Optimistic contrarian.

1980s · age four

Music since age four. I learned how to create.

I have been a musician since I was four. After several years of practice I was performing at real venues up and down the east coast while still in middle school. The dozens of shows over those years taught me how to make something people would pay to hear, and gave me many of the relationships I still have.

It is also where I learned how to run a business, and when I fell in love with the idea of entrepreneurship.

1990s · a kid with a computer

Learning to build.

The first computer in the house changed what I did with my evenings. I learned to build things on it: pages for the band, then pages for anyone who asked, then the beginnings of code. Nobody taught me. I figured it out at night, one problem at a time, and the habit of teaching myself whatever the next thing needed started here and never stopped.

2000s · high school

High school baseball. I learned how to compete.

Throughout high school I blended my drumming gigs with a knack for sports. I studied during the day, played baseball in the evenings, and still found time to teach myself how to leverage the internet at night. I had my music to promote, and I could connect the world to my band’s music with a few clicks and a MySpace account. Baseball taught me the part the computer could not: how to show up every evening, lose, and come back.

2005 · college

Founding in college.

After high school I went to the University of Central Florida in Orlando so I could refine my business sense in an active, thriving music scene. While I kept playing live shows and recording with bands, I took a more active approach to the business side of the industry, and it was not long before I found ways to use my online marketing skills for other musicians in my community.

A few months later I launched a full-service talent agency called Endagon Entertainment. It represented independent artists, sent them on tours, and found new ways for musicians to make a living. I learned that a company is just a promise you keep to other people, over and over, until they trust you with the next one.

2008 · graduating

Learned how to scale.

Before graduating from UCF in 2008 I had spun the talent agency into a full-service marketing agency called Endagon Studios. We worked on large campaigns for Coca-Cola, Miller Lite, Warner Bros, and Disney, to name a few. Our specialization in organic channels made our service unusual in the market, and we became one of the first agencies leading the charge for business blogging and tweeting, back in 2007.

As Endagon grew to 49 employees, so did other opportunities. I became a board member of the local nonprofit Rock for Hunger, launched an in-house incubator for web applications, and sold the talent division of the company. Between 2008 and 2011 the incubator launched Songclash, an online music competition, and Jamblr, online music collaboration software. Scaling taught me that the company is the people, and the job is to hire well and get out of the way.

2010s · the operator years

Learned how to automate.

I entered the employee benefits space in 2016 with a benefits administration technology, NICG, which I built single-handedly while serving as an officer of a successful practice in South Florida. It became a full-service home for startup leaders to clear their heads, collaborate with a community, realize their visions, and take care of their employees more seamlessly. From 2018 to 2021 I ran Order Media, full-service advertising for franchises, and I served as Chief Information Officer of a $20 million media company for a little over three years.

Every one of those jobs had the same lesson inside it. Find the ritual nobody wrote down. Write it down. Hand it to a machine. That is what I do now, for a living: low-code and no-code systems that automate the boring parts of running a company.

Now

Learned the purpose.

Now I am the captain of the ship at Nucleus, a mental health organization poised to impact the lives of over a billion people. I also invest in startups through my fund, Patient Ventures, coach entrepreneurs at Hire Skies, help build community around the Stacks blockchain and CityCoins, attempt to save the planet with Artsy Farms, and help small businesses get more out of their website and the internet as a whole through Awesome Internet.

The purpose turned out to be simple: use what I learned to build things that make the next generation’s life materially better, and enjoy the process while doing it.

Always

Learned to lead with love.

On top of all of that I am a startup mentor, leadership coach, marketing consultant, growth hacker, business developer, coder, designer, product manager, client success specialist, writer, musician, instructor, speaker, performer, and investor. Most importantly, I am a husband and a father to three amazing children. Everything above is in service of that.