Perspectives from Fortune 50 finance and operations — applied to building software and growing small businesses. 16 articles, newest first.
MIT says 95% of corporate AI spending shows no profit impact. That isn't a verdict on the technology — it's a verdict on what it was pointed at. You cannot automate a process nobody wrote down, and in a small business almost everything lives in somebody's head. What I do instead, in four piles.
Read articleThe best consultants I worked with could listen for twenty minutes and tell me, in one sentence, how wrong I'd been. That sentence was never why the engagement worked. Here's the question to ask before you hire anyone: after you hand me this, who actually does it?
Read articleMost improvement plans fail because the first visible result is nine months out, and nothing survives nine months of a company's attention. I learned the alternative on a factory floor — along with which half of it reliably worked and which half didn't.
Read articleAt Cox I built the business cases for capital projects that had to clear an 18% hurdle rate. Most good ideas didn't clear it. Spending a year in that seat teaches you something useful: a recommendation with no number attached isn't a recommendation yet.
Read articleHourly, day rate, fixed fee, retainer, outcome share, equity. Nobody picks a pricing model — you get handed one, and by then you're arguing about the number instead of the structure. Six models, what each one quietly rewards, and how to tell which is being used on you.
Read articleSomeone tries AI, gets a generic answer, and decides the whole thing is overhyped. The answer was generic because the question was. Five mistakes almost everyone makes in the first ten minutes, and what using it properly actually looks like.
Read articleA lender is legally required to tell you why you were declined, but nobody publishes those reasons in aggregate. The SBA's own rulebook does — and it changed substantially in June 2025. What actually disqualifies an application, and what to fix six months before you apply.
Read articleBig companies don't start bloated — they earn their way there. From inside Fortune 50 finance, here's why the exact things that make a company successful are what slow it down, what the waste actually costs, and why one operator with AI can now out-run a committee.
Read articleI started this blog to get found, learned SEO by playing the game on my own site, and came away with one conviction: SEO isn't a service you bolt on later and pay monthly for — it's a set of decisions made while the thing is being built. Here's what that means for anything I build for you.
Read articleFor a decade my job title was, officially, nothing — sweatpants, school pickup, snack duty. And I'm fairly sure I built a bigger, more useful network in those ten years than in my whole corporate finance career, without ever once 'networking.' Here's how that happened, and why it beats every conference you'll ever attend.
Read articleI build software for a living, so when a custom-dev shop pitched me, I knew exactly what to ask. Watching the standard playbook unfold — dodged pricing, pay-before-you-see-it, 'just hop on a call' — is the best argument I know for buying differently. Here's how to protect yourself.
Read articleI started using AI in September 2025 the way most people still do — as a fancy search engine. Six months and one production app later, here's what I learned about where AI earns its keep, where it quietly lies to you, and why "just use AI" is terrible advice. The anchor of a full series on building real software with AI.
Read articleMost consultants take 6 weeks and $30K to deliver a strategy deck. I deliver an interactive growth platform in 72 hours — competitive analysis, marketing channels, product expansion, networking roadmap, SEO strategy, and live ROI calculators. Here's exactly how.
Read articleAgencies quote $150K. Freelancers say $15K. The AI-native solo builder? Under $5K in tools with enterprise-grade architecture. A transparent breakdown of what it actually costs to build production SaaS today.
Read articleAfter a career managing P&Ls — Fortune 50 included — I started building production software using AI tools. Here's what most technologists get wrong — and what most business people don't realize is now possible.
Read articleEvery agency drops AWS and Kubernetes into their pitch to sound impressive. I use Vercel, Supabase, and Stripe. Here's why the unsexy stack wins — and why I'll replace any of it tomorrow if something better comes along. A Kaizen approach to technology.
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