Fishers, Indiana
Twenty years of building, operating and occasionally breaking companies. Today I run three businesses: Symtry Partners, Shortlist Local and Truecrest Advisory. Along the way I've paid full price for a few lessons, and I'm open about every one of them. The whole record is below.
How I work
Most companies don't fail on the idea. They fail on the four hundred small follow-throughs after it, none of which anyone owns. So I spend my time on two things: what's actually true inside the business today, and what has to get built so it stays on plan for the next four quarters. A lot of this list exists because I once learned the cost of not doing it.
The record
If you're reading this because you searched my name, you've probably already found the hard part. Here's the whole thing in one place.
The ecommerce and marketing agency I run day to day. We build and run brands on Amazon, Walmart, TikTok Shop and Shopify. Every framework I hand a founder is one my own team has to execute against.
For local businesses that need more customers. We get them found on Google and in AI search, then help with what comes after: pricing, margin and the operations to handle the growth.
Seller-side advisory for physical therapy practice owners who are ready to sell. I've sat on both sides of the table, so I represent one side only: the owner.
Five years running my own consulting shop, sitting in as fractional CFO and operator for founders who needed structure, reporting and a plan their team could actually run.
Across Amazon, Walmart, eBay and DTC. Also lived through the part where the platforms change the rules and a partner stops showing up. That year taught more than the good ones did.
I ran a private credit fund that put roughly $20 million to work across about twenty investments in two years, up and down the capital structure. Three of them went sideways. In 2021 I consented to a settled SEC administrative order covering that period, without admitting or denying the findings — after three years of legal bills, settling was what let me get back to building. I'll talk about it with anyone, in as much detail as they want.
Off the clock
I played Division I soccer, which is a long way of saying I learned early that talent is the cheapest thing on the field. Preparation, showing up, and being the same guy in week fourteen that you were in week one — that's the whole game. It turned out to be the whole game in business too.
Now my son plays competitive soccer and I get to watch it from the other side of the touchline, which is harder. My wife is the reason any of it runs, and our three kids keep me honest in ways nobody in a boardroom ever has. There's a rule in our house: between 5:30 and 8:30 the phone goes down and the work brain turns off. I don't hit it every night. I hit it most nights, and that's the honest version.
Legacy is a word people use to mean a building with their name on it. I mean something smaller and harder. Stewardship over ownership. Long-term games with long-term people. Build things that outlive the quarter, and be someone worth working for while you build them.
I also wrote a book about it, Read the Course. It's finished and coming out soon.
Play life like it's legacy.Twenty years in. Still learning.
Watt Matters
One email, Sunday morning. Real stories from inside the work — the deals, the operating problems, the calls I got wrong — plus the breathwork and nervous system practice that keeps me steady enough to run any of it. It opens with a ten-week series called The Power Codes.
Nothing for sale in it. Unsubscribe any time.
Contact
I'm not selling anything here. If you want to work together, ask about something on this page, or ask me straight out about the SEC order — all three go to the same inbox and I answer them the same way.