I didn't study marketing. I had to learn it to eat.
I left the Navy and became a loan officer. To survive in that job, I had to generate my own leads. That's where the marketing started — not in a classroom, not from a book, but as a survival skill.
By 25 I was Marketing Director at a major mortgage firm. From there I built Magic Bullet System — one of the first tracking platforms for media buyers, used by hundreds of marketers running direct response campaigns. That was the moment I stopped just doing marketing and started building the infrastructure other marketers ran on.
Then I co-founded my own brands. FragrantJewels — grew to $30M in year one. A DTC leggings brand — $7M in year one. Survivalist Depot — $3M in year one. I built Digispace into a 2× Inc. 500 / 5000 honoree. Consulted on Uproxx's growth from zero to 1M+ fans. And trained hundreds of operators since 2010 — many now running nine-figure brands.
Today I lead retained CRO work for multi-brand DTC operations at the eight-figure level — and run SimplEngine, where I bring that same approach to a wider set of brands. Twenty years in the trenches, now powered by AI infrastructure.
P.S. — I have ADHD. It's why I build systems. I needed them to survive. If your brain runs at 4× speed but your tools don't, we'll get along great.
Also — I started a community for marketers and operators learning to vibe-code their own AI workflows. Sharing what I'm building, why, and how. skool.com/vibecode ↗