Writing

These are my notes, essays, and explorations on systems, software, automation, consulting, and building.

Some are practical. Some are conceptual. Some are about the business of consulting. Most are somewhere in between.

Ai Automation Consulting General Principles Social Media Systems

Featured

What Is a Fractional CTO?

A Fractional CTO provides senior technical leadership on a part-time basis — strategic direction, architectural guidance, and risk management at a level that matches your company's stage. It's not a reduced CTO role. It's a different engagement model.

6 min read Systems

From Monday.com to Custom Software

One of the highest-volume Monday.com users in North America. 30,000+ orders per year. How I scaled them from Monday.com to low-code to custom software.

What Used to Take 5 Months Now Takes 6 Weeks

Multi-Brand QSR Performance Dashboard: A Case Study How I built a custom performance dashboard for a multi-unit franchisee operating 45+ restaurants across three national QSR brands — replacing spreadsheets and manual reporting with automated metrics, hierarchical rollups, and enterprise-grade FP&A. 6 min read · Consulting What Is a Fractional CTO? A Fractional CTO provides senior technical leadership on a part-time basis — strategic direction, architectural guidance, and risk management at a level that matches your company's stage. It's not a reduced CTO role. It's a different engagement model. 6 min read · Consulting Modeling Reality Dashboards are easy. Data models are hard. If the data model is wrong, no dashboard will save you. 5 min read · Systems Hybrid Stacks Low-code and custom code can coexist without becoming brittle. The best systems use each approach where it makes sense. 6 min read · Systems Automation Without Structure Speed amplifies chaos. Automating broken processes just creates faster failure. Structure first, automation second. 5 min read · Systems When Systems Become the Bottleneck Growth eventually stops being a product problem. At some point, the systems you built to support the product become the thing holding you back. 4 min read · Systems From Monday.com to Custom Software One of the highest-volume Monday.com users in North America. 30,000+ orders per year. How I scaled them from Monday.com to low-code to custom software. 8 min read · Systems What Used to Take 5 Months Now Takes 6 Weeks 8 min read · Ai Choosing the Right Development Paradigm in 2025 6 min read · Systems Craft over speed I care about how it's built, not just that it ships. Cutting corners creates future problems. 5 min read · Principles Years, not weeks I think long-term. Short-term wins that damage reputation aren't wins. 5 min read · Principles Truth beats comfort I'd rather be right than polite. Hard truths now cost less than comfortable lies later. 5 min read · Principles Timing beats trends I don't adopt technology because it's new. I adopt it because it creates leverage that lasts. Being early is optional. Being intentional isn't. 4 min read · Principles Simple beats clever Complexity looks smart. Usually it's hiding cost and fragility. Why I choose Rails over React, Stimulus over frontend frameworks, and simplicity over sophistication. 5 min read · Principles How to Build Effective Workflows A good workflow is the backbone of any successful operation. Here is my methodology for creating processes and workflows that actually work. 5 min read · Automation The AI models I use and what I think of them 15 min read · General Why am I creating all of this content for free? So I’ve decided to go all in on social media and building in public. 2 min read · Social Media How I made $100,000 USD consulting on Upwork in less than a year If you want to know what "starting from the bottom" actually feels like — this is it. I dropped my rate to $25/hour and applied to 50 jobs before landing my first contract. 4 min read · Consulting How I made $500,000 USD consulting on Toptal in two years When I left the 70-employee consulting firm I had co-founded, I was starting from zero again. No pipeline. No brand. No safety net. So I applied to Toptal. 3 min read · Consulting Consulting isn't for everyone. Read this before you start. Independence is not an upgrade. It's a trade. You're trading structure for freedom, predictability for control, stability for optionality. 6 min read · Consulting Why I left the 70-employee consulting firm I founded to go solo I grew an agency to 70 employees. From the outside it looked like success. On the inside, it felt very different. This is the story of why I walked away and what I learned. 5 min read · Consulting The Wonders and Challenges of Using AI What I learned from using AI to develop SQL queries and schemas for production systems — and why treating it like a powerful but unreliable assistant works better than trusting it blindly. 5 min read · Ai Compounding Beats Breakthroughs Why small, iterative improvements consistently outperform big, ambitious plans—in software, motorsports, and business. 6 min read · Principles