About
Founder and operator first.
Soldier, state trooper, federal agent, horse trainer, founder. Every job I have held came down to sitting across from a person and finding out what is actually going on, as opposed to what the paperwork says.
Where I started
Kentucky, Iraq, and a horse arena at midnight.
I was raised in rural Kentucky, and I learned early to work hard, keep my word, and do right whether or not anyone was watching.
Deployed to Iraq for the full year with the Army National Guard, running convoy security as a gunner. Named Soldier of the Year for that deployment. When I came home I joined the Kentucky State Police.
Chelsea and I married. We wanted her home with our future children, and I could not see how that worked on $28,000 a year. We prayed about it.
Still a police officer, we bought our first rental property.
Took a position as a federal agent and we moved to Virginia. That first weekend we learned how many children in the world have no family. We started the adoption process right away, with no idea how the Lord would use it.
More than two full-time jobs. Federal agent by day, in the horse arena most nights until midnight to make ends meet. I loved the horses. I was missing my wife and my children.
The decision
We asked a plain question.
Chelsea and I walked the beach one fall and asked ourselves whether the life we were living was going to get us where we wanted to go.
The answer was no. In 2017 we sold the family farm to start our real estate business.
I did not walk away from the career overnight. I built the business while I was still a federal agent, often up at 4:30 in the morning taking investor calls before my shift and recording interviews after I got home. I kept that pace about two and a half years before I left federal service.
Two thousand conversations
A strange education.
After leaving federal service I produced and hosted more than 2,000 daily episodes of a commercial real estate podcast, interviewing operators, investors, entrepreneurs, lenders, and brokers from all over the country.
Two thousand conversations is a strange education. You stop hearing industries and start hearing structure. The same three or four operating problems show up underneath very different businesses, and most of the founders describing them to me did not know that was what they were describing.
I got very good at one narrow thing. Asking an owner how his business works, listening past the first answer, and finding the part nobody said out loud.
Growth did not make me less necessary. It made me more necessary.
What fast growth does to a company
I built and scaled a real estate investment firm past $400 million in assets.
Here is what I would tell any founder headed into a growth year. Roles, documentation, decision rights, meeting discipline, and management information cannot run at the speed of today's revenue. They have to be running ahead of it, built for the size you are trying to reach.
Most of the time they are behind instead. And everything they are behind on lands on the founder.
I have seen that from inside a company that scaled quickly. Knowing what it feels like is the reason I do this work.
What I do now
Most founders do not wake up wanting another tool.
And if they are going to grow, they need to know whether the company can carry it.
I am comfortable sitting across from a founder and asking hard questions. I am comfortable telling him when I think he is part of the problem. I am comfortable challenging roles, performance, meetings, and the way the company operates.
A founder does not need another hundred-page report. He needs to know what matters most and what has to change next.
I also build. My team and I put AI to work inside these companies, not as a demonstration but as something a team actually uses on a Tuesday. Most people who understand operations cannot build it, and most people who can build it have never fixed a broken process. I have spent the last few years on both sides of that, and it is one of the more useful things I bring.
Show me what to fix →
Success that costs your family is not success.
What I believe
Christ leads this company.
My faith in Christ directs everything I do. It is not one lens among several. Christ governs how I think about leadership, stewardship, marriage, fatherhood, money, business, truth, and success.
This company is Christ-led by design. We serve founders and companies whether or not they share our faith, and we do not separate what we believe from how we work.
A bigger company is not automatically a better one. Business is stewardship. Time is stewardship. Leadership is stewardship. The aim is not to build something bigger. It is to lead well what the Lord has entrusted to us.
Chelsea, our children, and Omnah
The reason I ask what you will do with the time.
I am a husband to Chelsea and a father to five children.
Chelsea and I founded the Omnah Foundation out of our own adoption story. Adoption can cost a family between $50,000 and $75,000, and that number stops families who are otherwise ready and willing. Omnah exists to remove that barrier so more children grow up in gospel-centered homes. We have partnered with more than sixty families through adoption grants.
That is not a credential I put on a business page for effect. It is the reason I ask founders what they plan to do with the time we help them get back.
One on one
A handful of men at a time.
Separately from the company work, I meet one on one with a few men at a time. It covers the business, but it does not stop there. Marriage, children, and whether you are walking with Christ this week or running on what you used to believe.
Some men need the company fixed. Some need this. Some need both, and I will tell you which I think you need.
It is me doing it, and it only works if I know what is going on in your life, so I take very few at a time. When I have room, I will email you myself.
Scale the company.
Be home for dinner.
Five questions, about a minute, and I'll tell you what would break if you stepped away. If we aren't the right help, I'll say so.
Show me what to fix →