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Field notes on AI, operations, and ownership from inside America's small manufacturers.
From Burnout to Buyout — the serialized story. 18 years inside a company that went from a napkin sketch to a $400M acquisition. Currently airing, new issues weekly.
Field Notes — the evergreen method library. Tactical pieces on AI and operations, organized by topic. No schedule; published when there's something worth keeping. Browse Field Notes →
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By 2017 every chair was filled — marketing, ops, purchasing, quality — but work still moved by whoever had the most pull in the room, and everyone downstream found out when it landed on their desk. I went looking for the discipline we were missing and learned nobody was fighting a system. They were starving for one.
Electricity took forty years to show up in the productivity stats because factories bolted electric motors onto steam-era layouts. AI is the motor; your shop is the floor. The value isn't the tool — it's rebuilding around it.
The first job I ever deleted wasn't a person. It was a file. The four shapes of work that exists only to move information from one place to another — and why getting people off the carrying gives them back the part of the job worth having.
The biggest account in company history came with a department for everything. Our side had a switchboard: me. What being the single point of contact for a multinational taught me about missing structure.
Three hats, one head, and the photoshoot date that was secretly the engineering deadline. Why one overworked human becoming the only place two worlds connect is a diagnosis, not a compliment.
How a Rolodex and a willingness to drive built the case file for a studio nobody asked for yet. Why the turmoil isn't waste — it's the case.
250 gigabytes of CAD files, no source of truth, and the day a mower frame on the shop floor disagreed with the drawings. The diagnostic muscle that started here.
What "marketing" actually meant when there was nobody else, no budget, and no playbook — just a second job stapled onto the one I already had.
How the logos and brand of a company that sold for $400M actually got built — by one person who raised their hand for everything.