I didn’t start in boardrooms.
I started by carrying boulders for neighbors as a kid, mixing concrete in my parents’ basement, dragging firewood out of the snow, and helping fix roofs and cars because that’s what my family needed. At 12, I worked on a dairy farm cleaning stalls and loading hay until a hay elevator caught my hand and took the tip of my index finger.
Hard work wasn’t a mindset. It was the entry fee.
When I wasn’t doing physical labor, I was taking apart technology. I crashed a Commodore 64 so badly the local techs couldn’t fix it. I treated AutoCAD and SimCity like games. I once read a dictionary because there was nothing else around. That weird mix — manual grind + systems and curiosity — became my default.
After high school, I went into Marine Corps infantry. That’s where I learned the most important truth about process: if the SOP is wrong, people get hurt. That lesson never left.
You can save a person — or a system — in the moment, but you can’t save everyone forever. Your job is to design systems that give people a fighting chance.
Chapter 01
Dairy farms, concrete, and a hay elevator
Early life was labor: carrying boulders, mixing concrete, dragging firewood, fixing roofs and cars because that’s what kept things moving. At 12, a hay elevator caught my hand and took the tip of my index finger. Lesson learned: systems and tools don’t care about your feelings — only how you use them.
Chapter 02
Infantry & crisis units
In Marine Corps infantry, I learned that if the SOP is wrong, people bleed. Later, at a youth residential facility, I became the guy they called when things went sideways. My cottage wouldn’t fold laundry, so I taught them the “Chinese folding” method and they started flexing on each other about how tight their stacks looked.
I was pulled into the crisis team because I could de-escalate without getting kids kicked out of the program — including the day I kicked in a bathroom door and cut a kid down from a belt around his neck.
Chapter 03
Frontline revenue & impossible calls
In BPO, telecom, and retail, I treated every floor like a lab. At TurboTax, I loved the “impossible” calls — the customers who’d been transferred three times and just wanted to explode on someone. Those turned into 100% CSAT months and a client champion award.
At Microsoft, Time Warner/Spectrum, and Best Buy, I turned simple walk-ins into multi-product, high-margin orders — consistently on the boards, consistently trusted with more.
Chapter 04
Miami reset & hostel survival
After a bad breakup, I went to Miami with about $200, no job, and a bunk in a South Beach hostel. On the way, I found out my mom had suffered a serious brain injury and needed care — something she hadn’t told anyone. I went anyway.
I delivered Uber Eats on a bike for over a year. About a year later, I was living in a Brickell high-rise. Around the three-year mark, I drove a Lincoln MKZ off the lot — a quiet signal to everyone who assumed I’d fail.
Chapter 05
Punchey & reputation rehab
Somewhere in that grind, I joined Punchey. When I came in, the business had a serious reputation problem and a trail of unhappy customers and chargebacks.
Today I’m the General Manager — effectively the department of everything: product, marketing, QA, admin, sales, success. My job has been to stop the bleeding, rebuild the systems, and turn it into a company that treats customers fairly and can realistically chase a multi-million-dollar exit.
That’s my lane now: taking messy, emotionally loaded businesses and turning them into disciplined, humane, revenue-producing machines.