I help operators who are already in motion — people with a real business, a real team, and something that's starting to break — fix it before it breaks them.
I run a lean team — not because I can't afford more people, but because I've learned to multiply what a small team can do using AI tools that most businesses haven't touched yet.
This isn't theory. I use a stack of AI and purpose-built tools to run email marketing, write product copy, handle customer research, draft legal correspondence, and build operational systems — daily, in a live business, with real revenue on the line.
Part of what I do with advisory clients is show them what's actually possible with a lean, AI-augmented team — and help them build the internal training to make it stick. Not because it's trendy. Because it's the fastest way to get more leverage without more overhead.
I also co-host Send Help — a podcast for founders who are figuring this out in real time. No hype. Just operators building lean.
Most consultants want a clean brief. I want the rant first.
Here's a real example. A founder came to me furious about one employee — the drama it was creating, what it was doing to her mentally, how it was poisoning the team. She'd already decided to fire her. She just needed someone to talk her through the logistics.
But I listened. Not for the story — for the signal underneath it. And what actually emerged, once we got past the emotion, was that the employee was talented in one specific lane, completely miscast in her current role, and creating chaos because nobody had ever put a box around what she owned. The real problem wasn't the person. It was the structure.
We didn't fire her. We redesigned the role, reassigned what was bleeding over, and gave two other people room to step up. The founder got her team back. The employee stayed and thrived in her lane.
That's what I do. I let people vent — fully, without rushing them — and then I help them figure out what they're actually solving for. Most of the time, the presenting problem isn't the real problem. Getting to root cause fast is the whole job.
I started Darn Good Yarn in 2008 — two years out of the Air Force, no roadmap, no safety net. What I had was a business degree from Clarkson, contract management experience with the 30th Space Wing, and a conviction that sourcing recycled sari silk from India was a viable business model.
It worked. Then it almost didn't. Peak debt hit $2.3 million. I had to lay people off, renegotiate everything, and make decisions that kept me up at night. We came back from it — not because of a consultant, not because of a program — because I stayed in the building and fixed it myself.
The company is 18 years old. Inc 5000 five times. Front page of the Wall Street Journal. And I still run it every day — which is the point. The case study is live, not archived.
A few years ago I traded performative city life for a small farm in coastal Maine. We're working on hard cider. There are chickens. My daughter is in elementary school and I pick her up at 2:30. I'm not preaching the grind from a position of no obligations. I run a real business, in a real life — and I've figured out how to make it work anyway. That's what I help other people do.
"I'm not selling a framework. I'm selling 18 years of scar tissue and the willingness to sit in the mess with you."
Most introductions happen through referrals. If someone sent you here, they probably told you I'm direct. Send me a note — tell me where you are and what's broken. Three sentences is enough. I don't need a deck.