About Me

I’m a curious and passionate learner, a creator, a problem solver. I love building relationships, empowering people and generating growth, I believe that good guys (or galls) win and with an abundance mindset we can grow together. I stick to my values of honesty, integrity and kindness. Empathy helps me understand the world.

Learner and Creator

The things people are passionate about are reflected in the things they do in their free time. For example I love projects and I go deep when I choose to learn something. I can never sleep in Saturday mornings because I get excited for taking on new challenges and projects that let me funnel my creativity and learn.

The supply chain shocks from covid-19 and panicked buying at the grocery stores led me to deep dive into market gardening. I purchased numerous books, built a greenhouse, watched countless hours of videos from the best in the business and bored my wife to death about the benefits of soil blocking, the perfect row widths and the need for no till in preserving soil health.

My passion for cooking and the quest how to make the perfect pizza led me to build a 42″ brick wood burning pizza oven. Yes again annoying the wife by taking away the ease of ordering a pizza for Friday night and turning it into a 3 day ordeal of making the dough days in advance to slowly proof in the fridge, chopping up firewood and starting a fire 2 hours in advance. It only takes 90 seconds to cook the pizza but it took 3 days of preparation, and advance planning for that delicious slice.

A pursuit of nostalgic video games led me to build a 4 player retro arcade. This was a fun project learning RasberryPi, understanding Linux, piecing together electronics, and lots of experimentation to get everything working.

Interest in woodworking and gaming led to a crokinole board (really a fun game for 2 or 4 players) and later a shuffle board table which I thought we would use more frequently.

I attended Weber State, BYU and University of Utah earning my associates, bachelors and masters degree. It was tough to pin down any one interest because I really loved learning. I tended to be a jack of all trades. I found my heart was at the intersection of computer science, and design and pursued a BUS in Digital Media (Build your own degree). I then went on to get my Masters Degree from University of Utah in business and focused my electives on entrepreneurship and leadership.

I’m currently sharpening my Growth and Product skills as a cohort with Reforge. I’m excited to learn from leaders in the growth and product industry as well as a community of vetted peers. Often the best learning isn’t from the instructor but rather from the people you interact and network with.

I’m an entrepreneur

OK, maybe not a successful entrepreneur (yet) but I certainly enjoy the process of identifying a customer need and creating a business to solve it.

My love of connecting with people and making stuff led me to help create a flying club, designing and building a 4 axis CNC cutter and starting a business to supply my custom combat wings and then later sharing with people how to cut there own and making a business supplying the hard to find EPP foam sheets.

During business school I started an online retail company with my classmate for made in the usa outdoor gear.

I run a freelance web consulting business and helped Kodiak Cakes in there early stages.

I started creating a product for helping kids to do there chores. Participated in a startup accelerator and was moving it forward. This was trying to solve my own problem at home which was keeping track of who was assigned what and being able to reward and incentivize for a job well done. Unfortunately our designer moved and the project lost momentum. We didn’t complete the product but its still on my backburner if the various tools I try out don’t cut it for me.

Tanner Farms – Partnering with my overly eager brother I learned farming for profit is lots of work and has very little margin. My own father reminds me that “there is nothing more humbling then gardening”. It ended up being an all you can eat buffet of melon’s and corn for the racoons and skunks. We provided produce for a salt lake market as well as locals in Davis County. It was a learning year in preparation for a subscription model. You cant control for weather and pests are always hungry to take advantage of your growth. I see a startup analogy there.

What I learned from all this startup business is that its not enough to solve a problem especially if its just your own problem. You need to carefully weigh the costs of solving the problem both financially and from an opportunity perspective, figure out what the market demand is and what someone’s willing to pay, understand the capacity you or a company have for solving the problem and then learn to fail forward, pivot quickly and connect with the people that can help you succeed.

One of my favorite lessons from my MBA venture foundations class is to fail quickly and eliminate risk. Our professor described a hack for real estate investing for short term rentals. He would find a property he considered buying, create a test (fake) listing and determine the price he could charge and the interest the property would generate before buying the property. A similar thing can be done with ecommerce. Before buying stock he would figure out what people wanted by listing the items and when someone went to purchase the page would it would say it was out of stock but to provide your email and be notified when it was back in stock. These hacks were cheep and reduced risk. I applied these same ideas in marketing and web development by prototyping and getting user feedback before investing in the build or ad buy.

I’m an innovative problem solver

Academic Healthcare has been slow to adopt and change but is rapidly facing innovative competition. I’ve helped improve the digital experience in healthcare for nearly 20 years and here are some of the problems I have come across and the way I attempted to solve them. None of the solutions are perfect, but unlike concrete (yes I’ve done that) you can keep iterating and changing and with each iteration you learn something new. Problem solving is a virtues cycle of research, hypothesis testing and creating and learning.

I’m a servant leader

While living in New Zealand and observing the Polynesian culture I witnessed parents waiting until their children ate before they joined me at the dinner table. This was their way of sacrificing and is a great analogy of servant leadership. You make sure those you lead have what they need, you pitch in when there stuck, you do what it takes to help them be successful. Leadership is fascinating and is a work in progress. The same principles of empathy, EQ, listening and conflict management have equal application in the home as they do in business.

My lessons from learning to be a leader is to confront problems early before a molehill becomes a mountain. Treat others as equals. Even though you might be the HIPPO in the room it doesn’t mean others roles are any less important to getting the work done. Helping people understand there why and there connection to purpose is motivating. Your responsible for recognizing and unlocking peoples potential. Your success is about helping someone else succeed.