When the business gets loud and every choice feels heavy, you need someone in the room who has built, failed, rebuilt — and studies how great decisions get made.
Running a business can be the loneliest job in the world. Your team looks to you. Your family worries about you. And the people giving advice have rarely signed the front of a paycheck.
I know the tunnel — the late nights, the numbers that won't add up, the quiet question of whether it's all worth it. I've stood there as an owner, and I still dream up new ventures at 2 a.m.
What I offer is a voice: candid, informed and without bias. No agenda, no upsell, no telling you what you want to hear. I give it to you black and white — then help you think it through, push back where it matters and find the light at the end of it.
I won't tell you to dream smaller. I'll help you decide — and build — with clarity.
Not a straight line. Every turn became something I now bring to the owners I counsel.
Before any business, there were cornfields and fryers. Detasseling corn under a relentless summer sun and flinging burgers on a packed grill line taught me the hard lessons first: sweat, hard work and perseverance. Show up. Do the work. Finish the row.
It started with a camera and nothing else. From there I built FOTOSPORT into a sports photography, publishing and digital media company — pioneering green-screen, geo-fencing and tethered-camera automated workflows while most shooters were still swapping memory cards. Along the way I learned to be the face and the story of my own brand. The first lesson: nobody hands you a business. You build it.
Years in corporate America — across financial services, autosports, technology, hotel management and sports and leisure — on both sides of the table. I learned the real dynamics between customer and seller, earned a seat in executive-level decision making and helped take new products from idea to market. It's where I learned how business works when the stakes are high and how it truly makes and loses money. It's also where I recognized my abilities and found the confidence to know I could do things better as my own boss.
Teaching marketing at the University of North Texas, I watched capable students freeze and lose confidence when it was time to decide. It exposed what most business education misses: you can teach marketing, accounting and operations, but without understanding the entrepreneurial mindset — its strengths and its weaknesses — decisions made under uncertainty will fail every time. Building that decision readiness is my life's work.
As Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship at Colorado Mesa University's Davis School of Business, I lead the New Venture Practicum and MBA venture courses while completing a PhD on how entrepreneurs build better judgment.
The same frameworks I teach at the undergraduate and master's level — ideation and validation, business models, marketing, finance, operations and decision-making under uncertainty — I now bring directly to founders and owners. University-level rigor, applied to your real business, without the semester or the tuition.
Today I turn that research into tools founders can use. As founder of AEON NCI, I created the ENVI™ Assessment — a 10-domain measure of the entrepreneurial mindset — and the Decision Readiness Index, which show exactly where a founder's judgment is strong and where it will break under pressure. They power Aurora EDU, a decision-training platform for students and faculty, and AEON Dynisis, an inventory and replenishment platform running inside a real retail operation.
I've written a book on the entrepreneurial mindset, my doctoral research studies how entrepreneurship education changes the way people think and I'm now writing Before He Was Wise, a new book on Solomon and how wisdom is formed. The counsel you get is tested on my own work first.
Most of us became founders for a reason: to live on our own terms. Adventure. Rest. Time on the river. The freedom to choose how our days are spent.
Somewhere along the way, the business can take over. My work is helping you build a company that funds the life you started it for, not one that consumes it.
Work on your business, not in your business.
From the first spark to the final handoff, I can help at every phase of the business. Every engagement begins with a complimentary conversation.
"I have an idea and I can't stop thinking about it."
Let's pressure-test it with real research and data, validate it with real customers, shape the business model and pricing and map a launch you can actually execute.
"I'm working harder than ever, and it isn't getting easier."
Let's find what's stuck — cash flow, inventory, pricing, marketing or you as the bottleneck — and put systems in place that give you your time back.
"We've proven it works. Now what?"
A new location, product, technology or round of capital — let's make the big move with a plan, not a prayer.
"I just need someone to think with."
An ongoing advisory seat — a standing voice for the calls that keep you up at night, whenever they come.
I've been in the game — building, researching and writing about it. I've failed, made the costly mistakes and learned from every one of them on the way to success. You get the lessons without paying the tuition I did.
My doctoral research asks why capable people make poor calls under uncertainty. That work produced the ENVI™ Assessment — ten domains of the entrepreneurial mindset, from risk awareness and trade-off thinking to resilience and execution discipline — and the Decision Readiness Index. Together they show where your judgment is strong, where bias like overconfidence creeps in and whether you're truly ready to proceed, revise or pause. I won't tell you what to decide. I'll help you see clearly enough to decide well.
Sports, photography, publishing, fashion, music, hospitality, gaming, SaaS, finance and technology. I've built, run and advised businesses across them all, from creative studios to software platforms. Whatever industry you're in, I've likely sat in that chair — and I know what it takes to win there.
Our first conversation is about learning who you are and what you want. No time limits, no pitch — just an honest read on where you stand and where you want to go.