about me

Empathy and innovation are my core compentencies.

Both are required in anything that I choose to take on.

But enough about the weird mantras and personal statments. The short and sweet about me is that I love to spot trends get firmly in front of them and then ride the wave when everyone else comes along and figures out what I thought was cool really was. In 1999, I started watching the Tour de France on a whim. Didn't know that I would be watching the beginning of an historical run by an American in a distinctly European sport. In 2006, a pair of friends introduced me to the English Premier League and European soccer. For four years now I've had people looking at me as if I were crazy when I would tell them I've stopped watching American sports or that my favorite sports team is Aston Villa. With a little help from ABC and ESPN, Americans are now waking up to what the world has known for years: football is an interesting and inspiring sport to watch.

My trendspotting isn't simply limited to sports. I started working at this tiny start-up tech company in Scottsdale called GoDaddy in 2004. I grabbed my degree in marketing with a distinct angle to online marketing in 2005. I cut the cord on my television in 2008 and have never looked back. I spotted and then reached out to top folks like Kevin Rose and Gary Vaynerchuk before they became household internet names. I've been both skilled and incredibly lucky to be able to get in front of trends.

The next big trend you're going to see in the next 3-5 years: the digital nomad as a lifestyle choice for people in their 20s and early 30s. With guides like Tim Ferriss, Colin Wright, Neil Strauss and Rolf Potts showing that it's possible to maintain a financially less demanding style of living with greater flexibility for personal development while living all over the world. It has all the things that the generation called "Millennials" are looking for. That's why I am obsessed with getting to this point as quickly as I possibly can. It is the reason why I am writing an ebook I intend to self publish (although publishers if you're interested in talking about buying the rights, email me) and am now taking on consulting clients in a variety of areas including marketing, product development and scalability. How will your business cater to people who are always "passing through"? What will these people need to survive and how can your product or service be top of mind for them? What are the long term effects of minimialistic living and consistent travel?

Now for the part where I list all my accomplishments and sound like a boastful ass:

• Graduated from Arizona State University with a degree in marketing in 2005. Graduated in 33 months.
• Worked for GoDaddy for over 4 years in a range of capacities but the majority of that time was inside their Spam and Abuse Department.
• GoDaddy sought two patents on an idea I had and titled those patent applications "Providing website hosting overage protection by transference to an overflow server" and "Providing website hosting overage protection by storage on an independent data server". Short version: I came up with a way to dynamically re-route internet traffic at peak server loads without the use of a standard router.
• Went back for my master's degree in information management from Arizona State and was the youngest person to ever complete the program at 24 years, 351 days of age. My master's thesis on Revision3 was nominated for being the best of all those in my graduating class.
• Helped several brands whose audience either did not understand the value of social media or operated in industries that are highly regulated. After servicing these companies and foundations they have proceeded to gain more than 10,000 social media followers/fan/subscribers and have successfully executed toward their larger goals.