Experience
Twenty years of building, running and buying businesses
I own and operate consumer ecommerce brands. What follows is the record behind that — the companies, the roles, and the work itself.
I've worked every seat in this business, including the one that signs for the whole thing.
That range is the whole point. A brand's problems rarely arrive sorted by department. A messy P&L, a reorder cycle that keeps stocking out, and an ad account nobody can evaluate are usually one problem wearing three costumes. Seeing that takes having been accountable for all three, on a real business, with the outcome landing on you.
Most of what I do sits on the operating side, which is to say everything that happens after the marketing. But I've built and run the marketing too, and that's often what lets me tell whether an ad account is the problem or just where the problem is showing up.
Now
Owner & Chief Operating Officer
Holding company for consumer ecommerce brands · Earth's Daughter, Professor Killamoth
My partner Travis and I formed Freedom Brands as the vehicle for acquiring and operating consumer product companies. We bought our platform business in a stock purchase — two brands in one deal: Earth's Daughter, organic lip balm and aloe skincare, and Professor Killamoth, non-toxic moth traps and cedar home protection. I ran the acquisition end to end, from diligence and quality of earnings through the stock purchase agreement and the financing.
Since closing I've held the operating and financial seat. That has meant building the company's financial operating system from nothing — the books, an Amazon settlement model that reconciles marketplace activity to the general ledger, and a month-end close that now runs in a single day — alongside the supply chain: contract manufacturers, freight terms, landed cost, and the demand forecasting that sizes every purchase order.
Partner & Investor
Direct-to-consumer fitness and apparel
A minority position in a Shopify brand, where I advise on ecommerce operations and the economics underneath the product line.
Operating
Fractional Chief Operating Officer
Three commonly-owned brands, one a two-time Inc. 5000 honoree
Two years holding the full operating remit across three brands that shared teams and resources: supply chain and production, marketing, and customer service. I built and led the DTC marketing function, with an in-house team and outside agencies covering paid media, creative and lifecycle.
The work that mattered most was less visible. The three brands ran on a single opaque P&L, so nobody could say which one made money. I separated them into three cleanly reported businesses with accurate COGS on a BigQuery reporting layer. It was the first time the owner had seen his brands individually, and profitability rose sharply on revenue that barely moved. I also brought AI into customer support, which let us remove two roles while service got better rather than worse.
Fractional Chief Operating Officer
Ecommerce brands and agencies, $1M–$10M
Roughly a dozen engagements. The job was usually the same one: pull the founder out of daily operations so the business could grow past them. Operating cadence, clear ownership, decisions pushed down into the team, and internal systems so the company ran on tooling rather than on somebody's memory. For several of them that meant building the marketing function too — hiring in-house marketers and managing the agencies alongside them.
Agency
Vice President of Operations
Performance marketing agency · Inc. 5000, 2018
I arrived through an acquisition: Tier 11 bought Funnel Owl, the Meta ads agency I had founded and run, and I stayed on to run operations. Over four years we grew from 8 people to 50 and from $1.1M to $5M in revenue, with more than $50M a year in client ad spend moving through the firm. Advertising, Creative, Client Success and Development all reported into operations, which meant owning delivery, capacity planning, and the org design that had to stay ahead of the growth rather than chase it.
Founder
Meta advertising agency · acquired by Tier 11
Built and ran an agency serving direct-response ecommerce advertisers.
Acquisitions
I've been on all sides of a transaction: the founder who sold a company, the operator who integrated one, and the buyer who structures and finances them.
A complete cycle
One of my partner's clients was shutting a brand down. He asked whether I'd run it if we bought it, and we did — on 100% seller financing with no recourse, which meant the risk was my time rather than my capital. We ran it two years, doubled it, and sold it. It was deliberately small. I wanted a complete buy, operate and exit loop behind me before putting real money at stake, and the credibility in it is the structure and the judgment rather than the size of the check.
C-corp stock purchase
Financed with an SBA 7(a) facility and seller notes, with competing lenders run against each other on terms, subordination and covenants. I formed the holding company with original-issue shares so the eventual exit qualifies under §1202, and built the governance layer beneath it. Freedom Brands is the vehicle for add-on acquisitions under the same umbrella.
Engineering
Before the business years I spent a decade as an engineer. It's the reason I build the reporting and data systems inside my companies myself instead of hiring someone to build them and hoping the output is right.
Ecommerce video platform
Implementation work for enterprise retailers including Home Depot and Samsonite.
DevOps · acquired by Return Path
A Ruby on Rails product where losing a message was not an option. The user base went from roughly 300 to 3 million on my watch, and the database layer from a single server to 25 coordinated ones.
Network operations · acquired by AT&T
My first job out of college, running the networks behind the first Wi-Fi hotspots in McDonald's and Starbucks — roughly 10,000 remote Linux servers.
What I actually do
Ecommerce operations
Multi-brand P&L across Amazon and Shopify, demand forecasting, purchase order planning, contract manufacturers and 3PLs, freight terms and landed cost.
Financial operations
Books and chart of accounts, month-end close, AP and AR systems, Amazon settlement reconciliation, per-SKU COGS, working capital.
Data and reporting
Airbyte to BigQuery to Dataform pipelines, Supabase applications, contribution margin by SKU and ASIN, LTV by entry product, demand models.
Marketing leadership
Building and running DTC marketing teams, hiring and directing agencies, paid media, creative and lifecycle, spend judged against contribution margin.
Corporate development
Buy-side diligence, stock purchase agreements, quality of earnings, SBA and seller-note financing, entity structuring, post-close integration.
Systems and AI
Internal tooling for small teams, AI applied to operations rather than to copy, SOPs and knowledge bases, operator handover documentation.
Recognition & education
Three Inc. 5000 awards across two companies — Tier 11 in 2018, and a pet supplement brand twice while I ran its operations. BS in Mathematics and Computer Science, Pepperdine University.
Where to go next
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