Twenty years carrying the number.

I wake up every morning thinking about ways to save local media. And often several times in the night. After living through the last several years in Minnesota, I can’t picture what a community becomes without local reporters in it. None of this is theory for me.

I’ve spent two decades inside media and agency businesses: leading teams, owning the revenue number, building and pricing the products, and putting the operating rhythm in place so growth holds. The same years built the relationships across the ecosystem: the vendors, the platforms, and the operators, known by name. When the call is build, buy, or partner, it isn’t made from the outside.

More recently I’ve built the AI-enabled systems that make this kind of rebuild possible: tools that replace expensive platforms, compress research cycles, surface competitive intelligence, and carry the repeatable work inside daily revenue workflows. The edge isn’t the technology. It’s knowing which parts of the revenue system are worth rebuilding, and the AI only makes the rebuild faster.

How I work

Every engagement runs the same sequence, because the sequence is the method:

• Find the leakage
• Simplify the offer
• Rebuild the workflow
• Automate the repeatable work
• Protect the renewal base

The order matters. Leakage funds the rest, a simpler offer makes every later system cheaper to build, and the renewal base is what makes any of it compound. Skip a step and the next one costs double.

Where to start

The thinking is public: the Field Notes argue the whole model, one essay at a time, and the engagements start with the diagnostic. If you’d rather argue with something I wrote, even better. The sharpest disagreements are where the real work starts.