Insights on Building Mission-Driven Organizations
Practical lessons from 15+ years of leadership across nonprofits, real estate, and healthtech. Topics include AI implementation, nonprofit operations, business systems, and what it takes to scale organizations without losing your mission.
GEO Is Like Feeding a Sourdough Starter
For the last year, I’ve been trying to find a metaphor that actually explains what Generative Engine Optimization really is.
Not the SEO-adjacent explanations. Not the dashboards. Not the keyword substitutions or citation games. But what it feels like to do this work correctly over time.
The closest analogy I’ve found is this:
Generative Engine Optimization is like feeding a sourdough starter.
Once you see it, it’s hard to unsee.
Why I Published Mission-Driven Ecommerce on Kindle and Why I’m Now Releasing It for Free
When I first published Mission-Driven Ecommerce on Kindle, it wasn’t because I thought it would be a bestseller. It was because I wanted the book to exist in a real, durable way.
Kindle was a forcing function. It made the book feel finished. It required decisions instead of drafts, structure instead of loose notes. It turned a lived experience into something that could be cited, shared, and referenced, not just blogged about and forgotten.
The Secret Sauce Behind My Operator Career Is Not an MBA, It Is Zapier
Zapier has quietly been the continuing education program of my operator career.
Not in the “take a course, get a certificate” way. In the “oh wow, I just rebuilt an entire department in an afternoon” way.
I did not come up through some glossy MBA to COO pipeline. I came up through broken spreadsheets, duct-taped CRMs, and nonprofit budgets that forced you to make hard choices fast. When you do not have headcount, you have to invent leverage. Zapier was the first tool that gave me that leverage.
The Rise and Flux of the Chief Automation Officer
When I first wrote about the Chief Automation Officer a couple years ago, it felt like a defining role for the next decade. Someone had to connect the dots between all the apps, processes, and platforms that were supposed to make work smarter. And for a moment, that was true — automation was the next big thing.
But in tech, “the next big thing” doesn’t stay still for long.
Why I Stopped Chasing Inbox Zero (and What I Do Instead)
For a long time, I thought Inbox Zero was the goal.
If my inbox was empty, I felt clear. In control. Productive. Like I had actually finished something.
But eventually I noticed the pattern. The cleaner my inbox got, the busier my days felt. More replying. More sorting. More “just one more thing.” I wasn’t doing better work. I was just better at moving emails around.