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Field notes on AI, operations, and ownership from inside America's small manufacturers.
From Burnout to Buyout — the serialized story. 18 years inside a company that went from a napkin sketch to a $400M acquisition. Currently airing, new issues weekly.
Field Notes — the evergreen method library. Tactical pieces on AI and operations, organized by topic. No schedule; published when there's something worth keeping. Browse Field Notes →
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The man who ran product development could not send an email, but he built the first machine in his garage in 1996. The trait that made him fast in a garage is the exact trait that made scrap in a factory. You do not slow the builder down to the speed of your paperwork — you put a record next to him fast enough to keep up.
A supplier once asked me if I ever answered an email before 10pm. I did not hold onto the work because I wanted it — it kept showing up faster than the help did. You cannot hire your way out of that; help arrives on a delay the growth never agreed to. You cannot work your way out either, and I have two burnouts that prove it. The only assistance that ever kept up was a system. AI is the first help that arrives the same afternoon you need it.
We had no change control. Anyone could change anything — and the welder who wanted the gap closed up was usually right, about his eight hours. He had no way to see what it did to assembly. Sometimes a second man would later request the gap be opened back up, and the part would quietly oscillate, scrapping a batch on every swing. The change was never the problem. The silence was.
By 2017 every chair was filled — marketing, ops, purchasing, quality — but work still moved by whoever had the most pull in the room, and everyone downstream found out when it landed on their desk. I went looking for the discipline we were missing and learned nobody was fighting a system. They were starving for one.
Electricity took forty years to show up in the productivity stats because factories bolted electric motors onto steam-era layouts. AI is the motor; your shop is the floor. The value isn't the tool — it's rebuilding around it.
The first job I ever deleted wasn't a person. It was a file. The four shapes of work that exists only to move information from one place to another — and why getting people off the carrying gives them back the part of the job worth having.
The biggest account in company history came with a department for everything. Our side had a switchboard: me. What being the single point of contact for a multinational taught me about missing structure.
Three hats, one head, and the photoshoot date that was secretly the engineering deadline. Why one overworked human becoming the only place two worlds connect is a diagnosis, not a compliment.
How a Rolodex and a willingness to drive built the case file for a studio nobody asked for yet. Why the turmoil isn't waste — it's the case.
250 gigabytes of CAD files, no source of truth, and the day a mower frame on the shop floor disagreed with the drawings. The diagnostic muscle that started here.
What "marketing" actually meant when there was nobody else, no budget, and no playbook — just a second job stapled onto the one I already had.
How the logos and brand of a company that sold for $400M actually got built — by one person who raised their hand for everything.