I started my first business at nine, mowing lawns.
In 1995 I was a Unix sysadmin, building websites and online stores by hand. Most of that early client work was ecommerce, travel and mail order, and I've stayed in those industries since. In the late 90s I was building ecommerce sites and automating graphics production.
When the web was young and affiliate programs were everywhere, I built sites around Mercedes, Airstream, Land Rover, rally cars (I used to race), and international real estate classifieds.
Along the way I worked in telecom sales engineering, designed injection molds, and ran an on-site tech support business. That mix means I can follow the technical details, and I know how selling actually works.
I also owned and partnered in a real estate redevelopment company. When the market broke around 2008, I lost a lot of money. I learned about leverage the expensive way, and I've been nearly all cash since. It keeps me humble about what can go wrong.
Since then I've run operations for a DTC food company and built search and ecommerce programs for a long list of businesses. I also chair the board at Century 21 Toma Partners.
I've started businesses, run them and lost money in them, so I look at yours the way an owner would. The pattern I keep seeing is that most business problems are revenue problems. Money stuck with partners, paid out in commissions, or tied up in stock, vendors and people doing the wrong things. That's where I look first.
This website is black and white, but most business problems aren't.