I’ve been in that room.
Probably a few dozen versions of the room you’re in right now.
Not as a consultant watching from the outside. As someone who’s felt what’s actually at stake.
Ken Lundin
The part I don’t put in my bio
I filed for bankruptcy.
I tell people that because I think it matters. Not as a comeback story — I’m not interested in selling you a redemption arc.
I tell you because when a founder sits across from me and says “I don’t know if we’re going to make payroll,” I don’t have to imagine what that feels like. I know the specific weight of it. I know what it does to a marriage, to a morning, to the way you answer when someone asks how you’re doing. That’s the only reason I can be trusted to tell you the truth about what I see.
The story
Thirty years across the tableThe problem lives closer to home than that.
I’ve spent three decades sitting across from founders running companies between $3M and $20M — watching the same patterns play out in their businesses and in their lives, regardless of industry, geography, or how good the product is.
The founder who can’t let go. The sales team that can’t run without the founder in the room. The company that grew fast and then stalled — and nobody quite knows why. The marriage that’s quietly paying the price for a business that demands everything.
I’ve been in enough of those rooms — and enough of those conversations at 11pm when the laptop finally closes — to know what’s actually happening versus what looks like it’s happening.
What I figured out, the hard way and then again by watching founders repeat it: the problem is almost never the market, the product, or the team.
What I actually do
Three vehicles. One job.RevHeat
I built RevHeat because sales is a system. Most companies treat it like magic — catch lightning in a bottle, hire a rainmaker, hope. I’ve watched that fail in every industry I’ve touched. Tree service. Software. Media. Manufacturing. We build the process together, install it in the team, and stay until it runs without us.
Unseat.ai
I hired 15 agencies and spent over $500,000 on marketing with almost nothing to show for it. Then AI rewrote the rules — buyers stopped searching and started asking. I didn’t wait for someone else to figure it out. I built Unseat.ai, first to fix my own problem, then for every company that didn’t know it had the same one.
Investing
Turn earned cash into hard assets that appreciate on purpose, not by luck of the market. Same job as the other two — force the value instead of waiting for it. See the framework →
Point of view
A few things most people in my field won’t say out loudB2B is still human.
Business-to-business is just a different form of business-to-consumer. You’re still selling to a person with fears, ambitions, and a spouse who has opinions.
The founder is usually the bottleneck.
Not the team. Not the market. The person who built the thing is often the reason it can’t grow past a certain point.
Advice without execution is expensive.
I’ve watched founders spend $50,000 on a consulting engagement and walk away with a deck they never opened again.
Being understood beats sounding smart.
The smartest thing in the room rarely wins. The clearest thing in the room does.
The playbook most founders follow is broken.
Not because the people who wrote it were wrong. Because the world changed, the rules changed, and nobody updated the document.
Wealth isn’t luck.
Every asset I’ve ever built value in — a company, a client’s revenue engine, a property — got there the same way. On purpose, not by market timing.
The podcast
It doesn’t matter if it’s tree service or software. It’s all the same.
I host Broken Playbook because someone needs to say the things founders are thinking but nobody’s saying out loud.
If something here made you think —
let’s talk.
I respond to every inquiry personally. Not a VA. Not an assistant. Me.