Experience

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  Lighthouse It

  • Principal And Strategic Advisor

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  Lighthouse IT

  • Killeen/Temple, Texas Area

  • Principal and Strategic Advisor

    • Mar 2017 - Present
    • Killeen/Temple, Texas Area

    Information Technology is the lifeline of business, and it can be a driver of efficiency or an anchor preventing growth. Lighthouse IT was created for Texas businesses looking to release that anchor and chart a course to reliable technology that works FOR you, not AGAINST you.While building other companies, I developed a strong sense of the importance of technology reliability, and system design to the success of an organization. My role inside Lighthouse IT is to provide strategic advice derived from years of business ownership and IT oversight to companies seeking professional IT management.

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  Yzarc, ltd

  • Partner

    • 2003 - Dec 2018

    My Dad's nickname was "Crazy". And when he suddenly passed away in 2003, my sister and I formed a partnership to hold all of his various business entities. We called it Yzarc (which is crazy, backward) because we were selling off what he had spent his life building. Yzarc has/had commercial and residential real estate as well as a culvert pipe distribution company called Tierce Supply. Instead of selling, we continued to run Tierce Supply and the commercial real estate for about 10 years, until we finally decided to dispose of both. My role in this company was primarily accounting and real estate strategy.

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  SimpleCar

  • Temple TX

  • Principal

    • Jan 2016 - Mar 2017
    • Temple TX

    Car dealers have a well-earned poor reputation of only being "in it" for themselves. Skip, Brian and I developed SimpleCar to address this by being an ultra-transparent and ultra-simple place to buy an affordable and reliable used vehicle. The business was built for the cash buyer (the Dave Ramsey fan), but was also a great place for anyone bringing their own financing to buy a car.I love to learn and there was much opportunity in this business. My partners are experts at company culture and effective meetings. We have used "Level 10" meetings, have coordinated task lists, engage in short daily "Huddles", etc. These activities coalesce the team around a shared objective and provide mutual accountability.

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  Schulman Partners

  • Partner

    • Jan 2005 - Dec 2015

    Morris & Mark Schulman and I formed Schulman Partners in 2005 with the purpose of building a circuit of movie theatres in Texas. After 10 years, we had five facilities totaling 44 screens and discovered an entirely new concept - the "movie entertainment center". These new facilities - one in Bastrop and the other in Weatherford, TX - had first run movies, bowling, arcades and made-to-order food.Although we didn't have titles per se, I functioned as COO/CIO for most of my tenure. My responsibilities included all facets of building the business from the ground up: developing the concepts, projecting financials, soliciting investors, finance, operational design, marketing, recruiting key personnel, technology architecture, vendor selection & negotiation, etc. Throughout the years, I spent most of my time growing and motivating a management team. Some of my core competencies arose during this time: entrepreneurship, leadership, business strategy, information technology and creative problem solving.

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  Wingo Princip

  • Georgetown, TX

  • VP of Engineering

    • May 2011 - Jan 2012
    • Georgetown, TX

    Michael Princip had an idea for a helmet. He had designed and prototyped something unique - something that addressed the rising concern about concussions in football and it started to appear in the media. But the idea needed development before it could reach the field.I was invited to participate in a fledgling company that had raised some money to develop the idea. JC Wingo, who had previously led Riddell and Schutt, had already joined the company and planned to create a protective equipment design company.My role was to lend my technical abilities - both in mechanical engineering and information technology - to the enterprise. I did so and after most of a year we had made sufficient progress that we believed a major helmet company would be interested in buying the patent. With insufficient time to be excellent in both the sports equipment and movie theatre industries, I left Wingo Princip to focus on theatres.The patent was eventually issued and licensed to Schutt. You'll see it on the field in their new F7 helmet.

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  Marble Slab Creamery

  • Waco, Texas

  • Franchisee

    • Dec 2001 - Jan 2004
    • Waco, Texas

    Marble Slab Creamery served DELICIOUS made-from-scratch ice cream and mixed-in toppings on a frozen slab right in front of you. Now, I love ice cream, but had never intended that it would be my occupation. This was my business laboratory - entrepreneur training wheels if you will. It was a going business with predictable revenue / income and all the kinks were already worked out. As the owner of the location, my role was hire and train talent, and to run the system. After a couple years, I could see competition rising and without the flexibility to "pivot", I decided to sell the franchise. A couple years after that Marble Slab Creamery (the franchisor) went out of business.

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  Texas Hydraulics

  • Temple, TX

  • Engineer

    • Jul 1998 - Sep 2001
    • Temple, TX

    My career started as an application engineer. Texas Hydraulics is the premier manufacturer of hydraulic cylinders (the things that make man lifts and tractors raise things up and dig) in the country. My main role was to work with engineers in other companies to design custom hydraulic cylinders and to work with the manufacturing side of the operation to improve quality and clarity.It was here that I learned about Lean Manufacturing, which has colored my view of productivity in everything I have done since. The Lean mentality is all about ridding waste and inefficiency from an operation - whether it is manufacturing or not. It's the main reason Toyota cars were so much better than American cars in the 80s. The relentless pursuit of efficiency improves not only speed to market and improves margin, but also reduces errors and makes everyone's job more enjoyable.