I was raised in a family where work-life and home-life weren’t separate — it was all a mushy mess of moneymaking mayhem.

 

My parents were entrepreneurs who ran a production company out of our house, then went on to build an Olympic-sized ice rink… in Florida.

 

Which is either insane or brilliant. (It turned out to be both.)

 

I grew up inside those businesses, and began managing teams as a testy teenager. Back then, I didn’t realize how lucky I was to learn about business operations by suffering actual consequences — not through classroom scenarios, and not through the eyes of people several rungs below you on the corporate ladder.

 

That kind of practice forces you to learn fast.

 

At the same time, I was training as a competitive figure skater with an Olympic dream, enduring 5am practices, relentless repetition, and a constant cycle of preparation, execution, and review. 

 

I didn’t make it to the Olympics. Instead, I broke my hip. Lucky me.

 

Unqualified. Hired anyway.

 

At 17, having already outgrown the family business, and too injured to train for Olympic glory, I moved to New York City, and talked my way into a venue management role at the Bryant Park ice rink — mere steps away from Times Square.

 

I was ridiculously under-qualified, and they had no clue how old I was until I was invited out one night for drinks, and… you can guess the rest. I went from sharpening sweaty rental skates in Florida to managing one of the busiest ice rinks in the world, handling the organized chaos that accompanies such a high-volume and high-profile venue.

 

I screwed up a lot, but I leaned on my instincts, and garnered enough experience to tackle my next challenge —

 

Launching an $84 million dollar venue in Melbourne, Australia. The largest ice sports center in the Southern Hemisphere. I was 22. And again, I was wildly unqualified to lead such a venture.

 

On my first day, I was asked to build a financial model… in a program I didn’t know how to use. So I went home, researched it, stayed up all night learning it, and came back ready to execute.

 

Tools are easy to learn. Judgement… not so much.

 

From operator to advisor

 

After years of developing and running complex ice rink operations, and a startup or two, I moved into real estate advisory work — partnering with companies like The Howard Hughes Corporation and Tishman Speyer on large-scale developments, including the redevelopment of New York City’s Seaport District and Rockefeller Center.

 

As always, I felt unqualified to be in those rooms, but I finally understood the edge I had all along:

 

Seeing the gap between what people assume, and what’s actually going to happen in the real world. Understanding that little superpower inspired me  to level-up my advisory practice, so fifteen years into my career, I made another unconventional move.

 

I went to Harvard. Trust me… I was as surprised as anyone.

 

Despite not having a traditional college degree, I was accepted into the executive real estate program at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. And what I found wasn’t just an education — it was a room full of brilliant, curious people who pushed me to think bigger. My tribe.

 

Today, I serve as an advisor to the program, sit on the alumni board of trustees, and continue to work with leaders and organizations around the world through my Harvard affiliation.

 

Time to write that shit down…

 

In 2023, I started writing professionally — with my first paid articles published in the premium research arm of the tech & startup publication The Hustle. Within weeks, they asked me to step into the Managing Editor role.

 

That experience taught me something important:

 

People enjoy good writing. But they pay for insight.

 

I went on to ghostwrite 150+ CEO thought leadership essays (115,000+ words), generating over 4.7 million views.

 

Then I thought, “Screw it, I should be doing this for myself,” so I built my own media platform:

 

Drunk Business Advice — a newsletter where I break down real-world business lessons through stories that are equal parts entertaining, honest, and practical.

 

I don’t speak from theory.

 

I’ve built businesses, fixed broken ones, launched complex operations, led teams under pressure, and delivered when the stakes were uncomfortably high.

 

My work lives at the intersection of strategy and reality — where great ideas either fall apart… or come to life.

 

And I help people close that gap.