First-person accounts from 30+ years building, buying, and selling the consumer-direct lead. Published when there's something only I can say.
Every year I turn down more advisory engagements than I take. Here's what separates the fintech founders I end up working with from the ones I don't.
May 2026
Fintech founders are getting bad marketing advice from SaaS playbooks. Here are the structural differences that make fintech a different sport.
May 2026
Most salespeople treat aged leads as garbage. They're not — they're a systematically mispriced asset class. Here's what 20 years of working them taught me.
May 2026
The mortgage industry is flooded with AI marketing hype. Here's what's actually working, what's not, and what 30 years of mortgage marketing experience tells me about what's next.
May 2026
I coined the term 'lead management' in 2005 to differentiate it from CRM. Twenty years later, most companies still confuse the two — and pay for it in conversion rates.
May 2026
I operate a portfolio of niche authority content sites across lead generation, real estate investing, and crypto lending. Here's the thesis behind the portfolio — and why I think every expert should build one.
April 2026
In 2016 I built the initial go-to-market strategy and operations for SpringEQ, a home equity lending fintech. Here's what the playbook actually looked like.
April 2026
When Kaleidico had its acquisition and liquidity event, I kept 10% and stepped into the CRO role. Here's why — and what it taught me about structuring a deal that keeps the founder in the game.
April 2026
DeepGreen Bank to Quicken Loans to Velocity Lending to the fintechs I advise today. Four distinct eras of fintech GTM, and the lessons that repeat in every one.
April 2026
Most enterprises treat lead buying like a procurement function — cheapest price per unit wins. That framing is why lead programs fail. Here's the framework I use instead.
April 2026
I helped grow Quizzle — one of the first free credit report platforms — before Bankrate acquired it to fuel their customer strategy. Here's what I learned about building for acquisition.
April 2026
In 2004, I joined Quicken Loans to build EquityOnline — their first platform that gave borrowers a real offer online, not just a lead form.
April 2026
Before I built lead generation platforms, I ran counterespionage operations for the Air Force. The skills aren't as different as you'd think.
April 2026
In 2000, I left Air Force intelligence to join DeepGreen Bank as Employee #7. We launched the first unconditional online HELOC. Here's what building an internet bank looked like before most banks had websites.
April 2026
In 2005, I built a platform called icoSales and needed a name for what it did. It wasn't a CRM — there was no relationship yet. That distinction created an industry category.
April 2026
I've been buying, generating, and converting mortgage leads since 2000. These are the 5 lead gen metrics most mortgage lenders measure wrong — and what to measure instead.
March 2026
I've spent 30+ years building mortgage lending operations — from DeepGreen Bank to EquityOnline at Quicken Loans to a hundred-plus Kaleidico clients. Here are the KPIs I watch, and the ones I've learned to ignore.
March 2026