The long way around
I tell true stories, and I build whatever those stories need. I got to both by way of a podcast I started in a dorm room. It's not the usual route.
The storyteller
In 2008 I was a college freshman in Indianapolis with an idea that sounded a little absurd. Crimes were happening on campus. The university wasn't reporting them and the local press wasn't covering them, so students were walking into things they couldn't see coming. I did the one thing I knew how to do. I started talking about it.
I had a microphone in a dorm room, no budget, and a guess that someone would listen. Someone did, then a lot of someones. That show was one of the first true crime podcasts anywhere, six years before Serial, back when the genre didn't have a name.
Eighteen years later it's the Myths and Malice network, six shows and more than 1,500 episodes, and every story still belongs to the people who lived it.
The builder
Running a media company shows you exactly what broken work looks like: the project tracker that only worked if I remembered to update it, and a person drowning in tasks a machine should be doing.
I built the fixes for my own company first, automation for the work nobody should touch by hand, and later AI that turned a pile of loose ends into something you could read at a glance. It worked well enough that other owners started asking how.
That's how Margin started in 2024, on the same instinct as the first podcast: find the problem nobody's solving and go after it. Today I design AI products and ship them to production myself. One of them is the board a farm auction runs on, every screen in the hall watching the same numbers.
The habit underneath all of it is the one from the podcast: find the real question, the one underneath the one people are asking. It's how I listen, too: I sit with people until they can see their own way through.
How it went
- 2008
A microphone and a problem
Freshman year, a campus where the crimes went unreported. The first episodes were about those, and the listeners showed up before the equipment did.
what I built I wanted people to be able to listen right on a website, so I taught myself to code and built one.
- 2015
One show became a network
It turned into a few shows, each with its own voice.
what I built When my tools couldn't keep up with the work, I built my own around how my ADHD brain works.
- 2020
Myths and Malice gets a name
The network got a name and a standard: tell it right, or don't tell it at all. Shows across true crime, history, the paranormal, and the unexplained, with hosts and producers who hold the same line.
what I built A home for the whole network online, every show and episode in one place, and the automation behind it so a small team could keep the shows coming out on time.
- 2024
I started building for other people
I'd spent years fixing broken systems inside my own company, and other business owners started asking how I did it, so I founded Margin.
what I built AI and automation for county offices, city halls, and family firms that can't afford a bad demo.
- 2026
A seat at a farm company
The first question a farm client typed into the desk used a county name the way locals say it, and the desk drew a blank. I fixed it before lunch.
what I built An M.S. in Computer Science and a Graduate Certificate in Artificial Intelligence, both from the University of Colorado Boulder.
Off the clock
Based in Wabash, Indiana, small town by choice. The best work I've done happened close to the ground.
When I'm not recording or building I'm usually reading. The library app got a workout this summer, thirty-two books, most of them about how people change their minds.
A speaking date, a consulting conversation, or just a good question. I'm always up for the last one. Get in touch, or see the work first.