Questions first. Answers can wait.
I ask a lot of questions. Some practical. Some uncomfortable. Some that sound unrelated until they aren't.
I want the polished strategy, but I also want the half-finished thought, the workaround nobody remembers starting, and the view from the person closest to the work.
No recommendations on day one. I do not know enough yet.
The useful conversation usually starts after the polished explanation is finished.
I take messy notes, listen for the aside that changes the story, and keep pulling on a thread until we understand what is actually happening.
What changed right before this stopped working?
Where does the work wait?
Who approves this, officially and in reality?
What do customers do, not just say?
Which number would change your mind?
What are we pretending is temporary?
I take unfiltered notes. You get unfiltered thinking.
I am not here to nod through the deck.
I will push on the assumption, follow the odd comment, and ask what the numbers would need to show for us to change our minds.
If I think something is off, I will say it. If the evidence proves me wrong, even better. The point is not to win the argument. It is to make a better decision.
Generalist. On purpose.
It took me a while to figure out that you do not have to be a specialist to add value. The breadth is the point.
I kept crossing departments because I love learning new things and, honestly, get bored easily. Moving around can look messy on a CV. It made me very good at hearing the same problem from six sides.
Across more than 12 years, I have worked in operations, strategy, business development, customer experience, partnerships, growth, and the less tidy spaces between them.
At Porsche Canada, I learned how ideas move through a large organization and an independently owned dealer network, often through influence rather than authority. Scaling the Ontario operations of a mobility startup taught me what happens when the road is being built while you are already driving on it.
I have also spent much of my career moving between European and North American contexts. I speak fluent German and conversational Italian. Throughout my time at Porsche, part of the job was cultural translation: interpreting German expectations, decisions, and ways of working for a North American market, then translating local realities back the other way.
That matters when a European company is entering North America, a North American company is expanding into Europe, or an international team is technically speaking the same language but not quite hearing the same thing.
Those experiences taught me to listen differently: to hear what leadership intends, what the data suggests, what the frontline is working around, and where the process and reality part ways.
I love bridges. This is relevant, I promise.
I should probably have been a civil engineer.
I love the logic of a bridge: different forces, one structure, and no tolerance for pretending the connections do not matter.
Business problems are similar. Strategy sits on one side. Execution sits on the other. The interesting work is usually in the span between them.
Apparently, I'm also in the top 3% of Huberman Lab listeners. My favourite episode is the one on the olfactory system. Give it a listen, trust me. I love neuroscience and psychology, and the fact that we're only beginning to scratch the surface of how it all connects.
Useful leverage. Human judgment stays in the room.
I use AI to research, synthesize, pressure-test, and build tools that extend the work. I am very interested in what it makes possible. I am equally interested in where it falls short. A fast answer is not the same as a good decision, and a model cannot read the room, catch the hesitation, or know which technically tidy answer will not work for the humans involved.
I am currently building an agent with Claude Code to extend how I support founders between conversations. Think part coach, part Chief of Staff, part COO, and part friend who tells you the truth. It will always sit alongside human support to interpret the context, challenge the output, and notice what is not being said. Stay tuned.
A few practical things.
What do you need from us?
Access and honesty. The strategy deck is useful. So are the numbers, customer research, team dynamics, meeting rhythms, and messy notes that never made it into the deck.
Do you only advise?
No. I can help define the strategy, then work alongside the team to turn it into priorities, ownership, measures, systems, and real execution.
What if we do not know what the real problem is?
That is normal. You do not need a perfectly written brief. Part of my job is asking enough of the right questions to find the constraint underneath the symptoms.
Bring the deck. Bring the messy notes too.