I grew up in the early days of personal computing — DOS, Windows 3.1, an Apple IIc in the school's computer lab. By the time the commercial web arrived in the mid-90s, I was already on it: IRC channels, hand-coded HTML, early PHP scripts, and the LAN networking that passed for community before Facebook existed.
Those weren't hobbies. They were a front-row seat to every pattern that would repeat across the next 30 years: the initial burst of enthusiasm, the overcrowding by amateurs, the collapse of the unsustainable approaches, and the emergence of whoever had built the deepest fundamentals underneath their tactics.
I watched it happen with vBulletin communities before social networks ate them. I watched it happen with Wordpress when it became a bloated liability for the agencies that had bet everything on it. I watched it happen with SEO when Google decided that manufactured links weren't real trust. And I'm watching it happen now with AI — the same pattern, compressed into a faster cycle.
Today, I'm the Director of Marketing at Wangard Partners, a commercial real estate firm in Milwaukee. I run Pure Digital LLC as a fractional CMO practice for B2B and CRE companies who need someone who has already lived through the next thing they're about to face. And I write Systems & Signal, a weekly Substack newsletter on AI-enabled marketing operations, brand strategy, and staying ahead when everything is changing at once.
The thread connecting all of it: the brands that survive are the ones that never lost sight of why people trust them. I use three decades of pattern recognition to help companies hold onto that through every technology shift — including this one.