ABOUT

Me In Ten Seconds

I'm an engineer, author, and content strategist. I also run a business called Dime Box.

Over the past few years, I've tried my best to specialize in pursuing what interests me and helping others to do the same.

I have a four-year-old beagle-husky mix named Roku.

What I Do


Timeline (For Context):


1997: The typical start: I was born.


2003: Hustle #1: Start playing soccer, basketball, tennis, baseball, and football. My mother was a gymnast, and my dad was a football player. My grandfather played basketball at Loyola around the time they won the NCAA Championship. He also was a semi-pro pitcher. I was born into a sports family.


2010: Choose my life's sport. I started training and playing basketball eight hours daily the summer before eighth grade. I spent my days at something called the IYG Academy. Basically, all the young kids got the crap kicked out of them by real professional basketball players from around the world. It was one of the most fun things I have ever done.


2010-2015: My first love. Playing basketball allowed me to train and play with or against dozens of players who would go on to play professionally, including NBA lottery picks (Kevon Looney, Diamond Stone, Tyler Herro, Jordan Poole, Deonte Burton, etc.). Of the 500 players that get in an NBA game every season, I have played with or against more than 50.

It also let me travel the country. By the time I was 17, I had played basketball in nearly all of the continental United States.


2015: My first major mistake. My senior season ends, and there is too much social pressure to go to college. Several schools recruit me from divisions one, two, and three. Without a solid offer from a school that offered engineering, I panicked and stumbled to my safety school. I told the coach I was coming a few days before the admission deadline.


2015-2016: A small success. My freshman year and my first season go well. I made the Dean's list for the first time in my college career and turned out to be one of the freshman standouts in the conference. I also broke a school record for field goal percentage in a game.


Fall 2016: 1st heartbreak. After committing an entire summer to train all day, I am removed from the team six games into my sophomore season. It had something to do with emotional triggers I had struggled with for years, and my coach figured I wasn't worth the headache.


2017: Lost & found. When you lose something you've spent your entire life doing, you lose a big part of your identity. To get out of my funk, I started reaching out to successful professionals. I had no experience conducting interviews, but that didn't stop me from sitting down at dinner with CEOs and Authors to ask them questions.

I was twenty and had a ton of passion for learning all the things about professional life that basketball had kept me from. Eventually, I ended up interviewing an executive that gave me a book. The book was Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss, and from the very first page, it felt like it was written for me. 


Winter 2018: The standard pace is for chumps. After finishing Tools of Titans, I become a voracious reader finishing five or more books every week. The stories of entrepreneurs became my obsession, so I decided to move to where entrepreneurs are. Within a week, I officially transferred schools and moved to Boise, Idaho. 


2018-2019: A small dream come true. Boise had everything I was looking for and more. After my move, I began experimenting with virtually every internet side hustle you can think of (courses, drop shipping, blogging, affiliate marketing, domain flipping, flipping sports cards, selling ebooks, etc.).

I launched a podcast to interview local entrepreneurs by using Boise States radio station. I interviewed everyone. Teams that were fresh out of Y-Combinator, entrepreneurs with multi-million dollar buyouts, and founders working with a small team of four high school hackers that figured college wasn't for them. By the time my show ended, I had recorded over two dozen episodes with some of the most notable names in the Boise entrepreneur community.


Summer 2019: Rule #7: Refuse a steady paycheck. I spend my first summer in Boise making a rule to never apply for a job and only accept projects where I can learn something valuable or expand my network. Some random projects included becoming a contractor for Boise State's official website, programming a robot, planning a new curriculum, and upgrading a plasma cutter.


Fall 2019: Startup #1: Idea Off. The wrong way to do business. I get accepted into Boise State's Venture College Startup Incubator to build a website that helps entrepreneurs validate new business ideas with paying customers. I threw myself into it, entering pitch contests to raise money and constantly working on it when I wasn't in class. I wasn't out like typical college students at a state school. I was stuck in an apartment or the library talking to customers. 

I realized later on that this was the wrong way to do business. The right way would have been going out, networking, creating partners, expanding ideas, and testing them on people in person.


Spring 2020: Freedom at last. Kind of. After graduating from Boise State (with BS in Engineering), I sold Idea Off to a competitor who just wanted the email list and the domain. Then the world goes into a global health pandemic, and everything goes on lockdown. So I made the compulsive decision to buy a dog. A beagle/husky mix named Roku. 


Summer 2020: Book #1: Routine Hacker. In a month, I write and publish my first book on how I break down routines to construct what I call day architecture. The book made more than $1,000 in sales in the first week, and I realized I could do this for work. 


July 2020: Journey #1: Boise to Brookfield. With 12-week-old Roku in the back seat, I took a road trip from Idaho to Wisconsin as a post-graduation release. We drove for several days stopping in Yellowstone and every park we could find. I've always had a deep love for nature.


2020-2021: Coaching at West Bend. I take a coaching position at West Bend East High School to keep basketball in my life and have a solid side hustle. In our first year, we win the Regional Final as the youngest coaching staff in the state and the first Division 1 Regional Championship in school history. Also, I found Startup #2: Leafyverse, with two other engineering friends. An environmentally friendly 3D printing construction company.

Later that same year, I founded Startup #3: Lazeboi, a publishing company. We immediately started researching and planning the books of famous Youtube and TikTok creators.


Late 2021: I realize I have no idea what I'm doing. I needed to learn how to run a real startup and publish a bestselling book. So I decided to learn from both. I contacted bestselling author Adam Shoalts to help with his next book and began doing some marketing for him.

On the startup side, we disbanded Leafyverse after failing to secure funding.


2022: Book #2: What To Risk. To prove the concept of Lazeboi, I professionally self-publish the first ever TikTok-based book. As a result, I land Lazeboi's first client.

But I still wanted to learn what it took to run a real startup. So I got a job as a content strategist at a revolutionary social media startup called Stan. It is full of geniuses and has a mission that could change the world.


2022-2023: So this is what a startup looks like. As employee #11, I got in with Stan really early. The founder had just raised $5,000,000 by himself and found a co-founder on the other side of the country. The team was incredible, with every member wearing multiple hats; the speed was intense, and so was the measuring; the attention to detail was so fierce nothing went unnoticed, and everyone virtually worked autonomously!  I absorbed everything like a sponge.

I learned how to raise money, find a co-founder, build a team, run an all-hands meeting, create culture, establish a business plan, what metrics matter, how teams lead from within early, and where the breakpoints are. It was easily the most exciting time of my life. 


Winter 2023: Rule #7: Refuse a steady paycheck. I loved Stan. I was there when we broke $1 million ARR. I watched our Creators pass $6 million made. I shared ideas that actually meant something and added to the change we were making. And they paid me incredibly well.

But there was a problem, I was getting too comfortable. I began reminding myself why I took that job in the first place. And how I had to get back to my own dreams. So after ten months, I quit, so I could take my own risks. 

I also finish my final season coaching at West Bend East High School. In just three years, we held one of the highest winning percentages in school history. We had one of five winning seasons that the school has had in twenty-three years. And we tied the school's longest winning streak in a thirty-year history. 


Spring 2024: 


To be continued...


I only grade myself on learning & making.


Above everything else in my life, I care about how well I can make things. My ultimate goal in life is to die completely empty. Making sure every idea gets out of my head and into the world. And I care about performance and learning new valuable skills that help make things happen. 


I am ambitiously driven to become more proficient. When I was a college basketball player, my coach would regularly find me in the gym an hour before our 6 a.m. practice. I knew I wasn't going to the NBA; I wasn't one of those one-in-million players, but in another country that offered professional contracts, just maybe. But only if I trained more than everyone else and in more creative ways.


This was my focus, my obsession to sign a professional contract from age 10 to 19. Going into my last season, I trained daily, ate clean, went to bed early, and said no to everything that didn't include training, lifting, recovering, or watching film. Then, six games into my sophomore season, I removed myself from the team after listening to my teammates complain about playing on game day.  It broke my heart that I couldn't get them to care as much as I did.


After basketball, my interest became decoding myself. Basketball had consumed my identity for all those years, so I focused entirely on answering personal questions, writing in my journal, and finding others to improve my thinking. I read multiple nonfiction books a week (and still do) to improve my mind and generate new insights. My single-focused obsession shifted to learning about different ways of living, creating income, and performing at a higher level.


Five years later, the life models, frameworks of habits, and ideas I generated were starting to get pretty good. That's when I decided I wanted to do this forever. Learn a lot of new stuff, generate a ton of ideas, and test them all in the real world to see what works. 


My days are organized to optimize my time spent doing just that and working creatively. I grade myself on how well I execute those things. 


My philosophy


I always thought my approach to life was different. Then I read the book Tools of Titans and realized I wasn't so special. If anything, I am well behind the curve. My interests and ambitions are shared mental models of both the current and ancient elite. Therefore, my approach to life is relatively similar to Derek Sivers, Richard Feynman, Tim Ferriss, Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Josh Waitzkin, William Leonard Hunt, Benjamin Franklin, Sir Francis Younghusband, and Ryan Holiday. If you want to know their approach, I highly recommend reading their books and following their socials.


It is a struggle to constantly remind myself that I am here to do work I am proud of and that brings me the most joy. If I ever feel like I am doing something to impress someone else or to compare myself to them, I try to replace it with a new perspective. 


Sometimes I try living an entirely different way for a few weeks to see if I want something new.


I see money as a tool.


Maybe it is because I have never had much of it or a lack of it, but money to me is like an ax. It is just something that makes getting a job done easier.


In most ways that you can think about it, it's true. Money certainly makes obtaining food much easier, but some people grow their own. Money makes projects more likely to succeed when you can hire someone to help you, but you could get it done yourself (if you wanted to).


Money, to me, isn't a tool for fame, recognition, or anything material. I see money as a tool for a better life, only given to you as a result of being more useful to more people. The more useful you are, the more money we want to give you so you can keep being useful (Amazon has made life much easier for millions around the world).


I disagree with being a starving artist who does everything intrinsically. It's silly not to equip yourself with the tools to do better work. I also disagree with ambitiously striving for more money simply for money's sake. If I ever catch myself saying, "But I am about to make so much money," then I know it is certainly something I should be avoiding. 


I work hard, work for money, and to be happier, smarter, and more useful, so I have the tools I need.


I love day architecture.


I use the term "day architecture" because that is precisely what it is, but in simple terms, it is creating better daily routines. There is a certain beauty to me when I structure my days just right, when the perfect combination of creative work, physical activity, and deep thinking all come together. 


I am constantly plugging in new inputs like a workout routine or meditation practice to see how I feel at the end of the day. It is crafting and structuring my days the same way an architect designs a building. A foundation for long-term success.


Training, writing, getting things done, it's all just day architecture to me.


I hate when people see how my days are designed and say, "You should have more fun." They don't understand I do it because it's fun. It is entirely intrinsic — Trying to cram the most out of the daily seconds. I know it will never be perfect for them, only perfect for me, which is why I am so particular about it.


Not taking into account how my time is being spent would compromise my happiness, so I continue to do it. It is a personal ambition. It is comparable to creating art. I don't expect everyone to understand; I reap the rewards alone.


Creative hours are an essential feature of my day architecture. This is the time spent directly related to my current project. Usually, that means a business, book, or film. This time is sacred, and I protect it as such. The only day it isn't vital is my "release" day. A day when I can wake up whenever, eat whatever, and explore without thinking about getting more done. It is good to have some kind of break.


My creative hours are recorded on a simple stopwatch I carry with me everywhere. At the end of each day, its value is recorded on an annual spreadsheet. As long as my creative hours surpass 1,000 by the end of the year (about 3 hours a day), I know I am doing something right.


Another part of my day architecture is consistent journaling. I love journals, and I know I wouldn't be who I am without them. In my mind, my thoughts always seem cluttered, but when written on a page, they're crystal clear. Journaling happens for me in the morning, throughout the day, and the evening totaling a few hours a day. This is where my natural creativity shines, and my fears are discarded. 


My time is worth $10,000 an hour


I think my time is worth $10,000 an hour. It represents how valuable time is to me and keeps math easy.

Whenever I need to surf my social feeds or watch TV, I ask myself if it is worth $10,000 an hour. The answer is always absolutely not.


Of course, I watch some things. I particularly love certain documentaries. But after about ten or twenty minutes (a loss of around $3,000), I know it is time to get back to work.


Why my name everywhere is Maximus, To Himself


I was introduced to the poem Maximus, To Himself when Debbie Millman read it on a podcast episode. She described it as her favorite poem, and it certainly is mine too.


It was what broke me out of my shell in the world of Social Media. Whenever I would get insecure about posting a video, piece of writing, or even a tweet, I would tell myself I was talking to myself. That was a game-changer.


When you feel like it's only you, you post things that you enjoy. Something you are particularly passionate about. I would highly recommend reading the poem for yourself here.


After I wake up in the morning, I usually think about the final lines of the poem, "It is undone business I speak of, this morning, with the sea stretching out from my feet."


My social media would exist if I were the last person on earth.


Before I post anything, I ask myself, "If I was the last person on earth and no one saw this, would I still post it?"


The reason why is I want to love what I post unconditionally. I want it to be for me. I also want it to be valuable to myself, which hopefully makes it worthwhile for others. Those who can relate to my story and experiences can come along. If not, it is easier than ever to leave and go somewhere else.


Social media has made attention the incentive. That craving for attention makes most people post just for others. I want you to do the opposite and post for me. To not get sucked into a world where attention is the prize, I make sure my posts are a record book—a way for me to look back into my mind through time.


Some of the other things I would do if I were the last person on earth include writing and learning. If the apocalypse happened tomorrow and I was a survivor, I would most certainly continue to pursue those things.


I'm an engineer in an entrepreneur's world.


In middle school, I was a part of a team that won a school-wide Rube Goldberg contest by creating a machine that could play music (Really, it just dropped marbles on a makeshift drum). When I was in high school, I built a working miniature elevator, a machine that could sort marbles, and a car engine from parts. I also designed a fishing tackle box, laser-cut it out, and pitched it to a team of engineers. This was an early sign of my need to tinker, solve problems, and deconstruct things of complexity. It forced me to think creatively, brainstorm, share creative ideas, and bring different visions to life.


I knew I was an engineer. It's nice when things work out that way. Most people pick something to study based on how much money they were told they could make or what would make their parents proud. Not me; I simply wanted to play with circuit boards, soldering irons, prosthetic-robotic hands, and 3D printers.


A few years into college before I noticed engineers were just cogs in a much bigger machine. Engineers fix minor problems or save corporations a little time and money. Entrepreneurs are the actual creators.


For my first 20 years of life, I was an engineer by nature, so for the next 20, I want to test my luck in becoming an entrepreneur.


My original life mission was always to put someone in the Iron Man suit (hopefully myself). But despite the movies, that doesn't get accomplished by a lonely engineer working in his basement, even with AI (sorry, Tony). That happens through an entrepreneur who can build an incredible startup team and raise a lot of funding (and program an AI).


So my new mission is to build a network, community, and the expertise needed to launch really disruptive books and companies that can dramatically change the environment, education, and current corporate structures. 


All that said, engineers make things 10% better, and I want to go 1,000% bigger. That's what I want from entrepreneurship, to go bigger and make dreams come true.


My retired titles


I called myself a basketball player until I graduated college despite not playing my last years. I should have done something about that because I was using a retired title.


Retired titles are those you've used but haven't earned anymore. If you ran track in high school but no longer run in competitions, you can't keep calling yourself an athlete. If you used to be in a band but no longer play, you can't keep calling yourself a musician.


Retiring titles is a good thing. It allows you to explore new titles or helps you realize what titles are valuable to you. 


So these are the titles I have retired:


My current titles:


 My actions earn my titles.


I don't accept phone calls.


Everyone who has met me, from coworkers to close friends, says I am an extrovert despite never seeing myself that way. I am never afraid to ask questions in public or have a conversation with someone I have just met. Although I have those tendencies, I don't particularly love being around a lot of people.


Being one-on-one with someone is what I love. My window is usually no more than an hour in social settings unless I can find a private place to have a conversation with someone without being interrupted. I read a quote once that went something like, "If you are ever not interested in someone, the problem isn't with them; it's with you." To me, everyone is fascinating.


Interviewing individuals one-on-one is what I love more than anything except when it is over the phone. I never accept phone calls. I even say it in my voicemail. So if I interview over the phone, I am breaking one of my life rules. If you don't believe me, give me a call.


I love interviewing others because I am naturally curious. The curiosity I know has been the source of some wonderful conversations, and I am eternally grateful for it.


I have been interviewing people since 2016, and I don't think I will ever stop. I just love hearing stories. So interviewing allows me to get my fix. 


I'm a minimalist


I firmly believe that we all have 2-3 hours of solid decision-making a day. Anything beyond that, you aren't as well equipped. Since that window is so limited, I never waste it on deciding what to wear or eat.


Mental power wasted to me is a terrible thing. I don't need to make 100 decisions when one will do. That means I own around 30 articles of clothing in total. I am aiming for 121 things in total (not counting books). The thing I have the most of our plain white T-Shirts. I eat the same meals almost on repeat. All of my items can fit into a backpack and a duffel bag small enough to fit on any plane (Again, besides my books).


This also applies to my phone. Unless it is an app I use twice daily, it's eliminated. My phone is wholly alphabetized, with no apps on the first or second page. If I need something, I know where to find it, but I can do without it most of the time.


One area of my life I am waiting for minimalism to catch up with is my writing. The shorter I can write, the happier I am. When I edit, I try to leave only what is essential.



I don't like playing in sporting events.


It took me forever to admit it to myself (probably because I wanted to become a professional), but I hated playing in basketball games. Other sports were equally painful. Mentally I was never equipped for it. I love practices and personal training.


People say a game is where you bring everything together. But to me, the beauty happened in creating the sequences to be able to get everything together. I never needed fans to cheer when the ball went through the net. I just needed to hear the basketball bounce.


Instead of the accolades and giant face signs in the crowd, I preferred to work out in gyms where no one knew who I was (or no one was around at all). That's when I could focus on the art itself and not be distracted by obnoxious cheering or over-emotional coaches.


My interest as an athlete came from when the curtain was closed. I felt comfortable training in the shadows with nothing but my voice as motivation. There I could see and feel results. 


Over the 16 years I played, I competed in over 1,000 basketball games. Probably more than 2,000. I've broken records, had perfect nights, and had other moments some athletes only dream of. But at the end of each game, if you would have asked me what I was thinking, my response definitely would have been how I would work on the mistakes I made tomorrow in the gym. I am almost always thinking about training.


I am not bragging about that. It is actually what ruined me as a basketball player. It even made certain games painful to play in because I couldn't control my emotions. To sum it all up, it made me utterly incompatible with becoming a basketball player.


So what did I like?


Tearing Up My Teammates In Practice. My teammates used to hate me at practice because I would go so hard. On more than several occasions, we almost ended up fist-fighting. Practice to me was the perfect laboratory. It was where I could test out new skills and make myself better. I only ever wanted to give my teammates that same gift, so I never went easy on them.


Watching Film. I loved analyzing film mainly to test my memory. Despite being exhausted, I was known to stay up late after games to catch my coach uploading our most recent tape. The film has the beauty of being incapable of lying. The mistakes I made were always clear and undeniable. There is no excuse for something I saw myself do five times on tape.


Training Other Players. Basketball is artwork when it is performed well. Footwork, body control, changes of speed all come into play in creating the perfect read. Because of this, I loved watching other players execute moves they had been working on for weeks or months. There is just something about watching a quick stop, good elevation, and having the ball go through the net. That has always brought me joy.


More About Me:


I deconstruct the routines of others simply because I enjoy them. If someone mentions what they do every morning or their schedule for the week, I can't help but create day architecture from it. I immediately start breaking down how I think their time plays out, down to the minute. I can't tell you why I do this, but it is something I enjoy doing.


I love noise. I sleep with a fan, rain noises, and a humidifier all blasting. I can't sleep without ambient noise. I need similar sounds going when I work. My most productive periods come from when something is in the background. Listening to songs on repeat is another trick to achieve the same result.


I think being busy is a decision. I never tell anyone I am busy. It doesn't exist in my world, and I don't think it should exist in anyone. If you are "busy," that means you are doing something you don't want to do. If you are "busy," that means that you don't control your time. My life is deliberate, and I don't commit to anything unless I want to. So I will never tell you I am busy, but I will tell you something else is more important at the time.


I love being brought problems I know nothing about. My last job was precisely this. I was a Maker coach who helped people with projects they didn't know how to complete themselves. The projects I loved to help with always involved being forced to learn a new skill. Someone came in once who needed help creating a prosthetic hand to help a veteran get back to fly fishing. This meant the prosthetic had to be equipped with electrodes that picked up subtle nerve signals from the user. These signals would be used to flex and relax prosthetic fingers. I knew nothing about training neurons to fire in different locations to make a prosthetic move. But you better believe I do now!


Questions? Thoughts? 


No comments here. Just send me a message.