Timeline

In May 2023, I began consulting to Muse Group as Head of Editorial. My initial focus is on Ultimate Guitar and MuseScore. As a long-time fan of UG and MuseScore user, I couldn’t be happier to contribute to the growth of these products. Let’s play it loud!

What started out as a pet project has grown beyond my early expectations. No Treble in a phrase is this: the online magazine for bass players I wished existed but didn’t. There were plenty of bass-focused sites out there, and many bigger names participating. I don’t like entering spaces where there’s no chance to be #1, and while I knew it would be a big climb, I felt it was possible. It took about three years to get No Treble to that spot, and we’ve never looked back. This niche site now gets over 200,000 unique visits a month, with a Facebook page followed by more than 215,000 people. Even better than all those stats: I met Kevin Johnson, who has become No Treble’s Managing Editor, and even better than that, a person I consider one of my best friends. I hope Kevin and I get to work together for a long, long time. Plus, we get tons of CDs, backstage passes, attending the annual NAMM show, and other shenanigans.

In 2005, I responded to a blog post by Seth Godin. He was asking for help with an idea he wanted to try. Codenamed “Plexodex”, the idea was actually what became Squidoo. I spent the summer of 2005 writing the spec and producing all wireframes. We hired Viget Labs in August (2005), and then our Editor in Chief, Megan Casey, followed by our Chief Engineer, Gil Hildebrand some time after that – the founding team. Squidoo launched as a closed beta in October 2005, followed by our public beta in December. We ran the site for 9 years, and I was as thrilled to be working with Seth every day. There’s never been a more generous, thoughtful, inspiring, genuine person I’ve met. Our team grew with even more people I loved working with, but we always remained lean and mean. Squidoo remained in the top 100 most visited sites in the U.S. for some time, reaching a rank as high as 35. Squidoo was acquired by Hubpages in August 2014.

While working on the “Portrait of Jaco” box set, Bob Bobbing recommended me to Jaco’s family and made an introduction. They were looking to launch Jaco’s official website and needed help. My team at Solutions Factory built the first version, which we managed from 2002 until 2007. My time at Squidoo made it challenging to maintain this project, but once Squidoo was acquired, I took over the site once again and revamped it from top to bottom. Building a site for my biggest musical inspiration was a dream come true.

I was a happy web consultant for about a year. Solo. One of my clients was Raytheon Corporation, and they asked me to work on the e-business strategy for Raytheon Marine. Once it was done, they couldn’t find an agency they felt could build out the idea, so they asked me to build a team. I hired five people, bought the computers, set up payroll, 401k, health insurance and the rest. A year later, the dreaded dot com fallout began. We survived another three years and eventually merged clients and employees to another company.