Open Dedication

Dedication

To the ICE team: Jon, Mark, Walter, & Bradford, thanks for humoring me, when the whiteboard called.

Open Table of Contents

1. People First, Always

Real people use the things we build, bringing their hopes, habits, hang‑ups, and history with them into every tap, swipe, or scroll. If we reduce them to “conversion events” or “churn risks,” we risk creating products that are efficient but empty. Great products earn their place in people’s lives by making those lives measurably better—not just faster or stickier, but genuinely better.

2. Product Physiology

My sports science background shaped how I see product. Like the human body, a great product is a complex system that requires alignment, intentional stress, and recovery. It flexes and grows stronger through feedback. It fails, adapts, and iterates. It only works when the whole system is healthy—when marketing isn’t at war with product, and engineers aren’t burning out to meet arbitrary deadlines.

3. Build for Belonging

Working on apps like Final Surge 2.0 and Wylder taught me that the best digital products create space: space for people to show up, connect,

Open 1. People First Always

1. People First, Always

This isn’t a tagline. It’s my product theology.

Real people use the things we build. They bring their hopes, habits, hangups, and history with them into every tap, swipe, and scroll. If we forget that, if we reduce them to “conversion events” or “churn risks,” we risk building something efficient, but empty. Polished, but pointless.

My background? A little quixotic, sure.

Undergrad in Exercise and Sports Science. Minor in Psychology.MBA with a focus on Marketing and Venture Management.Master of Arts in Biblical Studies.

Yes, I’ve earned an odd collection of degrees, but to me, they’re deeply connected.

What some see as a strange mix, I see as overlapping lenses. And after going deep in three different disciplines, I started to notice that most fields of study share the same underlying ideas; they just use different words, acronyms, and uniforms.

And when you start seeing the connections, you stop trying to solve problems with complexity. You start simplifying

Open 2. Product Physiology: What studying Exercise Science taught me about building digital products.

2. Product Physiology

What studying Exercise Science taught me about building digital products.

My educational background isn’t in Computer Science or Graphic Design. I studied Exercise and Sports Science. I lettered as a D1 athlete. My first serious frameworks weren’t roadmaps or sprint plans; they were training regimens, playbooks, and route charts. A foundation in physiology and performance has shaped my perspective on product delivery. How? 

Well, like the human body, as products grow, they become more complex. As complexity is introduced to the system, there is more alignment required. When a stressor is induced, the team observes how the system performs. Their takeaway creates more tweaks and changes to the product plan to ensure they get to where they want to be, whether that is in revenue, performance, or stability. 

Maybe a quick story will connect the dots. Recently, I strained my Posterior Inferior Serratus muscle in my mid-back. This muscle connects the spine to the ribs, and t

Open 3. Build for Belonging

3. Build for Belonging

Over the past couple of years, I’ve taken on fractional product leadership roles in the fitness space. I helped launch Final Surge 2.0, which connects structured training plans with Garmin and Apple users. I’ve been partnering with Wylder to help Race Directors and Running Influencers build communities that go deeper than a like or emoji comment.

Both of these apps do something I love—they are a digital organizer for co-located physical experiences. 

Final Surge is a coaching app in which the most prolific users are coaching teams of runners in real life. The app is the conduit of information for the runner and the coach to optimize their performance both in training and on race day. 

Wylder is an app for groups, clubs, brands, and influencers who want to chat, compete, and coordinate online for offline group runs and meetups, #IRL. Examples include: the coordination of a group run in the Salt Lake City foothills with filmmaker and Ultra runner Billy Yang with a live podca

Open 4. Disrupt or Innovate. You can't do both.

4. Disrupt or Innovate. You can't do both.

One breaks the system and one builds it better. Knowing the difference will help the team succeed.

At Sonic Drive-In, we reimagined the customer experience across 3,600 locations. That meant threading innovation into something already beloved. If we moved too fast, we’d lose the soul of what made Sonic, well, Sonic. If we moved too slowly, we’d stay stuck in a 1990s loop, trying to innovate with one hand tied behind our backs. The innovation required some disruption, but mostly it required tactical innovation from each department: Marketing, IT, Delivery, Product, HR, Legal, Franchise Relations, and Operations.

That balance between disruption and innovation is where great products live.

Disruption means burning it down and starting from scratch. It’s cheaper, faster, and unconstrained by legacy systems. No integrations. No baggage.

Innovation, on the other hand, is expensive. It requires a deep understanding of what’s already there, includin

Open 5. The Shape of work

5. The Shape of the Work

The best teams are as intentional about how they build as they are about what they build.

Every product team talks about outcomes—what we are building, why we are building it, and how we are going to build it. If the goal is ambiguous, it’s difficult to understand who you need to fill the seats of those who will be building it. The goal of a healthy executive team is to understand and communicate the vision in broad strokes. This can be end-goal products, feature suggestions, and/or engagement or sales lift.

We can’t build out a budget or understand time and effort if we don’t know the goal, or if the goal seems to always move.

The Shape of the Work Shapes the Team

At Sonic Drive-In, from the start, the goal was clear: omnichannel experiences to drive sales, reduce operational overhead, and increase digital engagement. We were to figure out how to build and deliver a digital-first ordering experience.

The executive team, in particular the Marketing leadership,

Open 6. Ego is the team killer

6. Ego is the Team Killer

We are conditioned to be heroes, but teams are where the magic happens.

Leave Your Ego at the Door

This isn’t about slogans. It’s about what makes shared ownership possible.

Ego is the team killer. Which is why retrospectives are so important to any team trying to accomplish something great! They give the team a ritual in which ego is left at the door, and a dialogue can take place without personal defenses partitioned around each member’s space. The team can discuss what is working, what is not working, what needs to stop, what needs to continue, and what needs to start. It is where mistakes can be corrected without malicious motivation, where juniors can learn from everyone’s mistakes and not just their own.

A team that can fail together, learn together, and train together will ultimately win together. A hero has to be perfect, and perfect is only possible when you control every aspect of the process. Why are heroes bad? Because they end up trying to con

Open 7. Organizational Physiology

7. Organizational Physiology

No Pain, No Gain, or is it Know Pain, Now Gain?

Digital as the Shiny New Thing

Too often, “digital product” is treated like a shiny badge: a sleek new website, an AI‑powered chatbot, a branded mobile app that no one uses. These are hood ornaments, attachments meant to signal innovation without altering how the organization operates. The problem with this perspective is that while it might give marketing the boost it needed to build brand awareness, it doesn’t add any value to the business. Technology as a marketing play is a strategy, and I would argue Domino’s Pizza has made this shtick incredibly impactful in the short term—remember the button to order or the tweet‑a‑pizza emoji to order launch?

![bc1a8d05-91da-4c11-b889-cfbf44ea3754_1300x868.jpg](https://books.story.build/u/bc1a8d05-91da-4c11-b889-cfbf44ea3754_

Open 8. Progress over Process

8. Progress over Process

The difference between Product and Project Management, without judgment.

For years, I got a bad rap. There was this idea projected onto me: that I hated Project Management, that I wanted them out of the building, off the project, and out of my life.

That couldn’t have been further from the truth. I cut my teeth in my early years of building apps as a project manager (in 2007–2010, we didn’t yet have the words or titles for Product Lead or Product Manager). I worked on waterfall projects, researched the different opportunities, managed decision‑making, note‑taking, mapped out all the details, and used Gantt charts and spreadsheets to track the work. I even did an extra‑credit project in graduate school where I wrote out three project plans for the movies Legally Blonde, The Sting, and Ocean’s 11.

I have a deep respect for Program and Project Management, and I hate the persistent myth that the two are at odds, that one is better, and that each wants the other out o

Open 9. Inspiration Isn’t Optional

9. Inspiration Isn’t Optional

Who inspires you? Are you finding inspiration? Are you inspiring?

One of the tenets in my Product Leadership presentation—the one I give to every new product manager—is a section called The Practices of a Product Team. It’s meant to offer directional vision. A way of saying: these are the things I expect us to do, whether or not they show up in your job description. What I’m naming here isn’t about role or scope, but about the posture of our department, the culture we’re trying to build together.

4 Practices of the Product Team

• Be curious. Ask the questions no one is asking. Press extended teams and departments for their understanding of the problem. Product teams should view the experience from a customer’s perspective with a business lens. Continue to ask the questions no one is asking.
• Become a connoisseur of the things you love. Post articles, ideas, designs, and sites you love in a collaboration tool. By sharing, you expose your point of vie

Open 10. Metrics that Matter

10. Metrics that Matter

People first, always, but don't ignore the data.

This is a manifesto, in the same vein as Jerry McGuire’s “The Things We Think and Do Not Say,” in which Tom Cruise’s character Jerry McGuire writes a 25‑page manifesto in a manic‑fueled night of writing. His goal was to call the agency back to the roots of the relationship within the industry of Sports Agent/Management—to get back to the personalized touch and care for the individual over the dollars that could be made off of their performance. In his words, from the movie, Jerry McGuire:

We are losing our battle with all that is personal and real about our business. Every day I can look at a list of phone calls only partially returned. Driving home, I think of what was not accomplished, instead of what was accomplished. The gnawing feeling continues. That families are sitting waiting for a call from us, waiting to hear the word on a contract, or a General Manager’s thoughts on an upcoming season. We are pushing numbers

Open Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

To all the builders I’ve had the privilege of working with—thank you. There were times I led and times I followed, but I was always learning. From you, with you, and sometimes in spite of you. The lessons came in brainstorms sessions and standup phone calls, in presentation deadlines, and milestone releases. You showed me what’s possible when curiosity outpaces ego and building trust is the priority.

Thanks for reminding me to always start with some Yik Yak, before we dig into the agenda.

To the gatekeepers—thanks for the motivation. Your stubbornness gave power to my persistence. You made things harder than they had to be, and through that resistance, I learned a great deal about myself. Your resistance gave us an opportunity to show what great teams are capable of when their motivations are aligned and their trust intact. For all the friction, I’m grateful.

To the writers, thinkers, and podcast talkers—thank you for offering perspective, humor, case studies, examples, failur