Building Steam with a Grain of Salt
Last year was not what I planned. There’s no dramatic collapse story. No scandal. No implosion. Just the slow erosion that happens when you pour experience into rooms that don’t quite know what to do with it. Twenty years in digital strategy. Agency leadership. Teaching. Advising growth-stage companies. Building curriculum. Helping founders avoid preventable mistakes.
And then suddenly…
Silence.
Applications sent into black holes. Conversations that went nowhere. Meetings where I could feel the gap between what I knew I could contribute and what the room was prepared to understand. Dedicated work for an agency who failed to pay me for most of the work I did for their clients. So I left. And genuinely felt badly about disappearing on certain clients as their dedicated point of contact, but like the agency owner, I had bills to pay as well. And it was ultimately not my situation to explain to them. Shortly afterward, the agency closed its doors, making it pretty clear that I’d never be seeing those earnings and leaving me afraid of what the next chapter would bring for me.
It’s a strange thing — to know your value intellectually but not feel it reflected back. And if I’m honest, that disconnect does something to you…
You start asking dangerous questions:
- Is the market broken?
- Am I out of step?
- Is experience no longer an asset?
- Have we commodified thinking to the point where no one wants it anymore?
I spent the year oscillating between frustration and clarity. Frustration at systems that reward volume over depth. Clarity that I was never built for surface-level work anyway.
Then I met Chris and Brad who were starting Omnipressence and something shifted.
A Calling
There was no posturing. No ego contest. No “prove it” energy. Just curiosity. Respect. Shared dissatisfaction with the status quo. And for the first time in well over a year, I felt professionally seen. Not flattered… Seen. There’s a difference.
We started talking about what the market actually needs right now:
- Strategy before tactics
- Performance without sacrificing aesthetics
- Human clarity in an AI-saturated world
- Brands that don’t just “exist online” but actually show up with intention
We talked about how bloated most digital solutions have become. How noise is being mistaken for innovation. How most companies don’t need more tools — they need coherence.
Omnipressence is not a pivot. It’s a return.
A return to:
- Craft
- Thoughtfulness
- Measurable clarity
- Work that earns attention instead of begging for it
A return to clarity.
The Values-Alignment Defibrillation Plan
I don’t feel defeated anymore. I feel sharp again. Hungry again. And honestly? Grateful.
Because if last year had been easy, I might not have been forced to re-evaluate what kind of work I actually want to build.
This is the beginning of something deliberate. Something lean. Something disruptive in the quiet way — not loud, but undeniable. And this time, I’m not trying to fit into someone else’s system. We’re building our own.
Thanks so much for seeing my value and insisting that I join you for this ride, guys. Let’s go.
