Building the systems and carrying the P&L as an owner

Why this is on the site

Most technology advisors have never carried a P&L. I have, for seven years, in a business where a bad systems decision showed up in the bank account within a month.

That experience is the thing clients actually end up relying on. It is not the eCommerce knowledge. It is knowing what it feels like to be the person on the other side of the table, deciding whether to spend money on technology when the money is yours.

What it was

I co-founded BZB Marine & RV and ran operations from 2016 to 2023. Co-founded and scaled a multi-channel eCommerce business past $10M in annual revenue. We sold across Amazon, Walmart, eBay, and direct-to-consumer.

I owned operations, systems, and platform strategy across logistics, fulfillment, marketing, and vendor management. The integrations between channels, the inventory and fulfillment flow, and the operating model behind it were all things I built rather than things I specified for someone else to build.

What it taught me that shows up in client work

Growth exposes whatever process you were getting away with. Nearly every operational failure we had was a manual step that worked fine at one volume and quietly stopped working at three times that volume. That is the same failure mode I get called in for now.

Buying is usually cheaper than building, right up until it isn't. Running the business made me conservative about custom software and specific about when it earns its cost.

The most expensive systems problem is the one only one person understands. We hit that, more than once. It is why the first question I ask about any process is what happens when the person who runs it is out for two weeks.