I sold $27.6 million in windows and doors. Then I built the software I wish I had.
The last ten years in commission sales taught me which problems are worth solving. Now I build tools for the people still out there doing it, and websites for the small businesses who deserve better than cheap.
About
Who I am, in about ninety seconds.
I have spent my career in two of the loneliest jobs there are. First as a financial advisor, then selling windows and doors, where I closed $27,600,600 over the course of my career.
Outside sales looks social from the outside. It is not. You are alone in the car, alone at the appointment, and everybody you might commiserate with is alone somewhere else doing the same thing. It is rare to sit down with other reps, compare notes, and lean on each other. My answer has always been to build the room I wanted to be in, and to keep a handful of people I can call at any hour.
R2 Pipeline came out of that. Every year at goal review, leadership asked what we were doing about repeat customers and referrals, and every year we said we had a system. Most of us did not. Then they made it a requirement to qualify for the incentive trip, and pretending stopped being an option for people who were already at capacity.
So I decided to build a solution that would help me earn my trip. Word spread, and soon a colleague of mine, John, asked if he could use my system as well. I told him that it was not built to be replicated, but I would look into it. He kept pushing, so I said I would send him a payment link and he could have it the minute he paid.
It took me twenty minutes to figure out how to make a payment link. He paid in five.
Then I spent months building it for real, between appointments, after appointments, most nights until three in the morning. I missed sleep and I missed a lot of things I would have rather been at.
I could have kept it to myself. Instead I sold it to John, and then to reps across the country.
Results
What I built, and what changed because of it.
$27,600,600
Sold in windows and doors over my sales career
42%
Increase in customer referral sales for reps running R2 Pipeline
Hundreds
Local poker events run on software I built, for thousands of players
I did not study these problems. I had them. The referral system exists because I was the one sitting in the goal review with nothing real to report, and the poker software exists because I was the one running the league.
Products and services
Nine solutions, and counting.
Some of these earn money today, some are still being built, and all of them started the same way. I needed the thing, so I built it, and then it turned out other people needed it too.
Poker
Software
Services
Outside the work
Where the work brain turns off.
I started hosting poker leagues as a young financial advisor because I wanted to know other professionals. The league I built in Colorado Springs still runs today. It is where the work brain turns off, where the food is good, and where a lot of my closest friendships came from.
That is also where two of these software products came from. Running a league is a mess of scheduling, scoring, and payouts, so I made it push button simple, and then built an app so anyone anywhere can find a league near them or start their own.
Contact
“The most expensive project you’ll ever have to do is the one you have to do more than once.”
I am not telling you to buy the most expensive option. I am telling you that the cheapest one rarely turns out to be the best value, and that the honest test is results. Run the numbers. If the results are there, the price question answers itself.
Tell me what you are working on. I read everything that comes through here.