Role: Co-Founder

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We’ll start easy here. Where are you from? Where do you live?

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Not such an easy one for me to answer. Born and mostly raised in Washington, DC. Have also spent a lot of my life in Essex County Massachusetts. I consider it to be home as well. Not that you’re asking, but I’ve also lived in Charleston, SC; Jackson, WY; Denver, CO; Andros, The Bahamas; and London. 

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I’m currently living a nomadic lifestyle.

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What do you like to do in your free time?

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I try not to have too much free time these days. That being said, I’m passionate about fly fishing, backcountry skiing, running, and starting to get into golf. I’ll try just about any outdoor activity. Sports that I really enjoy but have never had the opportunity to do regularly enough to claim true participation include mountain biking and kiteboarding.

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I really enjoy audiobooks, in particular, I enjoy non-fiction books that focus on anthropology, neurology, psychology, and human nature in general. I think the process of getting to know oneself is an endlessly rewarding pursuit.

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I’m also into meditation and yoga, although my practice has fallen off precipitously since the beginning of COVID. Music & dancing are high up on the list as well. Given that I literally don’t have a home address, I feel like saying “I like to travel” would be a bit too obvious. Generally passionate about life. 

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How long have you been working & collaborating with oakpool for?

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Since the beginning! Before we were oakpool, we were Ford Hamilton, and before we were Ford Hamilton Alex and I shared clients with each other. I think the contract that bound us together was probably when I moved to the Bahamas to manage Bair’s Lodge and passed the Parlor Skis marketing torch to Alex. Over the years, I’ve worked full-time for two venture capital firms (Progress Ventures, and KHP Ventures) while we scaled the business, and I’m stoked to be able to focus on oakpool as my primary pursuit as of this year. 

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What’s your specialty in the growth marketing world?

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I don’t think I have one. I’m a generalist and don’t generally work with clients once they’re onboarded. What I can do is identify gaps in our offering, design the MVP of how we build the offering, and hire great people to fill those gaps. Beyond that, I focus on building new relationships for the company and a lot of what goes on behind the scenes.

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What does “Sustainable Growth” mean to you?

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Sustainable Growth is the type of growth that a business achieves when they figure out exactly what it is that they’re selling, the story they’re telling, and who their ideal customers are. Once these things have been defined, a brand can truly resonate with the right audience. At that point, it becomes a simple calculation: spend x on growth, get y in return. 

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Easier said than done! But that’s why we’re here. 

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For oakpool it means that we’ve never gotten over our proverbial “skis.” We’ve never taken a dime of outside investment and don’t intend to any time soon. We have grown our business by providing a relatively commoditized service that everyone needs, which means that we have had to dial in our processes and bring on the highest quality team members possible. When you’re not doing something “innovative” or “differentiated” you just have to be really good at what you do in order to grow. That’s what we’ve done. It’s been very organic. 

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