What I built this year: a poison-ivy removal brand, a gas-delivery startup turned country singer, a Cape Cod demon-hunter horror-pop saga, a UFO essay series becoming a novel — all self-taught.

Yes — poison ivy removal. People always tilt their heads. Here's what makes it insane: I don't spray. I hand-pull every plant, root and all, in the dead heat of summer. It's some of the hardest manual labor there is — only a lunatic does this by hand. It's also where I do my best thinking. Then I gave the least glamorous job in town the brand of a national company: a logo, a cinematic highlight reel, and a UV survey that makes the roots glow in the dark. And people remember the name. If I can make poison ivy look this good, imagine what I can do for something you actually want to sell.

Gas Daddy started as a real fuel-delivery startup — I'd fill your tank overnight so you'd wake up with a full car. Then the marketing took over. I built a country-music persona to promote it, "Gas Daddy," and wrote the songs myself: real tracks, on Spotify and Apple Music, with names like "Fill My Tank Up, Daddy." The character outgrew the company. People started recognizing me as Gas Daddy at the grocery store. The fuel business is on hold — prices went haywire and you can't build on a number that won't sit still — but the persona, the catalog, and the campaign are all still here. Proof that I can build a brand people actually remember.

My interest in the UAP question started the way these things do — a lifetime of quiet fascination, and one cold email. While I was at the IMF, I began reaching out to people in the UAP community — and they wrote back. So I made a decision: I didn't renew at the IMF. I went to help stand up the Sol Foundation instead — the Stanford-affiliated effort taking the question seriously — working on the conference, the fundraising, the research, and the operations, and developing an online course on the subject with a colleague. When it was time, I left. Then I started writing Against Zero, my Substack on the phenomenon, consciousness, and cosmology. Those essays are now becoming a novel by the same name.

"I got there the same way I get everywhere: a cold email."

This work put me in real rooms — with academics, intelligence-community figures, armed-services leaders, journalists, and former government officials.