I started in restaurants and never left the operating side. Over twenty-five years I have been a manager, a general manager, an owner twice over, and the person the whole thing came back to.
What I have actually done for a living, more than anything else, is walk into a business that isn't working and find out why. Sometimes I was sent. Twice I bought the problem myself.
Alongside that, for more than a decade, I have built and run rental property — a portfolio that reached fifteen rentals across the United States and México, seven of them short-term. Acquisition, renovation, furnishing, pricing, licensing, contractors, guest experience, compliance, in two countries and two regulatory systems.
Since 2022 I have been based in Mérida, México, working with businesses in the U.S. and elsewhere. Operating across two countries has made me a better operator, not a more distant one — I have run real businesses under two sets of rules, two vendor markets and two labor environments, and I know what it takes to make each one work.
Since the venue sold I have built two businesses out of that experience — STR Host Advisory with Moya, and Buy Smart In Mexico — which between them amount to thirty published modules of operating systems, checklists and scorecards. Writing it all down turned out to be the best preparation possible for doing it inside somebody else’s business.
I am not a consultant who studied operations. I am an operator who was accountable for the outcome. In my experience that is a different conversation for a business owner to have.
