Closet-eccentric, detail-obsessed; just doin' what I think is right.

Since 2011, I've been working as an independent entrepreneur, teaching other developers, and building my own brands. I’m a self-taught designer and full-stack JavaScript developer, based in Cookeville, TN (where I relocated in 2021 after growing tired of city life after eight years in Chicago, IL).

In 2007, frustrated with the limits of doing static designs in Photoshop, I started to teach myself the fundamentals of front-end development (the book that started it all). After a few years, I learned how to build WordPress sites, and at the end of 2011, I started out as a freelancer, offering design and development services to small businesses and startups.

By 2013, I’d developed an interest in building web apps, and started to learn full-stack JavaScript development. After I built and shut down the first SaaS I ever built—Proper, a tool for managing freelance projects—I decided to roll my expertise with the Meteor JavaScript platform into a teaching business, The Meteor Chef, in 2014.

After three years of writing in-depth tutorials on Meteor, I decided to roll the mentorship service I created under The Meteor Chef brand, “Chef’s Table,” into a spin-off business: Clever Beagle. That business was focused on helping developers take an idea for a SaaS app from back-of-the-napkin to a working, production-ready product.

In the process of running Clever Beagle, I grew increasingly frustrated by the complexity of JavaScript stacks. When I wasn’t working with mentees in the evenings, I started to tinker with prototypes for my own full-stack framework. After about two years of experimentation, I’d figured out enough to start building out a beta of what I had in mind and got to work on what would eventually become Joystick.

In March of 2021, I decided to rebrand Clever Beagle to CheatCode and focus my efforts on building and scaling up a complete suite of tools for designing, building, and a deploying an app using a single stack. Today, that exists as a combination of: Joystick, Mod, and Push.

After spending four years getting these tools built, now, in addition to maintaining and expanding those, I’ve started to use those tools to build my own SaaS apps.

When I’m not working on tools or apps, I like to spend my time outdoors, writing music, reviewing cigars, hanging out with my wife, and giving belly rubs to our stray-turned-diva Torbie, Kit Kat.