Thirty years in the same company

I started Stimulus Technologies in 1995, in Henderson, Nevada, and I still run it. Almost everything I say from a stage is something the company had to survive first.

We began by fixing what broke. That is a workable business and a poor one: you get paid when your customer is having a bad day, which puts your interests on the wrong side of theirs. Moving off break-fix took years and cost us clients who liked the old arrangement. It is the decision I would make again fastest.

Today the company manages technology and security for businesses that have no IT department of their own — more than eight hundred of them over the years. That work is where my opinions about risk come from. When I say a project will take longer than the vendor claims, I am remembering a specific project.

The network

Through Stimulus Technologies we also build networks. Stimulus Broadband runs fiber and fixed wireless in Nevada, Oregon, California, New Mexico, and Missouri.

• Awarded federal broadband funding across multiple states to build fiber in rural communities that have never had it — one of the larger rural buildouts awarded to an independent operator.
• Hundreds of miles of network under construction, reaching communities measured in hundreds to low thousands of addresses.
• Accountable for construction timelines, subcontractors, and federal compliance milestones, not just for opinions about them.

I keep no dollar figure on this page. Awarded funding is not revenue and not built network, awards are still pending, and any number written here would be wrong within a quarter. The part that matters is that the deadlines are public and they are mine.

The writing

I wrote The CEO's Digital Survival Guide for the executive who has to approve technology decisions without the background to audit them. Not a technical book. A book about how to judge advice, what to ask after you have been told the price, and who is accountable when it breaks.

Outside the company

I am an Eagle Scout, a pilot, and a father of five. I am working through a sub-four-hour marathon in all fifty states and I race Ironman, which is a longer answer to the same question the network build asks: what actually holds up.