The market is going to decide what you're worth.
Somebody should build the case.

I built one of the machines that decides who's good.

Every profession has a list. Best lawyers, top doctors, top advisors, greatest teachers. Somebody has to build them, and the methodology is rarely as objective as the cover suggests. I built Golf Digest's in 2000 and ran it for the next 24 years — designed the voting system, ran the measurement, and built the editorial franchise around what it produced.

Then I started helping other people build campaigns and win national awards.

Nobody who runs a ranking sells advice about winning rankings. Almost nobody selling that advice has ever run one.

A company approaching a raise or an exit is being ranked, too. The criteria are comps, diligence and whatever stories the buyers and sellers build to convince themselves they're on the right path. Most people being measured never see how that machinery really works, or understand how to position themselves within it.

One primary activity.

I sit with the principal for four hours and collect the raw materials for your story, campaign or PE event. We build output that shows the market what to do next. This can include personal or corporate brand positioning, verbal identity, content strategy, award campaign management or investor opportunity framework development.

It could be making the case for an award or ranking, or building the narrative that goes in front of a buyer.

That used to be called writing and reporting. It has always been about judgment.

In my first month at Golf Digest in 1999, I started working with a teacher in Texas named Randy Smith. Twenty-five years later, the last piece I wrote for the magazine was Randy's first-person account of the swing work behind Scottie Scheffler — the same junior he'd been teaching when we met. You don't get that story in an afternoon. You don't get it at all unless somebody has trusted you for a very long time.

Most of the experts I've worked with are excellent and underpriced. They're selling hours when they could be selling leverage, and what's standing in between is almost never talent. It's showing — and proving — the case.

A few pieces, if you'd rather see the work than read about it: Mad Money, on what LIV Golf did to the sport's endorsement economy. HyperFit, on performance technology and how the best players actually train. And How Scottie Scheffler Got So Good, the Randy Smith piece itself — and the film I directed from the same range session.

Build it once. The right way.

Multiple briefings. Corrections. Draft after draft. Those are the expensive hours you never get back. At the end, you have (at best) mediocre work, or (more likely) material you end up deemphasizing or not using at all.

Bad work is recoverable. A flake or opportunist in the midst of a high-stakes, fixed-term campaign is not. A raise might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. An award cycle might intersect with your highest-profile work just a handful of times across an entire career. Redos aren't just expensive. They're often impossible.

My engagements speak for themselves, more than any byline or credit. Three million words in print. Brand building, content strategy and verbal identity for national retailers and the largest golf instruction purveyor in the world.

For several years I wrote books for Tiger Woods' former coach while I was working with his current one. Both men knew. Neither ever had a problem, and neither one ever learned anything from me about the other.

There is no way to claim that. You can only have not done the other thing, for 25 years, in front of people who were paying attention.

The numbers are audited. The story isn't built.

A company heading into a raise gets valued on data it can substantiate and the story of its future state it can tell. The story is worth its own multiple, but is often consigned to secondary status in a deck, footnotes or the short-term memory of a nervous presenter.

Pre-raise or exit narrative is value creation, not a marketing expense. It belongs in the transaction budget, and it deserves attention from a specialist.

• Built a national professional ranking and ran it for 24 years. Golf Digest's 50 Greatest Teachers, created in 2000 and run through 2024. Designed the voting system that measured and recorded the ballots, and built the editorial franchise around what it produced.
• Seven award wins across five voting bodies. Three of them national. Mark Blackburn and Bernie Najar, PGA National Teacher of the Year. Michael Jacobs, PGA National Professional Development Award. Teacher of the Year in the Met, Michigan, Illinois and Middle Atlantic sections. Four regions, four separate electorates, the same method each time.
• Named things you've seen on television. Naming, brand voice and launch language for DICK'S Sporting Goods, Golf Galaxy and GOLFTEC, including the motion-capture technology now running in about 900 locations.
• Built the case for companies with a buyer in mind. Branding for Buyout, on original interviews with founders who had sold. Positioning and case-study architecture for Tim Marken, a fractional chief growth officer working with mid-market companies scaling past $500 million.
• Thirty-one books and 3 million words in print, most under other people's names. The Coaching Code, with Mark Blackburn, the top-ranked instructor in the country. Organize Tomorrow Today, with a Major League team psychologist and the head trainer at Edward Jones. Your Score, for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, an Amazon bestseller in personal finance. TakingPoint, for a Navy SEAL platoon commander. Life as Sport, for a team psychologist with the New York Jets. And a couple dozen with performance coaches in sport. The full list is on Amazon.

  

  

  

  

  

• Twenty-five years at Golf Digest, and an MBA. Senior writer. Cover stories with Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Scottie Scheffler, plus the first real financial analysis of what LIV Golf did to the sport's endorsement economy and a piece reading the PGA Tour's equity plan through tech-industry retention structures. Director on Capital One's The Match and 25 multi-episode video series. M.B.A. in management, Fairfield University.
• Currently. Senior Director of Content and Communications at GOLFTEC. Executive producer of The Real Deal with Bob Philion, a podcast on the business of golf hosted by the former chief executive of Cobra Puma Golf, with guests including Greg Norman, Butch Harmon, Mark Steinberg and the chief executives of TaylorMade and Topgolf Callaway.

Three seats.

My current capacity is three long-term clients. These relationships typically last a year to 18 months, tied to award timing, raise or exit calendar or other finish line. I don't take engagements from two clients in the same award category or market sector.