Confessions of a Utility Player: From Long Snaps to AI Operating Systems
If you looked at my high school football stats, you’d probably get confused. I wasn’t the star quarterback, and I wasn’t the flashy wide receiver. Instead, my coaches threw me everywhere. On offense, I lined up at Left Tackle, Right Tackle, and Center. Flip the possession, and I was on defense as a Defensive Tackle. When special teams took the field, I was the guy long-snapping for punts, field goals, and PATs.
In baseball, it was the exact same story. I pitched, held down first base, and took reps as the designated hitter. I even tried my hand at catching, though if I’m being completely honest, I wasn't any good at it.
Back then, I didn't have a sophisticated word for it. Today, I do: Operations.
In sports, they call it being a "utility player." In business, it means being the ultimate operational force multiplier. It means you don't get the luxury of hiding behind a rigid title. You roll up your sleeves, you learn fast, and you figure things out on the fly.
Here is how a lifetime of long snaps and cold calls translated into a career of scaling diverse businesses—and why being a utility player is the ultimate entrepreneurial cheat code.
The Art of Figuring It Out
My professional roots weren't planted in a corporate boardroom; they were in the music industry. I started out spinning records as a DJ and acting as a Music Director for a few radio stations in my hometown. When I moved to Southern California, I suddenly had to learn how to sell music to independent, mom-and-pop music stores scattered across the Northwest and Southeastern United States.
Later, as a radio promotions and publicity guy at a small label in Tennessee, we ended up driving some of the most impactful records in the entire industry. How? By being a utility player. I didn't just pitch tracks; I worked on video shoots, handled video promotion, mastered singles, and personally created radio edits. When we needed to get on the map, I cold-called MTV. I didn’t have a playbook—I just figured it out. I spent years traveling the country by planes, trains, and automobiles, absorbing how different people tick and how different pieces of a project fit together.
Every single one of those miles laid the groundwork for where I am today.
Knowing When You're Out of Your League
The most critical skill of a utility player isn't knowing how to do everything—it's knowing when you are completely out of your league, and finding immediate, strategic ways to compensate. Just like my short-lived stint as a high school catcher, you have to recognize your blind spots early so you can bring in the right talent or build the right systems to protect the team.
Working with Co-X Holdings has been a masterclass in this exact philosophy. It has been an incredible experience that has taught me how to be a sharper entrepreneur, a more adaptable teammate, and a student of wildly diverse industries.
If you had told me five years ago that I’d know the ins and outs of how a commercial parking enterprise runs, I would have told you that wasn't on my bingo card. But we jumped in, figured it out, and today Pivot Parking continues to scale massively due to great leadership and the excellent relationship skills of their team.
Hotels? Nope... building and managing hospitality assets wasn't on my radar either. But by immersing ourselves in the business, we’ve learned how to provide elite service for fantastic towns across the South.
The Ultimate Special Teams Project: Monarrch
All of these disparate experiences—from tracking physical assets to managing global digital properties—converge perfectly in what I’m doing right now.
Today, I get to work with incredibly diverse people on high-stakes projects like Monarrch. We are actively building the scaffolding that allows intellectual property owners to protect and get paid for their name, image, likeness (NIL), and voice in the age of generative AI.
Man, it’s fun. But let me tell you, it’s hard too.
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