Studio Bananas
Practical notes on marketing, AI, and payments — the kind of specific, no-fluff thinking I bring to client work. Read one, steal the idea, or send me a harder question.
Fractional
They are not seniority levels of the same job. One keeps the record straight, the other decides what to do next — and hiring the wrong one is expensive.
Capital
Most CRE loans take weeks. The expensive part is not the wait — it is a slow no. How the timeline breaks down, and how to force an early answer.
Payments
Being a law firm is not the reason an application gets declined. What underwriters actually read, and what to fix before reapplying.
Marketing
An agency produces the work. A CMO decides what work to do and checks it was done. Most owners buy one and assume they bought both.
AI & Automation
The model is the easy part. A chatbot repeats whatever you give it, including the page nobody has updated in two years.
Capital
Every mezzanine deal needs an intercreditor agreement with the senior lender. Some lenders will not sign one — and sponsors usually find out at commitment.
Fractional
Growth hides the cost of serving it. What we fixed in a medical-distribution business when the operation underneath the revenue hadn't moved.
Marketing
We audited our own site. Every defect was already logged as finished. How to check a claim about a system instead of trusting it.
AI & Automation
Buying usually means renting a configuration on someone else's servers. What we learned building our own, and the question nobody asks first.
Capital
Brookmont can now lend directly on CRE bridge deals — their underwriting, their term sheet, their decision. What that changes for a sponsor.
Fractional
The two places cash usually hides inside a business — capital spending that isn't earning yet, and the gap between paying and being paid.
Marketing
Six questions that separate an agency doing real work from one producing activity — and the one number most reports quietly leave out.
AI & Automation
Replacing your software rarely fixes it. A thin connective layer between the tools you already own usually does.
Capital
The deal package tells a lender what the numbers say. The first call tells them what the numbers mean — and tells you who you're dealing with.
Fractional
Better spreadsheets describe the problem. Financial authority changes the decision — a 20-project portfolio case study.
Marketing
He paid on time and loved the work. We still ended it. What a values mismatch teaches about choosing who you work with.
AI & Automation
Five logins, five schedules, one blind spot. Automation's real value isn't doing something new — it's removing the friction that stopped you.
Marketing
He cleared every invoice and loved the work. We still walked away. Why getting paid is the minimum bar, not the whole test.
AI & Automation
Everyone chases the newest model. Almost nobody asks whether their business can actually use it. The model is the engine — the workflow is the car.
Fractional
Twenty active projects, no unified financial architecture. Rebuilding it doubled EBITDA and unlocked US$50M in credit — and showed exactly how founder-run finance breaks at scale.
AI & Automation
The honest trade-offs between a lightweight, server-driven approach and JavaScript — and how we decide which fits a build, without chasing the trendy answer.
Marketing
A great product, a childish brand, a strong rebrand, and a bad print run — the mistake that taught me the most about why you charge for expertise.
Marketing
In 2008 I met the CEO of Bill2Pay over a drink at a Chamber meetup — not a pitch. That relationship became years of work. Connection before contract.
Marketing
A psychologist in Bilbao had other designers to choose from. She chose us — not for the price, but because we told her the truth. A real client story.
Capital
They decide in the first ten minutes, discount your pro forma on sight, and stall behind "one more document." Seven truths — and how to use them.
Marketing
Before I marketed businesses, I marketed a country. The lesson most brands still get wrong — you sell what people already want to feel, not what you have.
Capital
The lender loved the deal. Committee killed it in eleven minutes — over something that had nothing to do with the deal. How CRE committees actually think.
Marketing
Winning a client is the easy part. Keeping one is the work — and it's why we obsess over customer care. The habits behind 12-year relationships.
Marketing
Your marketing isn't working — but it's probably not the marketing. It's the ecosystem problem: demand showed up and the business wasn't ready to catch it.
Marketing
Strong product, weak pipeline? The gap usually isn't spend — it's the broken bridge between marketing and sales. Here's where it breaks.
Marketing
The gap is rarely effort. It's almost always one of these three quiet failures — and all three are fixable in a quarter.
AI & Automation
A simple framework for finding the highest-leverage hour in your week — and why automating the wrong thing costs more than doing nothing.
Payments
The three lines processors hope you never look at — and the questions that get your effective rate cut without switching banks.