The encore version.

Throat cancer. Six months. Two-ten to one-thirty-two on the scale. Four times the floor came up and I felt myself starting to go.

I didn't go. I'm still here.

I came back to my desk a different person, and the inbox didn't know. I started telling the truth in meetings I'd been carrying politely for years. I stopped performing urgency for people who didn't matter to my real life. I started saying no to things that, on inventory, weren't worth a single hour of the encore.

Eventually that pattern got me let go from a company I'd given the best of my forties to. Best decision they could have made — for them, and eventually for me too. I'm building my own thing now.

That's the philosophy. That's the operating system. It's tattooed on my arm as #IMALLIN, and most people assume it's a hustle thing. It's the opposite. It's a reminder, every time I see it, that the choice in front of me — today, right now — is the encore. If I'm going to spend an hour, I'm going to spend it all in. If I'm not all in, I'm going to stop spending the hour.

I started in logistics in my early twenties. The plan was to make a living. What happened is that I fell into one of the hardest, most underrated industries in North America, and I learned things you can't learn any other way.

Freight teaches you what most business schools can't. The carrier who said "yes" on Monday might cancel on Wednesday, and the load still has to deliver Thursday. There's no AI coming to save you when a tanker is stuck on Northern Ontario rails in February and the customer is on the phone wondering where their product is. You either build the system, the relationships, and the discipline — or you don't survive.

The brokerage years

From 2005 to early 2010, I owned a logistics brokerage with two partners. We did well for a while. Then 2009 hit and our customers started squeezing us on rates. I made a call I now look back on as my first real lesson in business: instead of figuring out how to keep them profitable and keep us profitable, I told them to look somewhere else.

They did. By 2010 we were done.

I lost the company, lost my income, and spent about a year wondering if I'd ever recover professionally. I read every business book I could find. I watched 1,800+ personal-development videos. I spent years interviewing authors and operators and teachers. I came back into logistics in my mid-thirties with a completely different framework for what a sales relationship actually is.

The climb back

I rebuilt. A sales role. Then a senior sales role. Then leadership. I trained reps across North America. I took departments that were in the hole and turned them into the company's most profitable lines. I wrote a book — Four Pillars Of Transportation — in 2015, which is still floating around out there with all the marks of a guy figuring out his voice for the first time.

By the early 2020s I was Director of Sales at a Canadian freight brokerage, running multimillion-dollar operations, training teams, and quietly building automation systems on the side that I knew were going to change how this industry worked.

Then the cancer happened. Then I came back. Then I started telling the truth out loud about operational choices that were costing money. Then they let me go.

That brings us to now.

Matryxx is the company that owns everything I'm shipping in this new chapter — a Canadian corporation, headquartered (loosely speaking) in my workshop in Erin, Ontario.

Software

VectorEase — image-to-vector converter for makers, designers, and Lightburn users. My first ship, live now.

Bridger 2.0 — a CRM that works the way an operator actually sells. No more data-entry tax. Coming soon.

Impact Motorsports App — motorsport operations in one tool, built for an industry nobody serves. Coming soon.

Handmade work

C&D's One Of A Kind Designs — live-edge wood, custom coasters, charcuterie boards. I make these in the workshop. Same vibe-coding energy, applied to physical materials.

Writing & speaking

This site is the hub. The blog is where the real conversation happens, and the #IMALLIN Show is where I talk with operators, builders, and survivors doing the actual work. I'm also available for keynotes, workshops, and one-on-one work — see below.

The throughline

Everything is connected by #IMALLIN. The software is built with vibe-coding energy and operator discipline. The wood is built with the same energy in a different material. The writing is the story behind the work. Nothing here is a side hustle. Everything is one company, one philosophy, one life, lived deliberately.