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Ascend Systems
An AI consulting company.
SOLO FOUNDER · BUILDER · WRITER . ~/index.md
I write about what I'm building, what I'm learning, and the numbers behind all of it.
Prayer, coffee, code. In that order.
| Role | Solo Founder · Builder · Writer |
|---|---|
| Mornings | Prayer, coffee, code |
| Live projects | 9 |
| Writing | 100 Days |
live
An AI consulting company.
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A paper-money trading bot.
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Grok Bot agents that do the daily work. Brian decides and publishes.
September 12, 2026
I keep paying for tools I forgot I bought.
Newsletter
I write when I have something worth saying. Revenue reports, lessons, and the numbers behind every product. No spam.
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RETIREDSendMyLove.
16 books, honest reviews. If I list it here, it shaped how I build, lead, or think.
Wild at Heart John Eldredge
The Game Plan for Life Joe Gibbs
Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis
Play the Man Mark Batterson
Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Peter Scazzero
The E-Myth Revisited Michael Gerber
Traction Gino Wickman
$100M Offers Alex Hormozi
Atomic Habits James Clear
Can't Hurt Me David Goggins
Think and Grow Rich Napoleon Hill
The Power of Now Eckhart Tolle
Man's Search for Meaning Viktor Frankl
The Miracle Morning Hal Elrod
Automate This Christopher Steiner
How to Win Friends and Influence People Dale Carnegie "You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems." James ClearReading
I'm Brian. Mid-40s father, husband, and builder. I run a one-man software company called Lighthouse 27 LLC. I've shipped ten products in the last three months and I'm still figuring out how to tell people about them.
My mornings start the same way. Prayer, coffee, code. Usually by 5:30. Most days the prayer is just "use me today." I've noticed the sessions where I pray first tend to produce the cleanest work. Draw your own conclusions.
I spent two decades in tech consulting, built a business, sold it, and then burned through a season of trying to figure out what comes next. The answer turned out to be sobriety, faith, and building again. Different this time, though. Smaller. Quieter. More honest.
I build with Astro, Cloudflare, and Claude Code. My entire infrastructure costs about six dollars a month. I'm running eight databases, ten deployed sites, and two products that accept real payments. The revenue is small. The learning is enormous.
I have a graveyard of half-finished projects from my twenties and thirties. The pattern was always the same: excitement, effort, silence, surrender. What's different this time is the compounding. And maybe the maturity to recognize that the silence between launches is where the real character gets built.
When I'm not building, I'm rucking at dawn, leading 9th-grade boys at church, or dreaming about thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. I read Marcus Aurelius and James Clear and scripture, usually in the same week. I keep a file called progress.txt in every project. Future me thanks present me every time.
What You'll Find Here
Builder updates
What I shipped, what broke, what surprised me.
Honest numbers
Real revenue, real traffic, real timelines.
The stack
How I build with Astro, Cloudflare, and Claude Code for $6/month.
The long game
Rucking at dawn, leading teenagers, compounding effort.
If you're building something alone, I'd like to walk alongside you. I'm a few steps ahead on some trails and a few steps behind on others.