For fourteen years that was Lineage, which grew from six people running social media for athletes into a studio for the Knicks, Lowe’s and Amazon. I was a partner and ran its operations and finances. Now I run delivery and operations at Human Marketing.
Chapter IVenice Beach courts / This Is MeloFrom 2011
IThe Roster
Before brands understood social media, athletes needed someone to run theirs. That’s where Lineage started, and where I started, as its second salesperson.
Six people
Athletes
Musicians
Agents
Contracts
Where it started
It started with the athletes.
In 2011 Lineage ran the digital lives of professional athletes: their social channels, websites and sponsorship content. Carmelo Anthony, Amar’e Stoudemire and Henrik Lundqvist were on the roster.
500MCombined followers across the roster at its peak
14Athlete clients I brought in after joining as the second salesperson
2014The year I became a partner in the company
Inside the contracts
The contracts became mine.
Agents guard their clients closely and keep outside agencies away. We got in by staying in our lane, making their clients look good, and writing co-marketing rights into every contract so the agencies got paid when we did.
Anthony, our founder, had been to law school, and I sat next to him through every athlete negotiation until I was running them myself.
From there I took on the campaign concepts, the sponsor pitches, the websites and the reporting.
Carmelo Anthony / STAYME7OAmar’e Stoudemire / Vote 4 Amar’e2012
The company we kept
More than a hundred athletes, artists and personalities.
The roster grew throughout the Lineage years, across basketball, football, baseball, hockey, boxing, golf and music.
See selected names +
Athletes & personalities
Aaron Gordon
Aja Evans
Alfred Blue
Allan Houston
Amanda Cerny
Amar’e Stoudemire
Andre Johnson
Anna Rawson
Benjamin Watson
Brad Richards
Brandon Phillips
Canelo Álvarez
Carmelo Anthony
Cecilia Brækhus
Charlie Villanueva
Chris Archer
Chris Culliver
CJ McCollum
Cole Kmet
Corey Brewer
Cristie Kerr
D’Andre Swift
Danny Granger
Danny Green
Dashon Goldson
David Ortiz
DeAndre Jordan
DeJuan Blair
Drew Gooden
Eric Decker
Edwin Encarnación
Gerald McCoy
Glen Davis
Greg Jennings
Henrik Lundqvist
Iman Shumpert
J.R. Smith
Jacoby Jones
Jason Pierre-Paul
Jermaine O’Neal
Jesse Itzler
Johnathan Joseph
Justin Dunn
Kelvin Beachum
Kemba Walker
Kevin Love
Kyle Singler
Larry Sanders
Martellus Bennett
Michael Crabtree
Miguel Cabrera
NaVorro Bowman
Nick Young
Roy Hibbert
Ryan Anderson
Sedrick Ellis
Seth Greenberg
Spencer Dinwiddie
Tim Howard
Tyson Chandler
Vernon Davis
Vince Carter
Vonta Leach
Wes Welker
Wilson Chandler
Yasiel Puig
Music
Animales
Bass Kleph
Bingo Players
Brett Young
Chris Lake
Christine McVie
Destructo
Dr. Fresch
Galantis
Good Times Ahead
J. Worra
Jorge Bianco
Justin Jay
Kaskade
Matoma
Mick Fleetwood
Ruby Rose
Rufus Wainwright
SNBRN
Tommy Trash
Walker & Royce
Wax Motif
ZZ Top
Music
The same team did it for musicians.
Tour art, release campaigns and social for Rock and Roll Hall of Famers and festival headliners, run by the same team that ran the athletes.
The Knicks noticed we had more reach with their players than they did. We built them a content studio, then took it across the leagues.
Knicks
Rangers
Pacers
Kings
LAFC
Fox Sports
MSG Network
From players to organizations
The Knicks noticed.
Carmelo. Amar’e. J.R. Smith. Tyson Chandler.
We managed four of their five starters. Madison Square Garden asked us to help them beat the Lakers and Rockets in web traffic.
NEW YORK KNICKS
Knicks / Reach for the Stars, All-Star campaign2012
Rangers / Lundqvist milestone2014
The content studio
We made the content and the Knicks published it.
We built them a content studio: a contributor network, a dedicated design team, and a template system that put a finished highlight graphic out seconds after the play.
Within a few months the Knicks had passed the Lakers and Rockets. We extended the model to the Rangers, then sold it to the Pacers, Kings, LAFC, Avalanche and Nuggets.
Getting the fans involved
We got five players elected to the All-Star Game.
Amar’e Stoudemire / Vote campaign2012
We built Social Fuego, a gamified voting platform plugged into Facebook’s API. Fans earned points for sharing, recruiting friends and voting by hashtag, with season tickets and signed gear on the leaderboard.
I designed the game economy and ran the build.
40,473Fans engaged
8.38MImpressions
3+2Knicks and Rangers voted into the All-Star games
Social Fuego / Vote KnicksDesign mockup
The sponsor slotLAFC / Player of the Game
The sponsor slot
Player of the Game
Pre-game Matchups
Save of the Game
presented by Chase
Social was outdrawing arena signage, and unlike signage it could be measured. We packaged content series into sponsorable inventory, priced it on guaranteed impressions, and sold the Knicks’ sales team on adding it to their toolkit.
I packaged the model to take it further: the pitch, the pricing, the workflow, the deal terms.
Sponsored content series are standard inventory for teams in every league now.
More teams
We took the same system across the leagues.
Every team had its own identity and fan culture. The system stayed consistent; the creative never had to. Our team clients also included the Indiana Fever, Detroit Red Wings and New Jersey Devils.
New York KnicksNew York RangersIndiana PacersLos Angeles KingsLos Angeles FCColorado AvalancheDenver NuggetsColorado Rapids
Indiana Pacers / GalacticLA Kings / Player of the Month
LAFC / Supporters
And then, the networks
Then Fox Sports, later Bally Sports, hired us to make the graphics, motion and video for all of its regional networks.
Fox & Bally Sports regional networks
The networks hired us too.
Where the model led
NFL.NBA. NHL.MLB.
Fox’s regional networks carried roughly half the teams in the four major leagues. We made the graphics for all of them.
01 / Across the networksSelected later work / Fox & Bally Sports
Back in New York / 2015
Then we madetelevision.
From a fan campaign to original programming↓
Lineage × MSG Network
THE MASKwith Henrik Lundqvist
Original series / 2015
The idea and the execution
We turned a fan contest into a TV series.
I conceived a fan campaign where people designed a goalie mask for Henrik Lundqvist, and we pitched MSG Network on turning it into a show. They loved it and had no budget, so we secured Chase and Volvo to fund it.
I produced the five-episode series, tied to a digital series and a charity gala.
The finished masksThe Mask, 2015
Each guest designed a mask. Henrik wore it on the ice.
Michael J. Fox Guest
John McEnroe Guest
Tiësto Guest
Jeff Gordon Guest
2015 / The Mask with Henrik Lundqvist
Emmy.
Our first television show won a New York Emmy. It started as a fan contest.
Chapter IIIKobalt / 24V stop motionFrom 2016
IIIThe Brands
Athletes and teams had small budgets. Brands had large ones, and we had no way in. So we built one.
Lowe’s
Kobalt
Amazon
BodyArmor
Zurich
Adidas
Ferrari
The way in
We went after brands with no brand work to show, and won.
No senior relationships, no inbound reputation. So we built an outbound sales engine borrowed from software companies, won small projects, delivered them like the company depended on it, and grew the accounts from there.
I built that engine: the pitch materials, the CRM and automation stack, the pricing models and the sales manual. Zurich Insurance became our first brand-direct account of record.
55%Win rate on about 120 pitches a year
100%Of proposals scoped and priced by me
Each dot is a pitch, one year66 won
Our first enterprise client
Lowe’s owned a tool brand with shelf space in every store and no identity of its own. Kobalt was a $700 million brand nobody had heard of.
Lowe’s × Kobalt
Kobalt had thirteen manufacturers and no marketing.
Kobalt tools were made by thirteen manufacturers, each paying an incumbent agency for marketing that wasn’t happening. We convinced Lowe’s corporate to let us approach the vendors directly, then convinced eight of them to pool their co-marketing budgets into a single program under our stewardship.
We had to re-win it from every vendor, every year. We did, through new brand leads and a new CMO at Lowe’s.
13 manufacturers8 pooled with us
Kobalt / Building Steam, a 20-minute film2021
Kobalt / 24V
Kobalt / Rorschach
Kobalt / Halloween
Kobalt XTR / Case study
We built Kobalt’s media from nothing.
Kobalt, 2017–2023 · 01 / 09
Artisans15-episode documentary series on makers
The Rally SeriesDocuseries with driver Patrik Sandell
Building SteamRestoring a steam railroad
In the GarageTutorial vertical
In MotionProduct films
24V PowerStop motion
Unboxing15-second social
AnthemBrand spot
And a community that co-created products with the brand.
8,000+ assets over the relationship
8,000+Assets produced
150M+Impressions
47,000+Hours watched
9.6%Engagement rate, against an industry norm under 1%
23×Return on the best paid campaigns
Over the years we had the account, Kobalt went from a $700 million brand to a $1.4 billion one.
Amazon Advertising, 2017–2023
One infographic.
Amazon Advertising was a young division with something to prove. Its first project with us was a single infographic, and we treated it like the only account we had.
Then the next one.
Infographics became social cutdowns, then campaign assets, then an introduction to the division’s head of marketing.
~30
Case-study films with executives from Hershey’s, Kraft Heinz, Lexus, SharkNinja and The Honest Company, made to convince the Fortune 500 to move ad spend to Amazon. When COVID hit, we produced Staying Connected: 60 remote interview videos with advertising leaders around the world.
Design Agency of Record.
Then work for Amazon’s biggest stages: CES, the premiere of Thursday Night Football on Prime Video, Alexa for Residential. Amazon Advertising named Lineage its Design Agency of Record.
An Amazon Advertising infographic
Social cutdown
Six of the case-study films. Tap to watch.
Las VegasCES
Prime VideoThursday Night Football
AlexaAlexa for Residential
NamedDesign Agency of Record
01 Infographic02 Cutdowns03 Films04 Agency of record
BodyArmor
From the founder’s house to Coca-Cola.
When we started with BodyArmor it was five people working out of the founder’s house. For twelve years I ran its athlete sweepstakes programs with retailers like 7-Eleven, Circle K and Wawa.
BodyArmor sold to Coca-Cola for $5.6 billion.
Each dot is a program381 programs, 2013–2025
Adidas / adidasLA
adidasLA presents Frank Have Mercy.
For adidasLA we made films, illustration and motion design around Boost, with Los Angeles as the backdrop.
adidasLA presents / Frank Have Mercy3:30
adidasLA / Michy FosterBoost / Motion design
Made for LA / Illustration
adidasLA / Illustration
FIGS
FIGS. Awesome humans.
For the healthcare apparel brand we made launch spots, social and out-of-home.
FIGS / Pips launchFIGS / Packable Puffer
FIGS / Awesome Humans out-of-home
FIGS / Optic White
After that the list got long.
Ferrari / Spencer Dinwiddie
212 Performance / Fire-resistant glovesLavazza / Taylor Fritz
Electrolit / Summer
Por Osos / Gold at the USA Spirits RatingsJason Wu / NYC
AT&T / Shark Week
Privacy Guard / HalloweenHudson’s Bay × Levi’s / Summer festival
Sanabul / Sticker Bomb
DirecTV / NBA fitsCastle Building Centers / 60th
Planet Beauty / Social
Kingdom Maker / Trollslayers launch
Dyson / Turkey Day
Moonbreaker / Halloween
2017
In 2017 I took over finance.
Our longtime finance lead passed away suddenly, weeks before tax deadlines, leaving an undocumented, fully manual system. I stepped in, stabilized it, and rebuilt it: automated accounting, in-house payroll, a 401(k) and health benefits, a new chart of accounts, and the scenario-planning model the company ran on from then forward.
From 2017 on, I owned the P&L, and I took over operations.
4.5×Revenue growth from 2017 to 2023, after I took over operations and finance
The players’ unions came next, then a feature film, then the year sports stopped and we didn’t.
MLBPA
NBPA
Vince Carter
2020
Flexa
Pokémon GO
Marvel Snap
The Major League Baseball Players Association
A contract obligation became a payday for the players.
Companies that license MLB players, video game publishers like Konami and Glu among them, are required to spend co-marketing money with the union every year. The campaigns that money bought satisfied the contract and little else.
Anthony and I won the account over established agencies with one idea: build social campaigns with 10 to 25 players each, and split every budget three ways.
⅓To the playersPaid to post
⅓To the unionAn obligation turned into profit
⅓To the workOur creative budget
We were the people bringing players money for doing very little, which did more for our relationships with their agents than any pitch could.
MLBPA / Edwin Díaz
Going Home / Chris ArcherThe Call Up
Christian Yelich
Going Home / On set
10–25Players in each campaign
⅓Of every budget paid to the players
Then the National Basketball Players Association
The league’s superstars were monetizing fine. The other 80% of players had a combined following of 92 million, roughly the reach of the league itself, and were capturing almost none of its value.
450 players● Stars● Everyone else
A studio owned by the players.
We pitched the NBPA on a content studio owned by the players, and we built the whole thing: the slate, the sales team, the production and the distribution. We rewrote the model so 30% of revenue went to the players.
Industry norm2–10%
Our model30%
$15M+Branded content sales in the first 18 months
92MCombined following of the players
Turner
Starz
Kia
Instacart
Sam’s Club
Nike
Twitch
Ferrari
NBA 2K
Kia / Hot TakesStarz / PowerNBA 2K / Top 5Instacart / SproutsSam’s Club / Fastest Scan
Feature documentary
Vince Carter: Legacy.
A feature-length documentary on one of the most beloved players of his generation. We sold it to Crackle, and it was later licensed to Amazon Prime.
I was a producer and the executive in charge: the budget, the contracts and the distribution deals.
2020
Sports shut down, and most of our sports work went with it.
The books, the payroll and the servers were already built to run from anywhere.
A video production company went remote without missing a deadline.
Nobody was laid off. Nobody missed a paycheck.
The next year was the best in the company’s history to that point.
Flexa
Then the biggest productions we had ever made.
For Flexa, a crypto payments network, we produced four commercial spots. For Eko, a Walmart company, we shot interactive choose-your-own-adventure commerce videos.
I ran business affairs on all of it: the budgets, the talent deals and the production contracts.
Flexa / 2 Chainz
David Duchovny
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
2 Chainz
Kevin Smith
Seven years of Pokémon GO, and a long list of games after it.
Gaming · 01 / 11
Niantic stayed with us for seven years and 27 contracts.
Pokémon GO · Riot Games · Marvel Snap · PUBG · Scopely · Splitgate · RAID: Shadow Legends · Gala Games
Pokémon GOPikachu Libre
Pokémon GOFestival of Colors
Pokémon GOKey art
Marvel SnapQuantum Realm sizzle
Marvel SnapWinterverse
SplitgateMr. Splitgate
RAID: Shadow LegendsCall of the Arbiter / Trailer
RAID: Shadow LegendsCall of the Arbiter / Inside Look
Gala GamesMotion
PUBGVikendi
Chapter VThe Lineage office, Los AngelesFrom 2022
VFull Scale
By 2022 everything in the first four chapters was running at the same time. This is the part the clients didn’t see.
Org design
Working groups
Utilization
Freelance network
Hiring
All at once
Athletes, teams, brands, two unions and a film slate, all at once, with forty people. This is how it ran.
The biggest account in the company’s history
PrizePicks. Run Your Game.
PrizePicks was the largest engagement Lineage ever signed, and the whole account was ours. It needed a dedicated team of more than ten people who didn’t work for us yet.
I ran that hiring myself rather than paying recruiters a percentage of every salary: thousands of résumés, hundreds of screens, and a finalist pool the team chose from. We grew to about forty people, and the new team was working within weeks.
PrizePicks / Run Your GameBrand spot
Run Your Game / Out-of-homePrizePicks World Championship2023
~40People at our peak, after the PrizePicks team came on
Player cardPlayer cardPlayer card
How it ran
We grew by doing four things agencies don’t do.
Agencies grow by adding clients and layers of management. We took fewer, bigger clients and kept the team lean, on purpose. I designed the system and ran it.
01
Take fewer clients.
We stopped chasing small work and went after bigger, longer engagements. Between 2017 and 2023 the client list shrank by more than half. Revenue grew four and a half times.
68→31Clients, 2017 to 2023
4.5×Revenue
9.8×Revenue per client
ClientsRevenue, indexed to 2017
02
Working groups instead of middle management.
We tried the conventional fix first and hired a chief operating officer from a big agency. The layers slowed every decision down, so we took the layer out.
The coordinating that middle managers usually do went to cross-functional working groups, each with one owner and one target that was either a number or a yes-or-no, posted where everyone could see it.
03
Reward finishing early.
Most agencies track utilization, and a utilization target on its own rewards logging hours over finishing work. We paired a 70% utilization target with a second one: deliver projects in 70% of their budgeted hours. The first kept people busy. The second made padding pointless.
70%Utilization
and
70%Of budgeted hours
04
850 freelancers instead of a bigger payroll.
Instead of hiring for every niche, we built a network of more than 850 vetted freelancers, rated after every project, and staffed the right specialist job by job instead of carrying the overhead.
That kept the full-time team small enough that I made the final call on every hire.
The freelance network850+ vetted specialists
What running it that way produced
9Consecutive profitable years
$0Outside capital, ever
0Missed payrolls
60%Repeat-client rate across 1,000+ contracts
125+Full-time hires, with the final call on every one
4+Years average tenure, in an industry that turns over every two
On the sideDSC × Base × Carhartt / The chore coat2024–2026
On the sideSpenders Club
A consumer brand Anthony and I co-founded and ran alongside Lineage, built from zero around drops, collabs and experiences.
Drops
Collabs
Experiences
Consensus 2025
Block Chain Video
A client asked us to build something with him.
Flexa’s founder had worked with us through the bull market and wanted to build for the culture around crypto instead of selling to it.
He funded two ventures and brought Anthony and me in as co-founders. We kept running Lineage and built these on the side.
Digital Spenders Club / The idea
Make digital spending a badge of honor.
DSC × Claynosaurz / Drop film
Crypto had a bad reputation and no style of its own beyond conference swag. But the culture was real: builders, traders, gamers and cypherpunks, each with their own codes.
Digital Spenders Club set out to give them something worth wearing and to celebrate the people actually building. Not merch, and not another conference meetup. Apparel people rep, collabs with a story behind them, and experiences that bring the community together.
01 / RepDrops
Elevated essentials and accessories people wear to show what they’re part of.
02 / InspireCollabs
Partnerships with the projects crypto respects, each one telling the story of who’s building.
03 / CommuneExperiences
Real-world moments that pull the community into one room.
We built a consumer brand from zero.
The idea only worked if the product did. I built the entire operation behind it, from the first sample to the box on someone’s doorstep.
01Shopify architecture
02Product development and manufacturing
03Inventory systems
04Self-run fulfillment
05Packaging and customer service
06Retail tax compliance
07Lifecycle marketing
99.2%Fulfillment accuracy
500+Orders a month the operation was built to ship
102Vendors onboarded in the first year
The chore coat at ETHDenverFeb 2026
Drops & collabs
Collabs with the people actually building.
Each collab started with a partner the culture already respected and a piece their community would actually wear, launched with a film that told their story. Every piece was developed, manufactured and shipped by the operation I built.
CollabNov 2025
DSC × Claynosaurz
The Claynosaurz pocket tee, in three colors.
CollabDec 2025
DSC × Entropy
“Whales Only.” Caps, tees and a collectible whale figurine. Only 12 figurines were made.
CollabFeb 2026
DSC × Barriers Worldwide
A cowrie-trimmed bomber, released for NBA All-Star Weekend.
CollabFeb 2026
Base × Carhartt
The chore coat: denim with chain-stitch embroidery, shown at ETHDenver.
Also: DSC × Raposa Coffee, the Club Capsule and the Winter Club Capsule.
Experiences / Consensus 2025, Toronto
A ’90s strip mall inside Consensus.
Consensus is the biggest conference in crypto, and most booths are a backdrop and a bowl of swag. We took the largest footprint on the floor and built a working strip mall: a 1-Hour Photo printing real portraits, a nail salon doing real manicures, the DSC shop, and Block Chain Video.
I oversaw concept, build and on-site operations. The organizers told us it was the best booth they’d ever had.
Consensus 2025 / The recap0:30
011-Hour Photo
02Nail salon
03The DSC shop
04Block Chain Video
Please be kind. Rewind.
A fictional video store. A very real production.
Block Chain Video was a Blockbuster for crypto. We wrote and produced six parody films, gave each one its own VHS clamshell and stocked the shelves.
The membership cards were working onchain wallets, made with Burner. Tap one and you were in.
Rugbusters / One of the six films
Clamshell / BTC to the Future
Clamshell / DAI Hard
The shelves
Now showing / Rugbusters
Membership card / Onchain wallet
70 × 40 ftThe largest footprint on the floor
4 storefronts1-Hour Photo, nail salon, the DSC shop, Block Chain Video
6 parody filmsEach with its own clamshell, written and produced in-house
Then we took it on the road.
NFT NYC × PermissionlessNew York · Jul 2025
Solana Summer House, presented by DSCLos Angeles · Sep 2025
Sundae Sessions at DevconArgentina · Nov 2025
DSC × Barriers WorldwideNBA All-Star Weekend · Feb 2026
Base × CarharttETHDenver · Feb 2026
On the sideUse Case, Issue 01 / Bitcoin Mining’s Pre-Industrial Past2025
On the sideUse Case
A 160-page answer to “what does crypto actually do?” With a working crypto wallet in every copy.
Publisher
Print
1,000 copies
The Daily Heller
magCulture
Issue 01 · October 2025
A magazine with a crypto wallet in every copy.
We hired two former CoinDesk editors-in-chief, a London design studio, and the best reporters and photographers in the field. Contributors included Niall Ferguson. Each copy carried its own embedded wallet, and we hand-delivered them to the most influential people in crypto and media.
I was the publisher: finance, contracts, production and distribution.
Written up by Steven Heller in PRINT. Sold out at magCulture.
Steven Heller’s Daily Heller column in PRINT covered the issue in January 2026 and named me as publisher. magCulture sold it at £75, and it sold out.
Through all of it
For two years I ran an agency, a product company and a magazine at the same time.
By the numbers
Fourteen years at Lineage, in numbers.
2011–2026.
14Years
19.6×Revenue growth from 2014 to 2023
6→40+People
320Clients
1,000+Contracts negotiated
100+Athletes and artists on the roster
1Emmy
1Feature film on Prime
Chapter VIHuman MarketingMarch 2026–
VIHuman Marketing
VP of Delivery and Operations, since March 2026.
VP, Delivery & Operations
Delivery P&L
Capacity
Operating partner to the CEO
Now.
In March 2026 I joined Human Marketing as VP of Delivery and Operations.
I run delivery across five teams, own the delivery P&L and capacity plan, and work as the CEO’s operating partner. It’s the work I did at Lineage, at a different agency.
