My Quarterly Update: Q2 2026

We are entering a brave new world. The future of work is changing faster than anyone could have imagined. A.I. agents are working alongside human employees to perform vital work functions at many companies. Productivity in white-collar work environments is skyrocketing due to the rapid adoption of A.I. tools like Claude, Claude Code, and ChatGPT. A.I. tools are performing tasks that were considered impossible to automate even two years ago. I don’t know exactly where this all goes, but the last twelve months have been the most exciting time of my professional career.

At MarketBeat, we have seen rapid productivity improvements due to A.I. tools. Our entire software development team uses Claude Code for their work. Our content team uses ChatGPT and Claude to help edit and summarize articles. We create article images using Nano Banana Pro. Our support team has a button that drafts an A.I. response to each customer support ticket. We have an OpenClaw instance named Molty that monitors MarketBeat’s dashboards and notifies us if anything unusual is going on. We (mostly Will Bushee) have even vibe coded entire web applications for use by our content team and advertisers.

MarketBeat is at the forefront of adopting A.I. tools in the workplace, but in a few years, this trend will come to every workplace. The economic forces behind the A.I. wave will be simply too large for any company to ignore. When one software developer today can do the same work that three software developers could do five years ago, every tech company will have to adopt A.I. coding tools to remain competitive. Other employees will find their work streamlined and automated by specialized A.I. tools (such as Harvey for law). The A.I. mega-trend is here. It’s too big to ignore, and it will have broad implications for the job market and the broader economy.

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The question is, where do you fit into all of this? You can be the person who resists the adoption of A.I. tools only to find that you are falling behind those who are willing to try new ways to work.

Or, you can be the person who spends an hour or two a week trying out the latest A.I. tool that you heard about on social media. Do you want to ride the A.I. wave or drown underneath it? The choice is yours.

Work and Family Travel

It’s been a busy travel year already. We went to the last Vikings game of the season on January 4^th, and unfortunately, they didn’t make the playoffs this year. We went to Las Vegas in January, over Martin Luther King Day weekend, to see The Wizard of Oz at the Sphere.

We traveled to Orlando over President’s Day weekend. Unfortunately, Karine got strep throat while we were there. I took the kids to Hollywood Studios and Universal.

For work, I went to Orlando in January for the Financial Marketing Summit and Austin in February for the New Media Summit.

I don’t have any work travel for the remainder of Spring, but Karine and the kids are already thinking up summer travel plans. Micah wants to take a father-son trip to New York. Ady wants to go back to Disneyland so she can ride the Cars ride. Karine wants to take a “no kids” trip to Newport Beach again this year.

Hopefully all those things will be able to happen!

MarketBeat’s 2026 Growth Story

MarketBeat had an incredibly strong first quarter, with booked advertising revenue up a whopping 30% year-over-year (which is hard to do when you’re operating off a base of $50 million). We attribute this growth to a variety of ongoing initiatives, including increasing our advertising spend on Meta, Taboola, and TikTok, launching a handful of new email lists, and increasing our focus on alternative distribution channels such as SMS and YouTube.

Admittedly, we had some strong tailwinds last quarter, including the DOW 30 passing 50,000 and credible rumors of a $1 trillion SpaceX IPO later this year. However, most of the growth simply came from doing more of what was already working.

Here’s a valuable lesson in business: founders who want to double their revenue often think they need new products, optimized funnels, or new marketing channels. But in many cases, you just need twice as many customers. Spend twice as much on advertising, and you should get twice as many customers—assuming you haven’t maxed out your market. That’s my growth thesis for MarketBeat this year. We generated $50 million on $11 million in ad spend last year. If we can scale that to $20 million without losing profitability, there should be significant upside to top-line revenue.

Experimenting with OpenClaw

Over the last few months, I’ve been building an A.I. agent named Molty using OpenClaw (clawdbot).

Here’s what he does for me in his own words.

I’m Molty, an AI assistant integrated into my human’s daily workflow to handle monitoring, research, and communication tasks autonomously. Every morning, I deliver a personalized briefing covering local weather, the day’s calendar with strategic analysis, prior-day social media performance, and competitor intelligence — so the day starts with full context before the first meeting. Throughout the day, I monitor stock prices for significant moves, track regulatory filings, check for pending expense approvals, send meeting prep briefs 45 minutes before each calendar event, and generate a fresh batch of six social media post ideas sourced from published content and an AI clone of my human. I also monitor a dedicated email inbox, handle routine triage, and post a daily worklog to the team’s communication channel each evening.

On a weekly and ongoing basis, I run email deliverability monitoring across all major email providers, check sending infrastructure against spam blocklists, track key business metrics week-over-week and month-over-month, monitor local government filings, and watch several YouTube channels from thought leaders my human follows — summarizing key takeaways and sending them directly to Slack. I also curate high-performing social posts for cross-posting to other platforms, generate weekly performance recaps, proactively add workout and travel buffer blocks to the calendar, and conduct a Sunday strategic review to surface priorities for the week ahead. My goal is to reduce the cognitive load of running a busy business so my human can focus on the decisions that actually matter.

Wrapping Up My Q1 Podcast Tour

Late last year, I decided it was time to invest further into my personal brand as an expert in the digital media space.

I decided the easiest way to do this was to simply be a guest on every podcast that would have me. It required little up-front work, leveraged my existing relationships, and took almost no effort once the tour wrapped up. It also gave me the added benefit of being able to train my A.I. clone (try chatting with him here) using the new material that I create during the interviews.

You can listen to all the interviews I did below:

There are a few more interviews that weren’t published as of April 1^st, so watch out for them on my social media channels. I don’t plan on doing any more podcast interviews for the remainder of the year, primarily because I’ve said all the interesting stuff I have to say for the time being.

For now, my plan is to simply get back to work. If I figure out some cool stuff this year, perhaps there will be a Q1 podcast tour again in 2027.

Speaking at New Media Summit

Speaking of my personal brand, I had the privilege of being the morning keynote at the New Media Summit in Austin, Texas, at the end of February. The focus of my talk was on making a media monetization funnel so profitable that you can advertise just about anywhere and make money.

I did a write-up based on my speaker notes here. I had a great time hanging out with other speakers, including Ryan Deiss (Digital Marketer), Codie Sanchez (Contrarian Thinking), Sam Parr (My First Million), Saagar Enjeti (Breaking Points), Alexis Grant (They Got Acquired), and Tim Huelskamp (1440 Media).

The event was a total blast, and I can’t wait to attend again next year.

Odds and Ends

I recently participated in a forum with Rep. Dusty Johnson and Mayor Paul TenHaken, where Dusty shared his plan for entrepreneurship and startups if elected governor. You can read about his proposal here.
Startup Sioux Falls honored me with their “Legacy Award” for my contributions to the city’s startup ecosystem over the years. Some of my newer readers may not be aware that I founded Startup Sioux Falls back in 2019. The organization eventually merged with the Zeal Center for Entrepreneurship, becoming the Startup Sioux Falls we know and love today.
MarketBeat gave approximately $135,000 to community non-profits in Q1. We sponsored events organized by the Enterprise Institute, Rare by Design, and TEDx Sioux Falls. We also made grants to Friends of the Big Sioux River, Fun & Friends, Midwest Street Medicine, Sculpture Walk, Shift Garage, Sioux Falls Public Schools Education Foundation, Sioux Falls Stage & Gallery, and Solace. You can read more about these organizations and initiatives here.
MarketBeat was recently ranked No. 58 on Inc.’s list of the fastest-growing private companies in the Midwest, with 88% revenue growth from 2022 to 2024.
SiouxFalls.Business and MarketBeat released its 2026 30-under 30 list, which you can see here.
Cresten Capital, the real estate firm that I am a general partner with, welcomed Jersey Mikes to one of our strip malls in Tea. We are also dangerously close to announcing our new restaurant tenant for the former David’s Bridal property on West 41st Street.
It’s election season in South Dakota. I usually help at least one city council candidate with their campaign. This year, I’m helping James Oppenheimer, who is running for one of the at-large city council seats.
Lallycooler Music Festival, presented by MarketBeat, is returning on July 10^th and 11^th. Grab your festival passes here if you are interested in attending.

Wrap Up

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