Last updated August 20, 2026.
Rendered turned six months old this summer, and the honest answer to "so how’s it going?" hasn’t changed: this is the most fun I’ve had working in a long while, and sleep is still fleeting. The operating system I built in May, with an AI partner working the other side of the desk, runs more of the business every week. Still one person. Still not working like one.
The bigger news is at home: our son Johnny proposed to Savannah, his high school love, and she said yes. Mia and I are gaining a daughter-in-law and couldn’t be happier about it. Meanwhile I crossed ten years since my last live show, which sounds impossible until I remember I’ve spent nearly every Sunday of those years behind the kit at church.
Work keeps getting more local, on purpose. Rendered joined the Collinsville Chamber of Commerce this summer, I’ve been making the rounds at neighboring chambers’ events too (the first breakfast in Troy already paid for itself), and I said yes to my first speaking slot, coming this fall. I’m helping a friend stand up a coworking space in Pontoon Beach, with more to share soon. The community events calendar I’ve been building for local newspapers is deep in the build. Even the first run of Rendered gear came from shops in Belleville and Granite City instead of a print-on-demand site. And that client site from the last update is built, paid for, and sitting on the runway. We flip the DNS the day they’re ready.
This site keeps learning tricks, too. Every note now has a Listen button that reads it to you (a generated voice, and it says so), notes can carry video straight from my phone, and subscribers get new notes by email with one-tap reactions. There’s a speed control for people like me who take everything in at 2×.
Rendered Consulting is the sit-across-from-an-owner side. A good example is branding and marketing for a multi-generational business, where the second or third generation is looking around at a crew that’s aging out, legacy customers with no real pipeline behind them beyond hope, and a website and social presence that haven’t kept up with how good the work actually is. Custom sites with inline editing, so clients can update their own words without calling me. AI Clarity Sessions are one straight, no-hype conversation for owners sorting out what AI can and can’t do for them. And the /meet page is twenty minutes, free, no pitch.
Rendered Digital is where the toys live. Boltkey makes passwords. SetKey pitch-shifts YouTube audio so musicians can practice in their own key. BOOM? answers the question everyone in Metro East has texted a neighbor at least once: "did you hear that boom?" And The Click, a metronome for worship teams that pulls Sunday’s setlist straight from Planning Center, still runs every week at August Gate Church on its way to a public release.
Otherwise: still up by 3:30, prayer, coffee, then work. The truck is still sometimes a rolling office with Starlink and a laptop mount, parked wherever the day goes, in and around Collinsville, Illinois.
If you’re wondering what this page is, it’s a /now page. It’s the answer to "so what are you up to these days?" without the small talk.