About
I build the thing, then I stay until it runs.
I am Daniel. I have spent my career inside operations rather than beside them, as the person accountable when the numbers are wrong, the schedule breaks, or nobody can find the file.
Whether managing operations behind $3.2B in institutional assets, coordinating logistics for 900 athletes across 88 teams, or cutting $2M of waste out of a university’s athletics operations by auditing every contract and workflow line by line, my focus has always been the same: finding what’s broken, tightening the handoffs, and making the machine run reliably.
Why I started Yui
Small businesses get the worst version of operations help. Either a consultant arrives, interviews everyone, leaves a deck, and invoices, or a software vendor sells a platform that nobody adopts because it was never fitted to how the work actually happens. Both leave the owner exactly where they started, just poorer and more tired.
I wanted to do the opposite: sit inside the operation, find the one or two things that are genuinely costing money, and build them. Not recommend them. Build them, put them in front of the people who have to use them, fix what breaks in week two, and keep going until the business runs without me watching it.
AI changed what is possible here, and not in the way most of the noise suggests. It does not replace anyone in a nine-person company. What it does is absorb the work that was never worth a salary and never got done properly anyway: the call that went to voicemail, the follow-up nobody sent, the report assembled by hand every month. That is unglamorous, and it is where the hours are.
The name
Yui (YOO-ee)
Yui is an old Japanese practice where neighbors traded labor: a roof to mend, a field to harvest, a house to build. Nobody invoiced anybody. You showed up because the help would come back around when it was your turn.
That is the standard I am trying to hold. Not a vendor relationship, and not charity either. It’s showing up like the outcome is also mine, because in practice it is.
Track record
- $3.2B
Assets managed
Folio Dynamix
- 900+
Players and 88 teams run
Greenhaven Soccer Club
- $2M
Cost reductions delivered
William Jessup University
Credentials
- Google AI Professional, Google Career Certificates
How I work
The work is hands-on: I’m inside your operation, in person or on screen, not sending reports and walking away. I’m based in Sacramento and work with clients locally and remotely.
If your operation is mostly fine and you need one automation built, say so. That is a sprint, not a retainer, and I will tell you as much on the call. If you are the bottleneck for everything and you know it, that is the longer engagement. Either way, the first call is me asking what breaks most often, and telling you honestly whether I am the right help.
Outside work
I’ve lived in Sacramento for 25 years. I came from St. Louis to go to UC Davis, met my wife there, and we settled here near her family. Our son and daughter keep us running between soccer, ballet, volleyball, and flag football, and somewhere in there homework, dinner, and cleaning happen. I’ve coached youth soccer for six years, mostly on my son’s teams, and coach in the Sac Republic youth program. I’ve also served on a youth soccer club board and helped with the Easter egg hunts at Garcia Bend. When I get a free hour, it goes to running, reading, art, getting outside, or whatever video game my kids are into.
Let’s talk about your operation.
Thirty minutes, no pitch deck. Tell me what keeps breaking and I will tell you what it would take to fix it.