And my guiding principle in life is…
There is no such thing as “impossible”…
Everything is possible, it’s just a matter of time, resources and skill.
This mindset, combined with my diverse skill set in software engineering, data analysis, and marketing, enables me to tackle even the most complex problems and create substantial value for my clients.
I am the founder of Infused Insight, a company that is dedicated to helping businesses that are using the Infusionsoft marketing and CRM platform. I help them gain more leads, increase sales and maximize their ad-spend return through data-driven insights.
Over the past 20 years I have been a software engineer, data analyst and even a direct-response marketer.
And on the hobbyist side I enjoy gaming, electrical engineering, 3D printing and designing erogonmic split keyboards.
I had the amazing opportunity of living across the world in Germany, Australia, Hong Kong, ex-soviet Georgia and Mexico. I love immersing myself in foreign countries and absorbing the best the entire world has to offer.
So, let me take you on a journey to discover how I acquired all my skills and how I came to be the man I am today…
“Let’s switch to Linux and learn C” decided 15-year old Kim…
It was my father who ignited my passion for technology. Although he was never a nerd or geek himself, his deep appreciation for it was irresistible.
And since all the best hackers, geeks and nerds seemed to code in C and use Linux, I decided to learn these technologies too.
I developed various tools for personal use in C and continued to learn other languages, such as PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript and eventually my favorite language, Python.
I read dozens of books about software development, networking, cyber security, and other IT-related topics.
At some point, I wanted to learn advanced IT concepts that were not sufficiently covered by German books. There was just one problem… At that age, my English was terrible.
So, I started learning English with the explicit goal of being able to read the advanced IT books I could only get in English.
And then Apple released the iPhone and changed my life…
The first iPhone didn’t even have an AppStore, but I just couldn’t wait. I immediately joined the homebrew development scene.
This was a small group of people who started making software for iPhones even before Apple made it officially possible to create apps.
I created many apps and one of them, 3G Unrestrictor, became a best-seller for many years.
This was during my final year of high school when I was supposed to start university, but my first big commercial success lead me to believe I was some kind of business genius (Spoiler Alert: I wasn’t 😆).
So, I decided to start traveling the world while I continued working on my apps.
Two years later, I co-founded Prescription Media, an iPad magazine publishing platform in Australia.
But not all of my apps and ventures were successful. Many of them failed.
After reflecting upon these failures, I realized that…
While I had great tech skills, I lacked marketing and business skills
So, I joined Blacksmith Global, an online publishing company, to learn direct-response marketing.
Since it was a very small team, I had the opportunity to learn and get hands-on experience in almost all areas of digital marketing.
I wrote sales letters, emails, SEO articles… I bought media (fancy industry term for “running ads”), built funnels and practiced many other disciplines of digital marketing.
I also continued to hone and develop my tech skills in my free time…
You can take the man away from the code, but you can’t take the coder out of the man…
This was an incredibly valuable time of my life. It taught me the ability to think like a marketer and business person combined with the deep understanding of a tech person.
It allows me to not only very effectively communicate, but bridge the oftentimes difficult communication between business and tech people.
But very soon I realized…
Marketing without Data & Busines Intelligence just doesn’t work…
The more I grew as a digital marketer, the more I became frustrated about having to make decisions based on my gut feeling instead of data.
Since the company I worked for was very lean, we had no Business Intelligence beyond Google Analytics and the Google Sheets I have created.
I vowed to change this and spent my weekends writing python scripts that extracted data from our CRM, Google Analytics and other sources. I loaded them into a Postgres database and started getting insights with Metabase.
It was a game-changer for the business and allowed me to scale our lead generation by over 500%.
This was when I fell in love with business intelligence… It allowed me to combine my passion for marketing with my passion for software engineering.
I repeated the same intensive learning process I used to become a software engineer with data analysis and modeling.
I consumed everything I could about the topic. Both the classics by authors like Kimball, but also modern data warehouse books and community discussions.
And I have been putting all of that knowledge into practice since I started my “Data Warehouse As A Service” company, Infused Insight, in 2019 where I work mostly with Python, SQL, dbt and Power Bi.
And then I discovered my new favorite hobby… Ergonomic keyboard design
A lot of the content on this site and many of my projects center around this hobby.
And that’s despite not having hand pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, or any other medical condition that would necessitate an ergonomic keyboard.
I just loved that I found a group of people who were willing to unshackle themselves from outdated ideas that persisted not for merit, but for the sake of convenience and inertia.
It’s a group of people who were willing to roll up their sleeves, re-think the conventional to innovate and replace their cozy old keyboards with “monstrosities” like this one:
I previously thought of myself as “a software guy”, but this hobby opened me up to a whole new world of opportunity, creation and creative expression.
One of the things I love most about this hobby is that there is so much to learn.
Creating a keyboard requires skills in electrical engineering, PCB design, soldering, 3D modeling, 3D printing and even embedded programming.
There’s just so much to learn and so much to explore. It’s a box of never-ending fun.
And on top of that we are living in a time where physical creation is more accessible than ever before.
You can even get STAINLESS STEEL 3D-prints for as little as US$8 + US$1.75 shipping, directly from China. Let me repeat that… We are living in a time where ANYONE can manufacture STAINLESS STEEL parts for just US$8.
What a time to be alive in.
With that in mind, I invite you to…
Continue getting to know me…
Through the articles on my blog and my open source projects.
Yours truly,
Kim