Family & Health
Jaime, five kids, two boxers, and Topher's health
Blended family of five kids (three in college, two in HS) plus boxers Zelda and Willow. Jaime is Topher's wife, Aspire co-founder, and AVP of UX Research at Synchrony. Health note: tirzepatide DISCONTINUED early June 2026 (headaches/nausea, low efficacy) — dose reminders retired. Just back from the 3rd annual Otten + Skillen Destin trip (Jun 27 – Jul 4, 17 people). Family & Health judgment calls are always Topher's (charter Tier-3).
HOA
213-home HOA — Topher is Board President
Willowbrook HOA in Columbus, OH. 213 homes across three phases, managed by CPS since Jan 2026 (replaced Omni). Topher leads the board, coordinates with attorney Jeff Dittmer, and targets a 5 min/month steady-state cadence. Big 2026 win: delawarewillowbrook.com is BUILT + LIVE (cut over from Google Sites 6/11) — pending board approval before it's announced to the community. Aria builds + maintains the site (operating manual: website-operations.md).
Jr Pacers
Youth football & cheer — grades 3-6, 100% volunteer
Jr Pacers Youth Football & Cheer in Delaware, OH — COYFL league (AYF-affiliated for insurance), volunteer-run. Topher is a board member, Registration Officer, and de facto IT; Aria operates as the org's "Virtual President" (strategist / coordinator — the legal President seat is human). July 13 board meeting completed — ETS training partnership, both scholarships accepted, OhioRISE third-party payment on record. Leadership transition underway: TJ Skillen elected President-elect 6/22 (effective Jan 2027); Kevin + Natasha Jenks step down EOY 2026. Flagship initiative: the grants pipeline (grants.md).
Travel
Delta Diamond, WorldVia agency, 4+ trips/year
Travel agency run by Topher and Jaime through WorldVia Pro Network — books their own trips plus clients (Bonnie Clary, Koby Agyekum). Delta Diamond status drives aggressive comp-stacking. Just back from Destin/30A (3rd annual Otten+Skillen family trip, Jun 27–Jul 4). NEXT UP: Las Vegas Aug 25 → Sep 2 with Jaime — an 8-night, 3-hotel comp stack (Resorts World → Fontainebleau → Cosmopolitan, ~$350 total) built around Jaime's Aug 31 birthday. One open loop: disputing a wrongful Vegas parking citation from the May trip (OPS-135).
Aspire Digital
Digital consulting agency — translator between AI and SMBs
Topher (Chris) and Jaime's digital agency for small-business owners. Thesis: AI capability outpaces human adoption; Aspire lives in the gap as the translator. Websites are the entry; CRM (GHL), automation, voice AI (TCYM / Concierge), and the Site Health retainer engine are the depth. Aria is COO (absorbed Linq 2026-05-15) and dispatches the specialists — Vegas (web), Sahara (Shopify), Circa (CRM/GHL), Strat (SEO), Paris (prospects) — directly as subagents, verifying results independently. 13 active clients; several finished sites await cutover calls.
Aspire Ventures
Moonshot — on-prem AI + fix-it for broken enterprise AI
Umbrella for higher-dollar, sporadic engagements beyond the agency. First vertical: on-prem AI for law firms (~$100K engagements); the fix-it entry point ("your AI is broken, we know why") may close faster than greenfield. Methodology is engagement-ready: six sellable modules, Foundation/Premium tiers, three named differentiators (from the RAG training sessions). No legal entity yet — formalize when the first deal is imminent. Related-but-separate: the Eric mentorship (drawer 13) provides accountability/timing counsel on ventures like the boat-financing SaaS.
Finance
Working CFO loop — 23 accounts, 9 institutions, $363K net worth
The full household portfolio, parsed from primary sources (6,685 transactions across 23 accounts) into a live dashboard at /info/finance with 9 sub-pages. Both Topher and Jaime work at Synchrony (~$489K combined gross). Doctrine: grow income, don't shrink lifestyle — and be the working CFO (due-date alarms, autopay tracking, push not pull), not a dashboard. Debt priority right now is the OPS-54 action queue: Venmo $7.2K @ 18.74%, BoA Spirit $10.9K @ 0% promo, Lafayette $25.5K @ 8.99% — avalanche + kill any sub-$1K balance immediately.
Smart Home
'Just works' — NAS-centered, Tailscale-everything
Philosophy: don't tinker, just works. The House Health dashboard now gives one live view of the NAS, Homebridge, Tailscale access, spa, laptop links, Pet Rescue, and Travel Mode. The LAN is intentionally treated as an untrusted IoT fabric; important machines rely on Tailscale. Anti-Google doctrine: HomeKit/Matter > local > Apple/Amazon cloud > Google last. Moen/Flo alerts itself by call/text/email and is intentionally outside Aria monitoring.
3D Printing
Bambu P2S + AMS 2 Pro — Aria as expert operator
Bambu Labs P2S Core-XY printer with AMS 2 Pro (4 spools) and Bambu Studio. Topher's rule: don't tinker, just works — Aria is the expert operator. He either describes what he needs (Aria creates via OpenSCAD → STL) or uploads a model for modification; files live on the NAS. Standing idea: the vibe-code 3D-printing MVP — make printing as accessible as Vegas makes websites.
Vehicles
The fleet — Lightning, Nautilus, MDX, CR-V, and the Crownline
Topher works on his vehicles a lot — this drawer is the single place for repair history, warranty status, parts, recalls, and call playbooks. One file per vehicle; active repair situations also get time-bound CC pages (e.g. the Lightning tracker). Fleet headline: the F-150 Lightning's Stop-Safely-Now saga RESOLVED — HVJB replaced $0 under the 8yr/100k EV warranty (~5/29). Standing gap: a fleet brain dump (who drives the Nautilus/MDX now, is the Crownline still owned/stored).
Day Job (SyF)
Synchrony — Rooster agent + portable second brain inside SyF-approved tools
Topher leads Product Owners across ~10 Agile teams at Synchrony Financial (VP Digital Payments org, white-label credit cards). The day-job is opportunity cost — exit is Aspire-revenue-gated (~June 2027 financial gate). Active build: Rooster, the custom Copilot agent living in VS Code on the SyF laptop (Aria bootstraps via corporate-safe exports, then steps back — need-to-know only, no personal-stack details cross the wall). Domain thinking gets captured as shareable primers (emerging payments, agentic commerce).
Personal Brand
LinkedIn rewrite paste-ready — the post-SyF identity, drafted
Reconciling Topher's two true identities — Synchrony VP (Emerging Payments) and Aspire founder/technical director — into one coherent public story for the post-SyF chapter (~June 2027 gate). The heavy lifting is DONE: all three interviews ran 4/24-4/25, positioning synthesized in positioning.md, and a paste-ready LinkedIn rewrite (Headline/About/Experience/Skills) has been sitting in linkedin-rewrite.md since 4/26 (refreshed 7/14 — em-dash sweep, Aspire 'growing roster' + 2023 founding date, Jr Pacers volunteer entry, quiet-update checklist). The ball is in Topher's court to paste it in. The /chris landing page is live at madebyotten.com/chris/ (Aspire v2 brand).
Advisory Board
Seat 3 filled (→ Eric drawer) · Seats 1-2 open, no active search
The three-seat personal advisory framework: Agency Founder/Operator (Seat 1), Fee-Only Fiduciary (Seat 2), Coach (Seat 3). Seat 3 succeeded — Eric Fatkin accepted April 2026 and the relationship grew into its own drawer (#13, weekly cadence + UJ channel). Seats 1 and 2 have candidates' shapes defined but no active search running — dormant until Topher wants to resume, likely closer to the SyF exit window.
News & Intel
Folded into the morning cron — no standalone pipeline
Originally a standalone drawer for a personalized daily digest (web dev, AI, payments) on local LLMs. Superseded: news/intel now arrives through the morning cron brief + the Hermes watch loops (GHL MCP roadmap signals, nrx-lead-hunt). Excluded from the Greeter picker but reachable by name. Revive only if a dedicated digest becomes worth its own pipeline again.
Home Projects
Dormant — DIY → delegation as Aspire grows
Open home projects and household vendor coordination. Topher is transitioning from DIY to delegation as Aspire grows. No active projects right now — the drawer wakes when one starts. (Home infrastructure lives in Smart Home; vehicle work in Vehicles.)
Eric
Eric Fatkin — Seat 3 advisor + UJ channel partner
Topher's accountability partner, mentor, and active business-development channel into Ugly John's Marina. Retired Fortune-200 banking exec (GE/Synchrony era, marine F&I background). Seat 3 of the advisory board since April 2026; UJ's F&I lead since the week of 5/11 — which makes him a gray-area information surface (fiduciary duty to UJ). His seat is accountability + transition timing, NOT finance. 6/12 demo call: Eric personally vouched for Topher to owner Jeremy Mullen + GM Jason Smith; Jason green-lit the relationship-first site. Jeremy eyes Team Marine (Salesforce) for CRM — hold that conversation until trust is earned.
How drawers work: each drawer is a parallel life area — HOA, Jr Pacers, Aspire Digital, etc. Open action items across all drawers live in Linear (OSB team) ↗ — that's the source of truth. Drawer detail pages here show the people, platforms, events, and memory files for ONE drawer at a time. For deep history, Aria reads the memory files listed at the bottom of each drawer page.