David Molina

Subject/Genre Categories, Book Keywords, and Assessment Reports

Mon, 18 May 2026 19:12:43 +0000

Today, we closed out the day with several taskers on The Principles of MESLO and an assessment report.

First, I selected three subject/ genres. In selecting these, I had to visit the BISG, the subject heading authority, and determine the top three. I chose: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Small Business; BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Operations Management; TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / Construction / General.

Second, I had to select 7-14 keywords that support SEO and searchability. This is different than principlesofmeslo.com and ensuring correct JSON structure— but I will end up using these keywords to support the site’s search visibility. I chose the following key words: construction estimating, job costing, operations management, small business systems, back office systems, project cost tracking, overhead allocation, service business pricing, operational workflows, risk management, business process systems, technology integration, cash flow management, and operational strategy.

Third, I spent some time crafting the retailer book description:

Most small business owners do not lose money because of bad work. They lose money because they do not know their true costs, lack operational structure, and fail to build systems that scale beyond themselves. The Principles of MESLO introduces a practical framework for estimating, pricing, operationalizing the back office, and building systems that support long-term profitability. Drawing from firsthand experience in construction, operations, government contracting, and military systems planning as a former U.S. Army Captain, David Molina presents a practical framework for estimating, operational discipline, and scalable business systems through the MESLO methodology:

Materials

Equipment

Subcontractors

Labor

Other Costs

Inside, business owners, estimators, contractors, and operators will learn how to:

Build structured and defensible estimates

Understand direct, indirect, and overhead costs

Reduce operational noise and duplicate effort

Improve pricing confidence and profit visibility

Operationalize back-office systems and workflows

Leverage technology to improve coordination and efficiency

Develop repeatable systems that reduce dependency on the owner

Create a scalable operational foundation for long-term growth

The principles in this book are designed to help business owners build more structured, scalable, and transferable operations over time. Part estimating framework, part operational playbook, and part systems manual, The Principles of MESLO provides a practical blueprint for business owners seeking greater clarity, structure, profitability, and operational control.

Finally, I wrapped up the day building out a client’s technical assessment report in the cloud and using a templating system to make future ones a repeatable process (and, soon automated). Something that generally takes the owner a few days to produce was crafted and tailored in a few hours. It started with an executive summary and I finished it with several supporting appendices. While the owner holds the operational knowledge, technology compresses those insights into a quality template that can be repeated, recycled, and eventually automated.

Diet, Lifestyle Medicine, and Business Health

Sat, 16 May 2026 19:12:43 +0000

@davidcmolina

I was hanging w/ some friends at Whidbey Island Bagel Factory and a friend remarked, “that diet you’re doing is helping you… you’re looking healthier.” Diet is when you’re punishing yourself and limiting certain foods to lose weight, taking meds, and sipping powders etc. In my case, it’s lifestyle medicine. But this way of life didn’t happen with pills or injections.

As written before, I had a horrible accident in 2022 in broad daylight. I passed out driving unexpectedly and when I opened my eyes a few split seconds later I had crashed my work truck, ruined the front right tire of my dually, and was in shock. A full day at the VA hospital later, new doses for medicine and steroid shots— I reverted to mentorship.

Who in my inner circle had been where I was, reversed it, and on a thinner, stronger, and healthier path?

You see. You don’t take advice from people who’ve never been there. You take advice from those who’ve been in the trenches, and the exact place you’re at. The difference is you’ll accelerate and compress your failure to success time if you follow the plan. Be it scaling a business or getting healthier.

After 18 months of lifestyle medicine, estilo de vida, I dropped from 299+ lbs. to 216.5 lbs. Today, I’m closer to 223 lbs., and body works as God intended. Inflammation was the silent killer and I’m grateful I learned about this lifestyle before it was too late.

Suffice to say, while I didn’t order a full bagel w/ cream cheese I did take a few bites of one from my friends, and had the most delicious dirty chai. Go visit them if you’re in the area.

Patterns and Common Toolkits

Fri, 15 May 2026 19:12:43 +0000

@davidcmolina

I was talking to an entrepreneur and dear friend this afternoon, and he shared how he had closed a deal over the phone while driving. Keep in mind, this is a go-getter that spends quite a few hours behind a desk and monitor. Always planting seeds, educating clients, and nurturing existing relationships.

This transaction (unexecuted) was closed while traveling and on the road— while enjoying some personal and catchup time w/ family.

What’s a business owner’s common toolkit? A computer, monitor, laptop, desk, printer, and phone.

What’s a business owner’s sales toolkit? A phone, and you. Deals don’t close themselves.

What can be permanently delegated? Everything else, from back office to administrative taskers, to a virtual assistant (VA). My last VA was in Puerto Vallarta, and the one before in Guadalajara.

Closing a sales deal while enjoying and in the presence of your family has got to be the biggest flex. It’s in these micro-breaks turned full day breaks where the magic happens— where deals close because you were in an environment of unconditional love. Find your sweet spot.

Aunt AI

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 19:12:43 +0000

@davidcmolina

Over the past few weeks I served as the middle person to AI-generated responses for family members. I would double check natural remedies for x, food recipes and 7-day at-home yoga plans. While there is YouTube and Facebook, TikTok seemed to be a stronger UI/ UX play. So today in an effort to get creating, than consuming, I bridged that gap on my mom and aunt’s devices. It started with sending them links to their WhatsApp or text, but it soon evolved to bringing the world’s known knowledge, thinking and structure to their fingertips.

A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions. —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Explaining hardware, software and now AI is tricky. The example and use case I used was a summer project in recycling large amount of yard debris. In my case we’d been taking debris to the local yard waste disposal facility— but this was costing more time and money. So I decided to store it locally and dispose of it through small yard waste batches. I then used ChatGPT for various recommendations centered on saving money and being friendly to the environment. My initial hunch was one of the recommendations. Ultimately, it designed a yard plan for where to store it, how and benefits. It was this example where my aunt knew AI was different than a regular internet search, YouTube video or her favorite app TikTok.

Installing ChatGPT on my mom’s iPhone wasn’t hard. She’s a bit more tech savvy and we’ve been using it while traveling to research our family tree. But installing ChatGPT on my aunt’s iPad took a little more time. First as is common, most don’t remember their install password so after working to secure it, we were able to document it and successfully download it onto her iPad (more about password management here. Throughout the process, she documented each step-by-step instruction, words+ icons, to remember the exact steps. It’s common for older adults to journal steps. Often we forget that journaling is key to remembering.

Once ChatGPT was installed, we started by adding three projects:

Medical, a place to learn more about natural remedies for x, y and z.
Recipes, a place to store recipes for birria de res, and other traditional regional plates.
Family, a place to create educational lessons plans for the grandchildren, but interestingly at this point is where curiosity sparked when my aunt requested a caricature of her granddaughter. After demonstrating how to add (+) an image and prompt the request, she double downed on one for her husband. While every rendered image request can take a bit, and internet can be spotty, we were ultimately successful.

The big smile on my aunt was worth every ounce of effort today. The two caricatures of her family and then sharing these was the highlight and power of AI adoption.

Exploratory Experiences

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 19:12:43 +0000

@davidcmolina

No one is born an explorer, you become one through exploratory experiences. It’s in exploratory experiences where your mind expands and rarely can you put it back where it was. You’re never the same each time, and I highly recommend it for all ages. Personal timeline example:

Child through pre-teen, my mom would pack us up in her Chevy pickup and we’d roadtrip to Mexico taking a few days to get there. This is before the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the further devaluation of the mighty dollar. We’d visit annually and it’s where I first learned Spanish. Growing up as a migrant farm worker kid this was always a treat.
At 10, a school field trip to Victoria, B.C. and where I first took a double-decker bus, enjoyed tea with croissants, and the most beautiful manicured gardens I’ve ever seen.
At 11, played a key role in, The Boy Who Fought the Dragon,at the Mount Vernon Lincoln Theater. Required lots of practice and facing fears in front of large audiences.
At 15, represented my high school at the Student Leadership Program at Central Washington University along with over a hundred migrant kids. It was the first time I set foot on a college campus and surprisingly got elected by my peers to represent them on the Superintendent of Public Instruction Migrant Student Advisory Council.
At 16, represented my high school at a leadership conference at Western Washington University.
At 16, represented my high school at the National Youth Leadership Forum (NYLF) on Law & the Constitution in Washington, D.C., and experienced the Supreme Court, top Washington law firms, the National Mall, Jefferson Memorial, Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam-War Memorial. I had to fundraise over $4,000 to attend.
At 16, represented Washington State migrant students at the national bilingual education conference in New Mexico. First time to Albuquerque, New Mexico.
At 16, represented my high school at the Washington State Hispanic Pre-Law Conference. Similar to NYLF participated in mock trials and debate.
At 17 - 20s, represented my high school, community college, and university at multiple leadership conferences throughout the United States with the last one on student government in Wisconsin (I served in student government at the time and even ran unsuccessfuly for student body president).
At 24, participated in an international internship in San Jose, Costa Rica, embedded on a journalist team taking time to travel throughout the countryside and it’s where my Spanish and writing improved.
At 24, interviewed people for Portland’s El Hispanic News y Mas. Back when it was a newspaper and getting access was as simple as flashing a badge and a Canon camera.
At 25, earned an officer commission in Infantry and attended the U.S. Army School of Infantry (Officers) at Fort Benning, Georgia. It’s where I first saw diversity and began my journey to give back to my country, a country that gave a migrant kid the opportunity to do more.
At 25, participated in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) cadet troop leader training at Fort Gordon, Georgia and assigned to a network communications military unit. I was fresh out of Infantry training and had lots of ideas.
At 28, mobilized to active-duty and sent to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. Explored the entire eastern seaboard when able to. In this time, I drove cross country there and back.
At 30, helped recruit and take 13 Oregon students to the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute (USHLI), Annual National Conference in Chicago. First time to the windy city.
At 31, mobilized to active-duty and sent to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Explored the entire eastern seaboard again when able to, including Niagara Falls, MIT and Harvard campuses and Alexandria, Virginia. Second time driving cross country there and back. By this time, I had traveled cross country at least half a dozen times and taken several Space-A flights.
30s and 40s, traveled extensively for various startups, including BilingualHire, Molinas Construction Company, Operation Code, and Fuerza. This is the age where you implement and accelerate what you learned throughout the years and become a master at what you are already superior at.

I’m not going anywhere without my luggage. – Richard Pryor

Again it’s a waste of your precious time to compare yourself to anyone else but yourself to where you have been and how far you’ve come.

Intentional Travels

Sat, 29 Nov 2025 19:12:43 +0000

@davidcmolina

In every aspect of business, startup and even in the military, a team is what makes it go around. Most recently in my downtown office I hired my first administrative assistant who went onto bigger and greener pasture co-founding her own construction company. A year later I went through a few virtual assistants to help with day-to-day new business development, research and clerical tasks. Today, I’m going to visit the last one, spend some time chatting and share lessons learned, best practices, and tips how software and AI is impacting the industry.

All too often entrepreneurs spend most of their time on the operational and tactical elements of the business and barely enough time on strategy. But strategy and planning is key in long term growth and sustainability– especially when there is so much seismic activity affecting business.

Previously, CEOs and chief executives would have several vice presidents/ directors for customer support, marketing, legal and operations:

CEO

_ VP, customer support+ human staff
_ VP, marketing+ human staff
_ VP, legal+ human staff
_ VP, operations+ human staff

Each of these director level positions would have dozens if not hundreds of individuals reporting to this senior position and use software such as Slack to communicate with each other. Every department instance requires time and human effort to move the needle and in most cases APIs and bots to expedite communication between each other. Like email but internal.

In the future and where it’s been going:

CEO

_ VP, customer support+ AI support agent
_ VP, marketing+ AI marketing agent
_ VP, legal+ AI legal agent
_ VP, operations+ AI operations agent

Companies everywhere are slowly beginning staff reductions in each of these AI-first departments. Where before you’d need 600 customer support representatives responding to individual customer requests, AI customer agents take the place of humans and automate the response rates. The latter requiring Python to modify the code. It feels very much like 2013 when I tried taking a taxi to Anacostia neighborhood in Washington, D.C. after Patriot Boot Camp and couldn’t so I took an Uber.The experience was new, eye opening, and now in some urban areas autonomous driving cars are becoming standard.

The old way of doing things are slowly being replaced by something more shiny and despite the shinyness, it’s important as leaders to slow it down, strategize, plan and be intentional in our travels with those on our teams that have gotten us this far and spend some time thinking about the future and what’s important.

Ponches and Black Friday

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 19:12:43 +0000

@davidcmolina

This week every business promotes Black Friday, or the period of time when business are trying to end the day in the black, not red, an accounting term for positive cash and profitability. If you own a small business you know exactly what this means. Business dependent, this means that you must figure out how to best position your product or service in front of customers balancing pricing strategy, timing, location and what people want. While word of mouth is important, understand your customers, patrons and clients have way more options at their fingertips to explore and discover you.

Whether you’re in the product business, ex. food, beverage, retail, or service business, ex. photography, real estate, appraisal, architecture or construction, same thing applies, but this means ensuring your customers, patrons and clients can find you regardless of hardware, software or AI.

iOS, this means clients can find you on Maps. This blog here and here provide great step-by-step instructions.
Android, this means clients can find you on Google Maps. This blog here and here provide great step-by-step instructions.
Software options are several, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and location-based services here and here such as Swarm by Foursquare, Yelp and TripAdvisor. Key here is you won’t know how customers and patrons came to you– so you must excavate the various trails for them to get to you.
AI, software that communicates with other software automatically in the background, pulls its data from the web, various references, and blogs enabling users to find what they are looking for quickly and efficiently. If you’re not already on the web, AI won’t be able to find you.

In smaller, rural towns word of mouth and local recommendations are key. Everyone knows where the good spots are. But in an interconnected world, your ability to pop in on people’s minds and on their devices is key to attracting new customers, new sales and new opportunities. This week I’m focused on spending with the locals and enjoying traditional ponche, a mix of Mexican eggnog, cinnamon tea and Tequila Hornitos. I encourage you to spend locally as well. Salud.

Leveraging Nature

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 19:12:43 +0000

@davidcmolina

Over the past three years I’ve transitioned from prescriptive medicine to lifestyle medicine, one in which health is the foundation of living. This has resulted in losing over 77lbs, healthy blood work, shrinking shirt and pant size, including blazers, and no longer out of breath when participating in normal or incline activities. As some of you already know, I blanked out driving my dually fully loaded over the Portland St. John’s bridge in summer 2022. That near life experience changed my perspective about entrepreneurship and hustle.

Back in the day, I would work endlessly burning the midnight oil, popping sugary drinks just to wake up, fire up the work truck and hit the nearby convenience store for a coffee and a few pumps of french vanilla, a donut, followed by a morning or midday lunch, pop, afternoon beers, endless emotional eating, endless sedentary hours in the office, coupled with lack of sleep, pills for pain and it caught up. Badly. But what good is it to always live to work, instead of work to live? What good is it to work endlessly, if your accelerating time decay and aging faster– or worse, your quality of life the last half sucks? I wrote about a few habits that I implemented a few months after here, but this week I visited an ailing uncle who’s not sick because of habits, but due to a bad step fall. This is a person that’s always been physically strong, a surveyor embedded on major infrastructure projects, but now is aging faster.

In my healing journey, I’ve done these to slow aging, reduce inflammation, and naturally help the body heal with nature’s best.

Morning

A glass of warm water with lemon squeeze and a pinch of cayenne pepper. The lemon activates the liver, is anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory. The cayenne pepper is like fielding a medical doctor in your system and attacks internal injuries that you don’t see and increases blood flow.
A cup of ginger tea which is a major healing veggie that is anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory. Chew on the remaining pieces in the tea.

Afternoon

A cup of chamomile tea in the afternoon to help relax and sooth the body.

Night

A cup of milk turmeric tea with a pinch of fresh black pepper. This tea is calming and puts most anyone to sleep within the hour.
Massage magnesium spray, a powerful mineral spray on chest, stomach and calf leg. It causes 300 chain reactions in our bodies that often don’t communicate, absorb vitamins, and healing properties from food. The calf is also known as our secondary heart.

When we know better, we must do better.

Huddles To Build Momentum

Thu, 14 Dec 2023 19:12:43 +0000

@davidcmolina

For benefits employees we all know what we’re going to collect on the day after our 20 years. I joined the Army reserve after putting myself through community college and after 20 years I wouldn’t have seen a dime until well into my 60s. For some they do that, for others not so much.

For business owners the same should be true. After a few years or even 20 years, we should be positioning our companies throughout to exit and sell the business and go onto our next chapter.

But backwards planning is a lot more difficult without a roadmap, one that builds momentum with our team.

Daily huddles, weekly management monthly accountability workshops, quarterly reviews, and annual strategic planning is the how.

The obvious one and often misunderstood is the annual. The annual is where business owners bunker down w/ key members of their team to update the annual business plan for the following year.

It can be as much as convening the entire company near a ski resort for the weekend, or somewhere in between where everyone on the team can contribute in person and provide valuable input.

Given the holiday season, business and life slowing down it’s a perfect time to update them, make any announcements, new promotions or hires, sharpen the axe, and prepare the entire ship to execute in that direction for the next year.

Collaborate More Than Compete

Wed, 13 Dec 2023 19:12:43 +0000

@davidcmolina

Over the years I’ve read about the importance of collaboration w/ competitors vs. competing with them.

Today, I was reminded why this is more advantageous in many scenarios. An industry newcomer is pidgin between competing on price (below the value of x) or somewhere in between.

The play by play is:

Determine if valuing on low bid, at or below value of x is worth the effort
The value of x is unknown and may cost the company in money
If t is value of time, we have time decay
Consider your burn rate (how much left in the bank before going in the red)
Thinking about the unknowns, how much can the company stomach going into more debt
Low bid is where the majority live at
All low bidders leave a percent on the table
Low bid might just be covering their direct and indirect costs, but no profits (which is a key indicator in valuations)
Conduct an actual takeoff and determine if you can take the work on w/ out increasing overhead and increase profit margins
Somewhere in between might just be good enough for some on the way to exiting their business but haven’t reversed engineered the final retirement number

Whereas collaboration is taking two or more competing companies or organizations to combine strengths, cover down on weaknesses, and minimize risks to produce better outcomes.

Very few live in this space— it’s a bold and strategic move. It’s the one owners can influence the most and set the culture and tone for the rest.