About Me

Hi, I'm Mal!

I'm a full-stack technical problem solver and creative designer with a long backing in inventory and fulfillment center operations, especially with heavy equipment operation, production optimization, and systems maintenance. I thrive on building practical solutions for independents, developers, and small businesses chasing their dreams. Whether you need brand development, network infrastructure, custom software, or some solution that doesn't exist yet, I'll find a way to make it happen.

Originally from Arizona, I now call Bellingham, Washington home, though I roam throughout Whatcom County and occasionally venture as far north as Vancouver, B.C.

The Pacific Northwest suits me, and it's where I've planted roots for now.

What I Do (and Why It Matters)

I specialize in helping small businesses compete with corporate juggernauts, not by outspending them, but by outworking them and delivering similar or superior quality. My approach combines practical solutions with complete transparency across everything from advertising and product development to CCTV systems, point-of-sale setups, conferencing technology, and adapting to emerging tools.

I work with creators, influencers, private developers, food trucks, mom-and-pop shops, and everyone in between. This isn't just about providing services, it's about empowering people to take control of their own infrastructure and operations so they're not perpetually dependent on expensive corporate solutions that extract value while providing minimal actual support. I build systems that scale with you, from day one through whatever growth you achieve, without forcing you into pricing tiers that are sometimes designed to bleed you dry the moment you start succeeding.

Quality does not have to be locked behind premiums like most would believe. If you know where to look and how to communicate, you have access to outlets that reach far beyond, to lengths you would not expect.

Big players want you to believe you need their overpriced systems, their monthly subscriptions, their "enterprise solutions" that cost more than most small businesses make in a year. With the right knowledge and tools, small operations can build infrastructure that rivals what corporations use, often for a fraction of the cost and with complete control over their own data and processes.

When small businesses win, their communities win. Local dollars stay local, jobs are created where people actually live, and neighborhoods become more resilient. That's why I help where I can, because every small business that thrives is a blow against the homogenization and extraction that's hollowing out communities across the country.

How I Work (and Think)

"Apes Strong Together." (Caesar, King of Apes) 🙈🙉🙊🐵

I believe in the power of community above all else. In today's brutal and often failing economy, community isn't just nice to have, it's the only thing that actually really matters.

When we build networks of mutual support, share knowledge freely, and lift each other up, we create something resilient that cannot be replicated by AI or corporation. I've seen firsthand how a connected community of small businesses, independents, and skilled individuals can weather economic storms that would sink any one of us alone.

I approach every project not just as a transaction, but as an opportunity to strengthen the web of relationships that keeps us all afloat. If I'm supporting you, then your success is my success, and together we're stronger than any challenge the market throws our way. This means being transparent about costs, sharing knowledge that others gatekeep, and building solutions that can be maintained and modified by the people who use them rather than locking them into proprietary systems that require expensive experts to touch.

I believe in full transparency in everything I do. Every system I build, every process I document, every line of data I handle gets delivered to my clients in a readable, comprehensible way. No black boxes, no "trust us it works, LOL!" no technical jargon designed to make you feel stupid for asking questions.

You should understand what you're paying for and how it works, period. If I can't explain it clearly, then I don't understand it well enough to be building it for you.

Core vs. Chore: Workflow Philosophy

I follow a Core and Chore mentality when approaching business operations, something I learned to practice more in recent years after attending leadership growth sessions with Mark Warren.

The idea is simple but transformative: differentiate between tasks that empower your business (core activities) and tasks that drain it (chores). It's about balance and mental + physical + emotional optimization.

Core activities: These are the things that generate value, build relationships, create products, or directly serve customers. These are what your business actually does, what makes it unique, what only you can provide.

Chores are everything else: repetitive data entry, manual inventory counts, reformatting spreadsheets, copying information between systems, waiting for slow systems to load, dealing with crashing computers, troubleshooting the same technical issues over and over, tasks that need to happen but don't require human creativity or expertise.

Here's the tricky part: just because someone is good at something doesn't make it a core activity for them.

I've met plenty of people who became excellent at wrestling with spreadsheets or troubleshooting finicky systems simply because they've done it so many times they got good at working the chore. They might even seem to enjoy it because competence feels good, but that doesn't mean it's empowering them or their business. Core and chore activities are deeply personal. What drains one person might energize another. Some people genuinely love the technical troubleshooting that would drive others insane. Bad and good are relative when it comes to core and chore, it's about identifying what actually serves you versus what you've just learned to tolerate or gotten skilled at enduring.

The problem is that most small businesses drown in chores, leaving little time or energy for core activities. Owners burn out doing data entry instead of developing their business. Staff spend hours on tasks that could be automated. Even vendors get caught in inefficient workflows that waste everyone's time.

One of the most common scenarios?:
Workplace doesn't (or won't) adapt helpful technology → Business can't scale with new growth doing it mostly-manual → Now team members spending too much time with manual process or outdated technology (The Bandaiding effect) → Build up (The Snowballing effect) → Team has to play catch up now in most processes → Cycle continues until there's a landslide effect.

You can run things this way and it might work for a long time, but why exhaust your team? Why make something take 10 minutes when it could've taken under 60 seconds? Wouldn't you want to spend just a little time to get things smoothed out if it means it can sometimes shave entire minutes (and collectively hours) off of processes?

This is what I'm good at fixing.

My approach is to identify these kinds of drains and systematically either eliminate them or automate them.

I train workflows that minimize the burden on owners, their staff, and even their direct vendors. This might mean building automation scripts that handle routine data processing, implementing barcode systems that eliminate manual counting, or creating integrations between platforms so information only needs to be entered once. The goal is to free up human attention and energy for the work that actually matters, the core activities that drive growth and make businesses worth running in the first place.

When you're not exhausted from chores, you have bandwidth to think strategically, serve customers better, and actually enjoy what you built your business to do. We're unfortunately not robots (at least not all of us...yet,) so we all need to reduce drain somewhere when we can.

What I've Built

I believe in creating useful tools that serve real needs, which is why I've developed several free utilities and comprehensive guides that put power back in people's hands:

Calc.Mal+ is a universal calculator and converter that's 100% free with NO ads. It handles weight, volume, length, temperature, speed, and time conversions. There's a donation option if you want to support the project, but it's completely optional. I built this because every other converter online is either buried in ads, tracking you across the web, or both. Sometimes you just need a tool that does a bunch of stuff, but have it in one place. It started to fill a gap in a workflow with converting Blender units and just became what it is now.

Ani.Mal+ is a classic Snake game called "Hungry Critter" with local-only (meaning same PC) high score tracking. It exists for no real reason except it was easy to make and it's a time killer. Mobile controls are a little janky but that'll be worked on if I ever revisit it. Otherwise, it's just a game. That's it. Go do the thing with it!🐍

Beyond these tools, I write comprehensive guides that empower people to build their own solutions instead of relying on expensive corporate services. My Small Scale Inventory Management System Build teaches small businesses how to set up professional barcode scanning and inventory tracking using affordable single-board computers for around $150, giving them solutions that scale with their growth without the $200+ monthly subscriptions that most inventory services demand. The guide covers everything from hardware selection to software installation, security hardening, and real-world workflows, written in plain language that anyone can follow even without a technical background. (More in Extras!)

I meticulously inspect every system I create, use, or recommend and work with industry security professionals to certify that these implementations can't be penetrated. Properly configured open-source infrastructure is often more secure than commercial alternatives because the code is transparent, auditable, and not hiding backdoors or data collection schemes.

When I deploy something for a client, they get the same level of security that Fortune 500 companies have sometimes paid six figures for, just without vendor lock-in and extortion pricing.

I also curate resources like The Internet You Don't Know, which highlights real communities, independent platforms, and tools that still embody the collaborative, human-centered spirit of the early web before algorithms and engagement metrics destroyed everything good about being online. Places like Neocities, Marginalia Search, and small forums where actual humans still talk to each other like humans. These aren't just nostalgic curiosities, they're proof that better models still exist and reminders that we don't have to accept the corporate internet as inevitable.

My hardware and tool compilations point people toward open-source alternatives, budget-friendly equipment sources, and practical builds that solve real problems without requiring enterprise budgets. Whether it's setting up a Raspberry Pi for network monitoring, building custom point-of-sale systems, or sourcing quality materials without getting ripped off by marked-up retail channels, I document what works and what doesn't so others can learn from my experiments.

These are just examples of the kind of practical, no-nonsense solutions I create when I see a need worth filling. Every guide I write, every tool I build, and every resource I share is designed with one goal: making people less dependent on systems that don't serve them.

Building Resilience in Hard Times

As the economy continues to worsen, I'm actively working toward self-sustainability and helping others do the same. I believe the best way to survive what's coming is to build skills, grow food, create value with your hands, and reduce dependence on systems that are increasingly fragile and exploitative.

"Corporations and the politics that influence them have repeatedly proven they cannot be trusted to support the communities they claim to serve. CEOs and executives answer to shareholders, not to the people whose lives depend on their decisions."

We've watched this play out over and over: companies that promise to "support local communities" while lobbying for policies that destroy those same communities, businesses that tout "family values" while paying starvation wages, platforms that claim to "connect people" while algorithmically driving us apart for engagement metrics. The pattern is clear and it's not changing.

This is exactly why I believe in making individuals strong, knowledgeable, and capable, so we are not taken advantage of. When people understand how things actually work, when they can build and repair their own solutions, when they're not dependent on proprietary systems they can't modify or understand, they stop being victims of corporate extraction. Knowledge is the most powerful form of resistance because it can't be taken away, it can only be shared.

I'm passionate about teaching others how to become more self-reliant through practical, actionable knowledge. This means writing detailed guides on building affordable business infrastructure that competes with corporate offerings, curating resources that help people rediscover forgotten corners of the internet where real communities still exist, and showing small businesses how to implement professional solutions without paying corporate ransoms. I focus on transferable skills: growing your own food so you're not entirely dependent on supply chains that can break, repairing instead of replacing so you're not feeding the planned obsolescence machine, building your own tools and infrastructure so you understand and control your own systems, and developing multiple income streams that don't rely on traditional employment that can disappear overnight.

I heavily practice the principle of Perception versus Perspective, always trying to balance a situation when I have the power to do so. This means stepping back from my immediate perception of a situation to consider broader perspectives, recognizing that my view is just one angle, and actively working to understand how decisions impact everyone involved, not just myself. It's about recognizing privilege where it exists and using it constructively rather than pretending it doesn't matter.

When one's cup overflows, they shouldn't bottle and hoard the water, they should redistribute it to those who need it.

This outlook seems like it catches hate sometimes and can be an unpopular opinion in a world that worships accumulation and treats greed as a virtue, but I personally don't enjoy knowing others suffer if I have resources in my possession to help. If I have knowledge, resources, or capabilities that can help someone else stand on their own feet, sharing that costs me nothing and strengthens all of us. The myth of scarcity, the idea that helping others somehow diminishes you, is one of the most destructive lies capitalism tells. In reality, communities where people share knowledge and resources are stronger, more resilient, and better positioned to handle whatever comes next.

When we empower each other with knowledge and capabilities, we create genuine security that no corporation or government can take away. My guides on hardware builds, inventory systems, and finding alternative platforms aren't just technical documentation, they're acts of resistance against a system designed to keep people dependent and uninformed. Every person who learns to build their own server instead of paying for cloud hosting, every small business that implements their own inventory system instead of subscribing to a SaaS product, every individual who grows even a portion of their own food, these are all small victories against a system that profits from our helplessness.

The goal isn't just personal survival, it's collective resilience. By sharing what I know and learning from others, we can build communities that don't just endure hard times but thrive through mutual support, shared resources, and the confidence that comes from actually knowing how things work. When the systems fail, and they will fail, the people who've built real skills and real community connections will be the ones still standing.

When I'm Not Working (I'm Still Working!)

I stream both work and gaming occasionally on my private streaming node at live.mal.plus. I'm not a fan of the corporate streaming platforms like Twitch, Kick, or Facebook, so I built my own infrastructure around an Owncast instance instead. Why hand over control of my content, my audience relationships, and my data to platforms that can ban you on a whim or change their terms whenever it suits them?

I'm also actively involved in game development teams, though more details on that will come later when projects are further along.

Currently Playing

I play League of Legends (aka. League of Lemons 🍋), where I'm the most anti-toxic player on Earth. I'm tilt-proof, and the words "Stay Positive!" are frequently typed from my fingertips. I've gotten very decent at the game over the last few years and enjoy a pool of champions, mostly supports. Some birds are just born to become problems.

I roam around in VRChat as well, mostly when my wife is on. She does commissions for various players and develops worlds for her friends. During the pandemic, she dove hard into learning Unity and now creates custom environments and interactive experiences for the VRChat community. I develop avatar assets and world accessories as well, mostly at her request. It's interesting work that combines 3D modeling, scripting, and understanding what makes virtual spaces feel lived-in versus sterile.

Beyond gaming, all my remaining time is spent helping people launch their dreams, playing with my beautiful ESA (Border Collie) Tater, hanging out with my wife, and working a 7-to-5 weekday job simultaneously. I enjoy personal projects that require intense focus and crave challenges, so anything with high difficulty curves intrigues me. I'm currently writing a warehouse inventorying system in JavaScript and Python that handles real-time scanning, automated reorder alerts, and integration with supplier APIs. It's unrelated to the one in my Extras section, this one's for a specific client with needs that off-the-shelf solutions don't address.

Want to know more? Contact me! I also do 3D printing (both FDM and resin), metal fabrication, part replication, custom parting and tooling, and product prototyping and development. If you can describe it or sketch it, I can probably figure out how to make it real.

I wasn't kidding when I said I do a lot of things.

Wanna Connect or Hang Out?

🗒️ Name: Mal Smith
🗺️ Location: Bellingham, WA (USA)
📧 Contact Me: [email protected]
🖥️ Discord: Ikadar
🔗 LinkedIn: Linkedin.com/in/that-guy