San Diego, California

My Story

I’m Dana Robinson. If you’re reading this, you’re probably trying to figure out who I am or what I’m all about. Let’s go back…all the way to childhood. I was the kid who mowed lawns in the neighborhood, sold our chickens’ eggs to the same customers, and looked for ways to make money. I wasn’t a greedy little brat (although I was a brat). I sought agency at a young age. I wanted to have something to empower me to make economic decisions, however small. In middle school, I made hair clips and sold them at school, and in high school, I learned to sew on my mom’s machine and focused on making surfboard covers that I sold to friends and to surf shops around San Diego. 

Fast forward to college, when I found myself hating my job at the mall and started a landscape maintenance business. (Little did I know at age 20 that in my 50’s, I would run a private equity firm that owns landscape companies.) I sold the landscape business four years later and opened a coffeehouse, which was a near disaster. 

I graduated from college and from graduate school and spent a season in ministry, where I was a staff pastor at a large church, vice principal of an elementary school, and dean of a small bible college. In that era, I found myself wanting more from my career and was still driven by the same entrepreneurial ambitions I had when I sold chicken eggs and mowed lawns.

But before I could envision myself as a business owner again, I craved a deeper education, one that might give me more tools and resources than I had when I was a kid from a blue-collar family. I had owned a landscape company. I worked for my dad’s telecommunications contracting business. I had worked for a commercial electrical contractor. But, I felt drawn to understand business on a higher level, and decided that going to law school would help me understand business better and give me a profession that might help me escape the middle class that seemed to trap everyone I knew and trapped was something I feared most. 

In law school, I was drawn to the Internet (it was the late ‘90’s). I started a website as a side hustle and continued to nurture my inner entrepreneur. I landed a job after law school doing intellectual property and corporate work, where I gained some deep skills in a wonderful legal niche focused on trademark law, but I also stretched my wings a bit and ventured out with a client, becoming the owner of a nursery (plants, not kids). I sold that and flipped the profits into a property management business that my wife and I grew for almost four years before selling it for about 5x what we paid. 

I would spend the ensuing decade as cofounder in a number of ventures, from shoes (Esquivel) to wine barrels (Modern Cooperage) to audiobooks (eChristian, sold to Shamrock and later to KKR), to importing from China, Thailand, and Vietnam (AsiaDirect), to real estate (100 doors of multifamily and specced two high rise developments). I would support multiple ventures, including Mako Labs, Guild, Surya Rising, Pouch Pal, among others. I would also roll up two property management companies in San Diego and sell that business before launching a private equity business with a focus on landscape maintenance (full circle, eh?).

All the while doing all of these business ventures, I kept my hand steadily on the wheel of a law practice that flourished with the support of my longtime paralegal and an associate. I was managing partner of Techlaw LLP for a number of years, before the eventual retirement and relocation of several partners. My team formed US IP Attorneys, which was eventually handed to my longtime associate and law partner Kayla (who continues to run the practice and to whom I am “of counsel” but rarely bill any time as an attorney). 

As if compelled to get additional certificates to paper my wall, I obtained my California real estate broker’s license in 2002 and my FINRA Series 63/79 in 2011. I published an academic article for fun and then proceeded to author a casebook and practice guide for aspiring trademark attorneys (priced at less than $10 to support the starving law students). In what I thought was going to be a post-retirement academic career, I spent seven years as an adjunct professor of law at University of San Diego School of Law and then the past six years as an adjunct professor of law at California Western School of Law (where I also ran the USPTO Trademark Clinic). 

The real fun began when I tried to buy a plumbing business. In 2020, I was in the process of becoming the owner of a San Diego-based plumbing and HVAC contracting business when I asked for the advice of a guy with more experience in the industry. He talked me into joining his PE-backed rollup in that industry, and I would spend the next two years on the executive team with Goettl (acquired by Cortec in 2021). 

While my current role as a managing partner of Verde Equity Partners takes most of my time (and money), I have supported my longtime business partner Cory in three ventures, where I am a board member and early investor. Zoundy, a SaaS that enables authors and publishers to promote and sell their own audiobooks; Unlimited Listens, a platform that delivers catalogs of unlimited audio content to listeners; and EverCourse, an audio and video learning production business.

When asked about my hobbies, it should be clear that selling chicken eggs and mowing lawns was my hobby as a kid, and I’m still occupying my time the same way as an old man. I do, however, like to travel, eat, and write. On the hobby of writing, among the unfinished pages, I’ve managed to push a few completed works to the public. 

Opt Out. Rethink Success. Reinvent Rich. Realize the Life You Want.” with a foreword by Michael E. Gerber and an endorsement from Brian Tracy, 

Gig Out. Finding Your Side Hustle in the Gig Economy.” with a foreword by Wallet Hacks founder Jim Wang, 

“Trademark Prosecution: A Casebook and Practice Guide” 

The King’s Flyswatter” with a foreword by Pat Flynn. 

I received a bachelor’s degree from Life Pacific University, an M.A. at Azusa Pacific University, and a J.D., cum laude, from the University of San Diego School of Law. I’m a candidate for a Doctor of Business Administration from ESGCI, a European business school. 

I’m on boards and have been for most of my career. Mostly, I seem to be the neutral director, a role for which I was trained by being the middle child of the family. 

I’m sane and not broke in large part due to my loving wife, who “gets me” and lets me spin too many plates and write and do business, and who loves to eat and travel, too. We live an awesome life in a little seaside village where we can walk to everything.

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