Joe Burbach  ·  Technology Advisor  ·  Central Minnesota

What Comes Next.

Most technology decisions feel harder than they should. Not because the technology is complicated, but because nobody is sitting on your side of the table helping you think it through before the vendors show up.

That's where I come in. I look at the whole picture, tell you the truth, help you decide what's worth doing, and roll up my sleeves to get it done.

Let's talk
25 years of enterprise technology. Harley-Davidson. Porsche. 3M. Cargill.
Founded and sold a digital health platform. Now based in Central Minnesota.

How I Help

The thinking that should happen before the spending

The businesses doing the best work with AI right now aren't the ones who moved fastest. They're the ones who asked the right questions first. What do we actually need? What are we risking if we wait? What are we risking if we rush?

Those aren't vendor questions. Vendors have products to sell. They're advisor questions, the kind you need someone on your side to help you think through before you start spending real money.

I've watched what happens when organizations adopt new technology well and when they don't. The difference is rarely the technology itself. It's almost always the thinking that happened, or didn't, before the first invoice.

AI is genuinely different from other technology shifts in one way: the pace is real. The window to get ahead of this, rather than just catch up, is shorter than most people expect. That's not a sales pitch. It's just the situation.

The good news is that you don't need to tackle everything at once. You need a clear-eyed look at your specific situation, a realistic sense of what's possible, and a plan that fits your organization. That's what I help you build.

Most first conversations take about an hour. By the end, you'll know whether there's something here worth pursuing.

How I Work

Four ways we can work together

Most client relationships start with a conversation. Some stay there. Others grow into something longer. All of them start the same way: honestly.

One

The Conversation

Tell me what's on your mind. No invoice follows. If there's nothing here worth pursuing, I'll tell you that too. I'd rather be useful for free than expensive and wrong.

Two

The Assessment

A fixed-fee diagnostic. We look at your current operations, your team, your goals, and your appetite for change. You get a plain-language report and a clear point of view before you spend serious money on anything else.

Three

The Build

Defined scope. Fixed price. Clear deliverables. You own everything at the end. No surprises, no scope creep, no dependency on me to keep the lights on after we're done.

Four

The Standing Relationship

This is the one most clients say they wish they'd started sooner. Technology decisions don't come in neat project-shaped packages. Having someone you can call, who knows your business and has no product to sell you, turns out to be worth quite a lot.

The standing relationship is structured around hours, but I don't watch the clock the way a billing system does. If I'm spending time learning something that makes me better at helping you, that doesn't feel like your tab to pick up. Relationships take time to build, and they're worth building right.

A Note on Price

What you're actually paying for

Technology consulting ranges from very cheap to very expensive, and neither end of that range reliably tells you what you're getting.

I don't have a Minneapolis office or a team of ten at the kickoff meeting. When you hire me, you get me: someone with 25 years of enterprise experience who is rooted in Minnesota and does this work because it matters, not because it scales.

I'm not the cheapest option. I'm also not the most expensive. What I am is consistent: one experienced person, full attention, every time.

Every engagement starts with a conversation at no charge. If it goes further, we'll agree on scope and price before any work begins. Then we get started. Reach out anytime.

A writer who ended up in technology

I started as a journalist. Edited the student newspaper at UW-Madison as editor-in-chief. Graduated convinced that the most interesting job in the world was figuring out how to tell stories to people who needed to hear them.

That instinct turned out to be useful in places I didn't expect. I spent a decade in advertising agencies in Minneapolis, working on brands like Harley-Davidson, Porsche, 3M, and Cargill. The work was less about selling than about understanding: what does this person actually need, and what's the most honest way to say it?

In 2008, I started a company. Facebook was two years old and most businesses didn't see a reason to be there. I spent the next few years helping companies like Kemps figure out what social media actually meant for their relationship with customers. The anxiety was real. Nobody knew what the rules were, what the risks were, what the opportunity cost of waiting might be.

The anxiety that comes with something unfamiliar is usually a signal, not a stop sign. That's as true of AI today as it was of social media in 2008.

Then something happened that rearranged my priorities. Open heart surgery in my early forties. The recovery gave me time to think. I watched the physical therapy process, the repetition, the documentation, the gap between what patients needed and what the system could provide, and I started building something.

A setback is a terrible thing to waste.

PTRx became a virtual physical therapy platform. By the time we were acquired in 2021, it had served 375,000 patients, was part of benefit plans covering more than 50 million people, and had partnerships with major health systems. Along the way I earned a certificate in AI in Health Care from Harvard Medical School, not because I was chasing credentials, but because I wanted to understand what was actually possible.

After the acquisition, my wife and I moved to Central Minnesota. We live near Lake Koronis outside Paynesville. I had spent 25 years doing this work at a distance from where I slept. It felt like time to close that gap. I write a weekly column for the Paynesville Press, serve on the Koronis Lake Association board, and am vice-chair of the Paynesville Area Community Foundation. I have 109 acres along the North Fork Crow River that I'm still figuring out.

Moving here didn't narrow what I do. It gave it a clearer purpose.

I work with manufacturers, nonprofits, health systems, professional services firms, and anyone else who is trying to figure out what comes next. I'm actively working with clients and always open to the right conversation. I also write a weekly column for the Paynesville Press on modern small town life.

Joe Burbach

What Others Say

In their words

Marcus Fischer, now CMO at Harley-Davidson, was a peer during the Carmichael Lynch years.

"Your team is better when Joe is on it."

Marcus Fischer — Chief Marketing Officer, Harley-Davidson

Jody Hilgers was VP Marketing at Urology of Minnesota when they chose Joe over agencies with ten times the headcount.

"The roadmap Joe developed became a foundational guide for how we thought about technology for years after he delivered it. We passed over larger agencies to work with him. It was the right call."

Jody Hilgers — formerly VP Marketing, Urology of Minnesota

Scott Kulstad was Executive Director of Digital Innovation at M Health Fairview, and among the first health system leaders to bet on PTRx before it had a track record.

"I took a chance on a patient who had an idea. What I got was someone who combines the art of client relations with the science of technical skill in a way that's genuinely rare."

Scott Kulstad — formerly Executive Director of Digital Innovation, M Health Fairview

Jaynie Bjornaraa is SVP at American Specialty Health. She watched PTRx build virtual care capabilities years before the pandemic made them essential.

"Joe built virtual care infrastructure into PTRx long before the pandemic made that a requirement. He saw where things were going, not where they were. That kind of foresight into emerging trends is exactly what you want in a technology partner."

Jaynie Bjornaraa — SVP, American Specialty Health

Let's Talk

Start with a conversation

If you made it this far, thank you. I know your time is valuable and I don't take it for granted.

I respond personally, usually the same day. No pitch, no intake form, no sales process. Just a conversation. If there's something worth pursuing, we'll figure that out together.

Paynesville and Edina, Minnesota.