Manuel Bautista
Chief Technology Officer at CLIMB IT Solutions. Built enterprise IT at scale — now running a smaller, sharper consulting practice from the road.
Previously CIO/CTO at Grant Cardone Enterprises and Harvard Maintenance, Director of Data Solutions Engineering at Panoply by SQream. Currently advising on Odoo implementations, building AI tools, and writing — most of it from wherever Courtney and I have parked.
Building technology that doesn't fall over — for businesses from six employees to ten thousand.
— Manuel, 2026
Writings
Notes on IT, MSP work, automation, and what it's like to do all of it from the road.
The CTO playbook for a small consulting practice
What changes when you're both the customer and the supplier of IT.
Odoo Enterprise as a small-business OS
Why I keep choosing it over the SaaS-of-the-month menu, and where it breaks down.
Why I rebuilt my whole assistant stack on AWS Bedrock
Notes from a year of Betty / OpenClaw — multi-modal personal AI, fully self-hosted.
Running a managed-services practice from an RV
What works, what breaks, what nobody warned me about.
Why I'm publishing here
This site, in 400 words.
Projects
Three things I work on — a consultancy, an AI assistant, and a travel-content brand. They feed each other.
CLIMB IT Solutions
IT consulting and managed services for small and mid-size businesses in South Florida. Odoo, M365, automation, MDR.
Betty / OpenClaw
Multi-modal personal AI assistant on AWS Bedrock + DigitalOcean. Telegram/WhatsApp/Slack ingress, persistent memory, MS365 + Odoo + Notion tools.
Our Hidden Compass
RV-travel content brand on Instagram. Co-founded with Courtney. Full-time on the road since March 2024.
About
I've run technology teams across hospitals, facilities-services holdings, sales-training companies, and venture-backed data warehouses — at Holy Cross Health, the Harvard family of companies (~10,000 employees across three sister companies), Grant Cardone Enterprises, and Panoply by SQream. CISSP, CISM, CWASP, CPSP. Executive education at Chicago Booth (Strategic Business Leadership) and an Executive MBA at Smartly Institute. Served on the SIM CIO Advisory Committee through 2024.
Today I run CLIMB IT Solutions as a smaller, sharper consulting practice — Odoo implementations, automation, managed IT — and build tools for myself and for clients. Courtney and I have been on the road full-time since March 2024, so most of this work happens from wherever we've parked.
This site is where the writing lives. The professional bio is on LinkedIn; the company is at climbitsolutions.com; the travel work is on Our Hidden Compass. Consulting inquiries: [email protected].
Press & Speaking
- CIOReview 2018 — Customer Engagement Management and Technology
- CIOReview 2019 — IoT in the Real World
- Panoply 2024 — Speaker, Customer Summit — on data-platform integrations