I spent years doing a lot of manual work — the kind where you're doing the same thing over and over and you know a computer should be handling it. Eventually I started building systems to get rid of it. Then people who saw what I'd built started asking whether I could do the same for them, and that's really how this started.
Somewhere in there I picked up an oddly strong passion for analyzing data. I know how that sounds. But it saves people real money, and the best part of this work is watching someone see their own business from a new angle — which product quietly carries the others, or where a small staffing change would pay for itself.
I also love databases, which is maybe a stranger thing to admit. Most businesses keep everything in a spreadsheet or a Google Doc, and that's fine until it isn't. A real database is a different thing: you can just ask questions in plain language and get answers back, instead of building a new spreadsheet every time you're curious. Once that exists for a business, everything after it gets easier.
I work with clients of all sizes, but small businesses are where my heart is. Several people in my family run them, and helping them is honestly more satisfying to me than helping a big company squeeze out another percent. Small businesses get far less help than they deserve, and most of the tools built for them are either too expensive or not really built for them at all.
One more thing worth knowing: I've been on the receiving end of internal tools. I've watched well-meaning software get abandoned inside a month because it added a step instead of removing one. I've had to get people who never asked for a new system to actually use it. That shapes how I build — if the thing I hand you doesn't make your day easier right away, it won't get used, and then it doesn't matter how good it is.
Based in Salmon Arm, British Columbia. Working with clients across Canada and the US.
Almost always, and usually that's the whole point — most of what I build sits between systems that don't talk to each other. If your tools have an API, we can get a lot done. If they don't, we can still look at what's possible; there's often a way in.
You do. It's yours when I hand it over, with documentation written for whoever ends up looking after it.
That's a normal outcome. I've handed projects off to clients' own teams and to clients who wanted to keep building on it themselves. The handoff document is there for exactly this.
Rarely too small. Some of the best-value things I've built were a few days of work that killed one person's recurring weekly task. If something isn't worth doing, the diagnostic will say so.
Yes. And nothing about your business goes on this site unless you've said yes to it.