I’ve run the business, not just the software.
Payroll, pricing, hiring, and every call about what to build — all of it mine, all at the same time. So when we sit down over what your business should do next, I’m working from having run one, not from having advised one.
I spent twenty two years with my own money on the line.
I started unetworks in 2004 and ran it for seventeen years. In 2021 we merged with Clearbridge Business Solutions, where I was a co-owner and the CTO.
In both companies I picked the technology. Which projects we took on and which ones we walked away from. What we built ourselves and what we paid someone else for. When I got it wrong, the money came out of my own pocket. Some of those calls paid for themselves inside a year. A couple I had to write off.
I’ve personally run hundreds of projects, some of them a week long and some that went on for years. You get a feel for it after a while. Which ones are going to pay for themselves and which ones are going to eat a year and leave you with something nobody uses.
I set the prices and made payroll too. I hired people, and I’ve had to let people go. So when you’re sitting there working out whether to add someone or buy software instead, I’ve done that math on my own company, and I’ve gotten it wrong.
It’s a big part of why the first day works the way it does. I’ve sat through the six week discovery that ends in a proposal. I’ve paid for them, too. You get a nice document out of it. You’re still no closer to knowing whether the thing will work.
Most of what I know about AI is what it gets wrong.
I was early, and early doesn’t count for much on its own. Everyone’s excited about AI right now. What counts is that I haven’t gone a single day without it since.
What you actually get out of that much time is a feel for where it falls apart. There are things it’s bad at that look fine in a demo, and things it handles so well you’d kick yourself for having planned six months around them.
I can usually tell you which is which before you’ve spent a dollar finding out.
My nine year old ships software.
My wife builds software. So do my kids. They’re nine to sixteen.
None of them are technology prodigies. They didn’t go through coding tutorials or bootcamps or anything like that. They each wanted something that didn’t exist yet, so they built it. Watching that happen at my own kitchen table is why I believe custom software is now in reach for any company.
Custom software used to be something only big companies could afford. That isn’t true anymore.
A twelve person company can now have a tool built around how they actually work, instead of changing how they work to fit the software they could afford.
Most businesses haven’t caught up yet, so there’s a real head start sitting there for the ones that move. My job is to get you across sooner, and without the expensive wrong turns I’ve already paid for myself.
I like to put numbers on things.
Starting with my own, which you can take as fair warning. I ride endurance events, partly for the data. I log every espresso shot I pull, for the same reason.
I built the software for both, because I wanted to see the thing a stopwatch and a receipt can’t tell you: whether any of it is actually getting better.
With experience, gut feel can get you a long way. Numbers settle it. I’ve built hundreds of dashboards and most of them never changed a decision, so I have a good sense of which numbers are worth having and which ones are there to be looked at.
Most companies work on the wrong thing first. Usually nobody ever ranked the list, so they started at the top of it.
I still build them. You’ll get the two or three that change what you do on Monday, not the forty that get opened once.
If a number isn’t going to change what you do next, we won’t spend time on it.
Abbotsford, British Columbia.
I take on four to six clients at a time. I’d rather learn how your business really works and go after the big problems than drop in for a one-off fix.
- Home port
- Abbotsford, BC
- Aboard
- Wife, four kids
- Ages
- 9 to 16
- Off watch
- Road, gravel, mountain
- Ridden
- 16,883 km
- Climbed
- 320,747 m
That’s the reason it stays small. When you phone me I already know what’s going on in your business, so you get an answer in that call instead of two weeks after it.
Not sure whether I’m the right fit?
Easiest way to find out is a quick call. It’s free, it’s short, and part of what it’s for is me telling you if I’m not.