I wasn't supposed to end up here.
Born on a farm in rural Canada, my childhood was as analog as it gets - no computers, no internet, just endless chores, problem-solving with whatever was lying around, and the kind of work ethic that gets beaten into you when the livestock need feeding at 5 AM regardless of how you're feeling.
While my friends were playing street hockey, I was figuring out why the tractor wouldn't start, how to fix a broken gate with baling wire, and learning that sometimes the best solution isn't the obvious one. When you're miles from a repair shop and something breaks, you don't call tech support—you figure it out. That's where I learned to think differently - to see problems as puzzles rather than roadblocks.
Fast-forward to the early 2000s, and I was watching this thing called "the internet" transform everything. Most people my age were catching up, learning digital skills they should have had years earlier. But I had something different - I'd lived through the entire transition. I watched dial-up become broadband, saw the first online stores stumble through terrible user experiences, witnessed social media evolve from basic forums to the attention economy we know today.
And here's what that gave me: I understand both worlds. I know what it's like to solve problems without Google, to build something from nothing with no instruction manual. But I lived through every major digital shift, watching technologies emerge, mature, and sometimes disappear entirely. While others were learning how to use new tools, I was understanding why they mattered and where they were heading.
That farm kid mentality never left me. When I co-founded LiveOutThere and grew it into one of Canada's 50 fastest-growing companies, I approached it like fixing that broken tractor—understand the problem, use what you have, build what you need, and don't stop until it works. When e-commerce was still the "risky" way to sell products, I was already three businesses deep, learning through trial and error on what moves the needle.
The hunger for innovation isn't trendy for me - it's a survival instinct. Growing up where standing still meant falling behind, I developed a compulsive need to stay ahead of what's coming next. That's why I built Aperture before most people understood AI could be more than a chatbot. It's why I've been experimenting with data intelligence tools for over a decade. It's why I can spot the difference between genuine innovation and Silicon Valley snake oil from a mile away.
Most entrepreneurs either have the technical background or the business instincts. I had to develop both, from scratch, while the entire digital landscape was being rewritten around me. That combination of analog problem-solving and digital native adaptation? It's rare. And in a world where everyone's trying to figure out what's next, it's exactly what most businesses need.
