A good solution starts with understanding the problem
Before deciding what to build, we need to understand what you’re actually trying to solve.
That means looking beyond the immediate deliverable and getting a sense of how it fits into the rest of your business: the tools you already use, who’s involved, the steps that happen before and after, and the little workarounds that have become ingrained in the process.
Sometimes all that exploration simply confirms what you came looking for is exactly what you need, and we can proceed with confidence. Other times we will uncover a better way to approach it.
Either way, starting with the whole picture means we can build something that fits naturally into the way you and your business works instead of creating another standalone tool that you have to work around.
If you have a puzzle with one piece missing, why cram any old piece into the space when you can make a custom piece that fits perfectly?
Practical process, straightforward communication
We keep the process practical and take responsibility for moving the work forward.
You don’t need to arrive with a perfectly written specification or have every detail figured out before we start. Part of my job is taking the messy collection of ideas, problems, requirements, and “it would be nice if…” conversations and turning them into a clear path forward.
Communication is similarly uncomplicated. You won’t get stiff, formal emails from me, and I can all but guarantee at least one superfluous exclamation point per email!
I’m also happy to work the way your team already works. Email, video calls, Slack, Asana, a shared document, whatever feels most natural to you and your team.
Why work
with me?
I’m endlessly curious, and I genuinely enjoy solving problems and building things.
My background is actually a big part of how I approach development. Before starting Millstone, I worked in product management and eventually became Head of Product at Helcim, where I spent a lot of time thinking about customers, internal teams, business requirements, technical constraints, and how all of those pieces fit together.
That experience stuck with me.
So when you come to me asking for a website, application, integration, or automation, I’m not only thinking about how to build it. I’m thinking about who needs to use it, what happens around it, what it connects to, and whether there might be a simpler way to solve the underlying problem.
I also have a tendency to go pretty deep once something catches my attention. I want to understand why something works the way it does, where the frustrating parts came from, and what might become a problem six months from now.
That curiosity tends to follow me around, too. I might be out in the garage building a table and suddenly realize how to simplify a workflow we’ve been discussing. I might be staring through a telescope at some distant star and, somehow, still end up thinking about your project.
Once I get interested in a problem, it can be surprisingly difficult to turn that part of my brain off.
So if you’re looking for someone who will spend time genuinely thinking about your business — not simply work through a list of requested features — we’ll probably get along well.
Tell me about your projectA bit
about me
I grew up in Victoria, BC and moved to Calgary as a teenager, where I’ve since spent most of my adult life and built my career. I’m half Blackfoot and half Scottish, and I still hope to eventually find my way back to Vancouver Island.
My path into tech wasn’t particularly direct.
Straight out of high school, I started working part-time at St. John’s Music. What was supposed to be a regular sales job turned into ten years with the company, eventually working as an Account Manager.
When the first COVID lockdown brought that chapter to an abrupt end, I decided it was a good opportunity to make a change and move into tech. I eventually joined Helcim, where I worked as a Product Manager and later Head of Product during a period of significant growth for the company.
Somewhere along the way, I realized that I enjoyed building solutions just as much as figuring out what those solutions should be, which eventually led me to strike out on my own and start Millstone.
Looking back, the common thread is probably curiosity.
I’ve always had a tendency to get a little obsessive about whatever has my attention. If there’s something I don’t understand, I’ll research it until I do. If I pick up a new hobby, there’s a decent chance I’ll immediately go much further down the rabbit hole than any reasonable person needs to.
Outside of work, you might find me playing chess, woodworking, flight simming, editing some obscure corner of Wikipedia, or out late at night staring through a telescope at something a few million light-years away. And by next month, there’s a decent chance something completely different will have sent me down another rabbit hole.
Although, if I’m being completely honest, I’ll probably just be sitting at my computer working on a hobby coding project or trying to learn another programming language.
But that makes for a less exciting bio, so let’s go with the telescope thing.
