About
I sometimes joke that I’ve accidentally had three careers.
The first was in design. The second was in digital and marketing. The third is still unfolding, somewhere between leadership, AI and helping organisations work a little better.
Looking back though, I don’t think they’ve really been different careers at all.
I’ve always been trying to answer the same question:
How do we make complicated things feel a little simpler?
Sometimes that meant designing a website. Sometimes it meant improving a customer journey. More recently it’s meant building AI tools, shaping marketing teams or helping organisations make better decisions.
The tools have changed.
The question hasn’t.
The longer I’ve worked, the less interested I’ve become in titles and the more interested I’ve become in solving interesting problems with good people.
Different tools. Same question. Make the complicated thing slightly less complicated than it was yesterday.
Curiosity has probably been my biggest advantage.
I’ve never been the smartest person in the room, and I’ve never really wanted to be.
I’ve always been far more interested in asking good questions than pretending to have all the answers.
That curiosity has taken me from building websites before most people had internet at home, to studying design in Cornwall, working in France and Spain, building a career in London, and eventually settling in Australia.
I’ve been fortunate to work with startups, scale-ups, listed companies and global brands. Each came with different challenges, different cultures and different ways of thinking.
The common thread wasn’t the industry.
It was understanding people a little better and helping businesses grow—whether that meant improving customer experiences, building stronger teams, launching new products or finding better ways to make decisions.
Every role left me with another perspective.
None of them replaced the last.
Building helps me think.
I’ve always enjoyed turning ideas into something real.
Sometimes that’s a strategy. Sometimes it’s a dashboard, a website or a new customer journey. Increasingly it’s a small piece of software or an AI workflow that quietly removes a repetitive task from someone’s day.
I’m not particularly interested in building technology for the sake of it.
I’m interested in building useful things.
The best ideas usually start with a small frustration. A task that’s repeated too often. A report that takes too long. A process that feels more complicated than it should.
Building is simply how I think through problems.
It’s also how I learn.
Leadership changed my perspective.
Early in my career I thought great work came from having great ideas.
Over time I realised that’s only part of the story.
The best teams I’ve been part of weren’t built around one person with the answers. They were built around shared context, trust and a clear understanding of what success looked like.
My role as a leader is to create that environment.
Hire smart people.
Give them clarity instead of control.
Hold them to high standards.
Remove unnecessary friction.
Trust them to do what they were hired to do.
When people understand the problem, feel ownership of the outcome and know they have the support to make decisions, they usually surprise you.
That’s where the best work happens.
When I’m not working
Home is now Thirroul, on the south coast of New South Wales.
It’s where my wife and I are raising our two children, Hugo is always happiest when the day includes a walk on the beach, and I spend far too much time tinkering with ideas that started with, “I wonder if…”
Living by the ocean has quietly become part of who I am. Maybe that’s because I studied in Cornwall, spent time in Spain and somehow kept finding places where the sea was never too far away.
I still support Crewe Alexandra.
I still make a proper cup of tea.
And I’m still just as curious as I was when I was building websites on a dial-up connection.
A few things I’ve learnt so far
Start with the user.
Curiosity beats certainty.
Simplicity is usually harder than complexity.
Context scales better than control.
Customers experience one business, not separate departments.
Technology should remove friction, not create it.
Great organisations learn faster than their competitors.
The best ideas can come from anywhere.
You’re allowed to change your mind when new evidence appears.
The canvas is just a little bigger than it used to be.
If anything on this site resonates, I’d love to hear from you.
If anything on this site resonates, or you’d simply like to chat about growth, AI, design, leadership or building better organisations, I’d love to hear from you.