About
You're a builder. Not a guru, not a motivational speaker, not a tech bro.
I'm a government data analyst in Newcastle who builds things on the side — apps, automations, systems — and documents the process publicly. I build because I can't not build.
The swimmer
I started swimming at five. Jumped into the ocean at nippers while other kids stood on the sand scared. By 12, I'd won my first big ocean swim. By 18, swimming wasn't fun anymore — it was who I was.
Ten sessions a week. Six morning swims, three or four in the afternoon. Gym. Pilates. A 110-kilometre training week at my peak. I bought festival tickets I never used. Missed trips with mates. Drove everyone home sober because I had training at five.
In 2017, I won the Australian Surf Race title and the World Surf Race title at Glenelg Beach, South Australia — both in the same year. I beat an Olympian at the Waikiki Rough Water Swim. Broke the Maui Channel record with my team. The goal was the Olympics.
While training 70 to 80 kilometres a week, I was also completing a Bachelor of Mathematics and Finance full-time. Most people can barely manage uni or elite sport. I did both for four years. Then completed a Master of Teaching after the dream ended. Two degrees by 25 — not because I loved the classroom, but because Dad drilled it into me: do your sport, but have a backup plan.
"It gets to be hard. So many people don't get to train and do what I do." That's what I told myself every session.
Three weeks in January
January 2020. I was 24.
Week one: the Olympic dream officially ends. Twenty-two years of training. Didn't make the team. The one goal that defined my entire life — gone.
Week two: my relationship falls apart. The person who'd been there through all of it. Done.
Week three: COVID hits Sydney. Most junior employee at the insurance company. Let go.
Rock bottom. Moved to a share house in Manly with money I didn't have. Everything I'd built my identity around — the swimming, the relationship, the stability — stripped away in three weeks.
The coasting years
Here's the part people don't talk about. After rock bottom, I didn't immediately transform. I coasted.
Wake up. Walk the dog. Work. Come home. Game for six or seven hours. Scroll until midnight. Sleep. Repeat. Call of Duty Warzone was the thing. Same competitive brain that trained 110 kilometres a week, just pointed at something that didn't compound.
I knew I was wasting it. Everyone in that cycle knows. That's the worst part — it's not ignorance, it's paralysis.
Same hyperfocus brain. Different target. The trick was figuring out where to point it.
The wake-up call
My partner Nikki said the thing I already knew but wouldn't say to myself. She said she wasn't finding me as attractive as she used to, because I wasn't being who I was meant to be.
I immediately knew she was right. Fuck no, there's no resentment for her saying it. She needed to say it. It needed to happen.
Took me a day. Maybe two. Sat down, wrote out everything I wanted to do and how I was going to do it. Changed pretty much overnight.
I didn't start with a course or a framework. I started walking. Listening to podcasts. Moving my body. Body first, then brain. The skills, the systems, the career pivot — all of that came after I started using my body and brain again.
Self-taught everything
After work, I replaced gaming time with learning. Five to nine PM, three or four days a week. Asked ChatGPT to find me the most-viewed SQL courses on YouTube. Grabbed the transcripts, fed them back to it, turned them into a structured course.
Two to three months later — maybe less — I got hired as a data analyst at Hunter Water. I had two degrees, but neither was in computer science. What got me the job wasn't a credential — it was proof of work. I taught myself SQL, prepped harder than anyone else, and showed up ready.
The pizza shop SQL project. The benchmarking tools at Hunter Water. The automations that changed how the organisation uses its data. All proof. No credentials needed.
The teacher
Before data, I taught maths. Stood in front of classrooms in schools where behaviour management was the real curriculum. My supervisor got COVID on day two of my prac placement — so I taught the class solo for two weeks. Thrown in the deep end, just like everything else.
The kids loved me. The head of department was gutted when I left. But while I was there, I saw the problem that would become TeachPlan: lesson planning scattered across five systems, programs disconnected from resources, teachers spending hours on admin that should take minutes.
Australian and World surf race champion. Two degrees. Qualified teacher. Self-taught data analyst. Each chapter built on the last — the discipline from swimming carried into study, the teaching exposed the problem, the data skills gave me the tools to solve it.
How I Think
The operating system
Body first, then brain.
Physical movement is the foundation. Everything else — the learning, building, creating — came after I started moving again. The body is part of the system.
Stop preparing to prepare.
Content frameworks instead of content. SOPs instead of shipping. The default failure mode is building the perfect system before doing the actual work. I know this about myself and call it out.
Build for how your brain actually works.
Systems that work for neurotypical brains don't work for mine. ADHD isn't a disorder when you're harnessing it. It's an absolute fucking superpower when pointed at something you care about.
Ship, don't study.
Prove it, don't certificate it. I have two degrees — neither got me my data job. TeachPlan is proof I can build. The dashboards at Hunter Water are proof I can deliver.
Unsexy efficiency.
The boring systems that actually work beat the flashy hacks that don't. A process that saves ten minutes every day forever beats a viral productivity hack that lasts a week.
Life is finite.
Use your brain and your body every single day. Not in a morbid way. In a "why are you wasting your evenings gaming and scrolling when you know you could be doing more" way.
The non-traditional brain
Self-diagnosed ADHD. My partner, all the teachers I used to work with, my mates — they all laugh. "We've all known for a long time, so that's pretty funny."
My dad has it. My brother has it. Undiagnosed, all of us. I learned about ADHD at university and thought: I have all the symptoms.
It shows up everywhere. University didn't work — traditional education failed me, but self-directed learning didn't. I couldn't dedicate myself to lectures, but I could lock myself in my study for eight hours building TeachPlan and not notice the time pass.
The scatterbrain reality is like a condensed city map. Brain firing on so many different things, trying to connect dots everywhere, seeing all these different paths. But in reality, you have to focus on one. So I built systems: Notion captures twenty times a day. Phone blocks from nine to five with an app I can't override. No music — it takes away my focus.
ADHD is an absolute fucking superpower when you're harnessing it. When you're using it on things you're interested in.
Now
Newcastle, NSW. Moved from Sydney with my fiancée Nikki and our dog Daisy — a slightly deaf Wheaten Border Collie who sits in her own chair in my study while I work.
Up at 4:30. Two hours in the pool before work. Data analyst at Hunter Water by day. Building TeachPlan, automations, and content at night and on weekends. Same brain that gamed seven hours a day — just pointed at things that compound.
Getting married in September. The proposal was the last time I cried. She is the light in my life.
I've learned more in the last three or four years than I have in the rest of my life. And I want people to know: your life can change. You can grow. You're not stuck in anything you do.
I also work with businesses — building automations, AI integrations, and systems that take work off people's plates. If that's what you need, get in touch.