How I
got here.
Not a highlight reel — the actual route, including the parts that didn't go to plan. If you're deciding whether to trust me with eight weeks of your life, this page is the cross-section.
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4:5 · portrait
You can't count growth from the outside.
You have to open it up.
A tree's rings only show in cross-section — so here's mine
Born fighting
I arrived seven weeks early with underdeveloped lungs, and spent my first 19 days in the NICU at SickKids Hospital in Toronto. Born ten years earlier, a kid with my diagnosis usually didn't make it home. I did — because of that hospital. Keep that detail; it comes back at the end of this page.
St. Andrew's College, Aurora ON
Seven years at a school where showing up was the whole culture. Structure was handed to me daily — I just didn't know yet that one day I'd have to build my own.
Queen's University
Economics and varsity lacrosse. The script said: degree, career, done. The script stopped working.
The years I don't sugarcoat
This is the chapter I'm still writing in public. The short version: life came apart, and I learned the exact weight of telling people "this time is different." I know what it's like to restart the same goal until the word "restart" makes you sick — and I know precisely what it finally took to stop. That mechanism is now the product.
Follow-through, invoiced weekly
Investor relations. Account executive at CleanRiver Recycling Solutions. Co-owner of a landscaping company — where the job either got done or the client was standing on their lawn asking why not. Nothing teaches accountability like work that's visible from the street.
West, to Vancouver
A fresh city for the rebuild — and, not by accident, a city with a mountain in it.
Everyday in May — 31 Grouse Grinds in 31 days
Remember 1998? This was the repayment plan. Every single day of May I climbed the Grouse Grind — 2,830 stairs, 853 metres of vertical, no days off — raising money for SickKids and BC Children's Hospital. I'd done the Grind for the first time exactly two days before starting.
There was a day of snow and sleet near the top. There was a morning a black bear crossed the trail a few feet from my group. There were 31 summits, documented daily, in public. CBC, CityNews Vancouver, and the North Shore News all covered it.
That month is the entire Buck Up thesis in miniature: a public commitment, a daily rep, and proof at the end.
Buck Up Coaching
Everything above, turned into a mechanic other people can use. I don't sell accountability I haven't practiced — you can watch me practice it on Instagram any day of the week.
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3:2 · Grouse Grind
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3:2 · your pick
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3:2 · your pick
Your past doesn't define you.
The future is
You write that part. The eight weeks are how.
Want the receipts version?
The proof behind everything on this page — the climb, the fundraiser, the coverage — lives on its own page.
Replies come from me, not an assistant