"See the pattern. Build the system."
Ian built everything underneath this platform. You won't see his name on it. You won't hear his voice. But every intelligent connection it makes, that's him.
Royal Marines, 1989–1998
Ian was twenty, going nowhere in particular, when he joined the Royal Marines. It wasn't a calling. He needed something harder than what he had, harder than what he was. The Marines was the hardest thing he could find.
He served for nine years. If you'd asked him at the time what the Marines gave him, he'd have talked about discipline, or fitness, or just getting through. He wouldn't have said what he'd say now.
What actually happened, and he only understood this recently, is that something changed in how he sees. Not what he looks at, but how he processes it. The patience to wait. The habit of watching before acting. The instinct for the detail that doesn't fit, the pattern that everyone else walks past.
The sniper training was where it started. Not because of what people imagine when they hear that word, but because of what it actually requires. Stillness, precision, and the ability to hold a complete picture in your mind while everything else moves around you. It wasn't taught as a philosophy. It was just the work. But it rewired something.
He left in 1998. Didn't think much about what he was taking with him. Got on with the next thing, and the thing after that. It was only decades later, building technology, studying nutrition, looking at how people actually behave, that he realised he'd been doing the same thing the whole time. Observing. Seeing what was being missed.
The Marines didn't give him a career. They gave him a way of seeing. He just didn't know it yet.
Results or Nothing
After the Marines, Ian became a personal trainer. Walked into a local fitness centre with his own equipment and offered to fill the classes. Results or nothing. They filled.
Triathlon followed. By 2005 he was doing Ironmans. Completed twelve. His partner Lisa completed fifteen and twice qualified for the World Championship at Kona. Ian was there both times, her number two.
One of his PT clients was Dr Lawrence Plaskett.
Plaskett International College
In 2006, Dr Plaskett, still Ian's PT client, asked him for help with his college. Overseas licensees, internet presence, the operational side. Ian took it on. Then bought the whole thing.
Twenty years now. Not wellness trends. Not fad diets. Clinical nutritional therapy, therapeutic ranges, human biochemistry at a depth most courses only touch on. Dr Plaskett built his curriculum on the science that was actually there, not the version that sells. Ian kept it that way. Same precision. Different target.
From a Timer to an Engine
It started with a timer. Lisa was running online classes and needed something to keep them on track. Ian built one. Nothing fancy. But it was the first thing he'd ever coded.
Around the same time, his students at Plaskett started submitting coursework that read differently. Turns out they were using ChatGPT. Most people saw a problem. Ian saw the potential to create a new approach to learning nutrition.
He built a food tracker. Then scrapped it and built another one. Then another. Each version got closer to the thing he could see but couldn't yet make. The data was never the problem. Apps like Cronometer already tracked to therapeutic ranges. He used to recommend it to his own students. The problem was that people stopped using them. The friction between logging food and understanding what it meant. The tracking never ran long enough to produce the picture.
That was the dead ground. Everyone was building better logging tools. Nobody was looking at why people quit.
The Alchemy of You app closed that gap. The operating system behind it has been running since 1991. He just gave it a faster body. Tracking seamless enough for the intelligence to actually accumulate. Education delivered through the act of doing it, not before it.
Ian doesn't appear on the homepage. But he's starting to show up. On coaching calls, as the nutrition voice, explaining how the app actually works. The architecture is becoming visible.
Each project stands on its own. The thread that connects them is the same one that's been running since 1991. See the system, build the system.
Training the next generation of nutritional therapists. Built on Dr Plaskett's clinical research.
Explore the coursesThe nutritional analysis engine. Making tracking seamless enough for the intelligence to actually accumulate.
Learn moreThe deeper patterns that influence timing, behaviour, and potential. Measured to the arcminute.
ExploreThe intelligence is invisible. The experience is not.