Billie

Billie grew up in Birchfield — a remote northern bush town where winters were long and ambitions were large. His father drove logging trucks and played guitar. His mother managed the books for three local businesses and had an absolute refusal to accept excuses from anyone, including herself. He taught himself to play his father's guitar at age nine from watching his father's hands, and has carried that guitar through every move since.

He played junior hockey with an intensity scouts described as borderline frightening. He was drafted in the fifth round, spent five years in the GHL, played nine games across two pro league call-ups. The third call-up never came. The year after hockey ended was hard. He talks about it honestly with every coaching client, because he believes it is the most useful thing he can offer.

He enrolled in business school at twenty-six, started a construction supply company out of a storage unit, pivoted it into an online marketplace in 1996, and sold it near the peak in 2000. Six months later the sector collapsed. He kept enough. He spent fifteen years as an angel investor — seventeen companies funded, nine successful, three funded specifically because nobody else would.

Billie surfs four mornings a week in Capeside. He rides a 1974 Triumph he restored himself. He writes in a battered notebook that travels everywhere — not for publication, for himself, to think. He calls Angora back when he identifies the time zone. He almost always calls Monte by the end of Sunday.