Personal finance and investing have long been personal passions for John. He has been an active part of the Canadian personal finance community for over 7 years, blogging at Blessed by the Potato, creating spreadsheets and how-to guides amongst other commentary and analyses. In 2011 he started Robertson Investment Services to help investors move away from relying on commissioned sales staff to planning and investing on their own. Those experiences helped identify the need for the material that would become The Value of Simple, and provided a venue to test and refine the explanations and tools that form the book.

He has a PhD in Medical Biophysics from the University of Western Ontario, and spends his days as a science writer & editor for the Techna Institute in Toronto. He specializes in explaining complex topics – scientific or financial – for the lay reader, and has won multiple scientific presentation awards and the Macklin Teaching Fellowship from the University of Western Ontario.