How we work
The problem with most digital advice
Most businesses aren't short on digital advice, they're short on an accurate diagnosis. Ask around and everyone has an answer:
- one person recommends a rebrand
- another is certain it's an SEO problem
- a developer quotes you for a brand new site
Each of them is looking at the same situation through the lens of whatever it is they sell.
We come in before any of that, and look at what's actually happening (in your data, in your team, in how customers find you and use you), then tell you what the real problem is. Sometimes it's the one you suspected, often it isn't.
Only then do we talk about what to do about it.
The diagnostic
How an engagement starts
Every engagement begins with a Digital Diagnostic: a paid, structured piece of work that covers three things.
The audit
Before we speak, I look at everything I can see: your traffic, your sources, where people land and where they leave, how your content is structured, how visible you are in search.
The findings vary, but they tend to fall into patterns:
- If your traffic is thin, that's usually the thing that matters most (it means the problem isn't your website, it's that not enough people are finding you, which is a different problem with a different solution and changes everything downstream).
- If the traffic is healthy but few people convert, the issue sits further down, in what happens once they arrive.
- If one channel brings most of your visitors but almost none of your customers, you're pouring effort into a source that was never going to pay off.
The conversation
A structured conversation (or a set of them) with the people who understand how the business actually works. That might be one leader, several members of the leadership team, or the leadership team alongside the people doing the work on the ground.
The questions depend on who's in the room:
- How are you winning clients right now?
- What's converting, and what isn't?
- Where do you think the gap is?
- Which content has actually landed?
- Is there a bottleneck between product and engineering?
I come to these conversations with a hypothesis already formed from the audit, and we test and refine it together.
The report
A succinct document (not a deck, not a framework) that tells you what the data shows, what I heard, and exactly where to focus. It's clear enough that you could act on it without us, and specific enough that if you'd rather we act on it with you, we both know precisely what we're doing and why.
The diagnostic fee is credited against any subsequent engagement.
After the diagnostic
What comes after
The report will point somewhere, and where it points decides what happens next.
That might be a content and SEO overhaul, an information architecture redesign (restructuring how your site is organised so the right people find the right things), a website rebuild, a new channel strategy, or changes to how you show up in the communities where your buyers already spend time. Sometimes it's several of these in sequence.
I scope each engagement around what we find rather than what we sell. If the fix is simple, I'll say so and it won't cost much, and if it's complex, we'll agree a phased approach with clear milestones.
I deliver the strategic work myself, and where a project needs specialist execution (development, design, security review) I bring in the right people, scoped to the problem. You work with me throughout, and everyone I bring in is vetted and accountable to the same standard.
Internal workflow
When the problem is inside the business
The same diagnostic instinct works turned inward, not just outward. More and more, what we're asked to look at is how a team is actually using the AI tools it's already adopted.
Most teams have ChatGPT, Copilot, or something similar in some form, but very few use them in ways that genuinely change what they produce or how long it takes. The gap between what a team is doing and what's possible (in how they prompt, in how the work is structured, in which tasks AI should and shouldn't own) is usually wide.
We diagnose that gap the way we'd diagnose anything else: look at how the tools are really being used, find where time and quality are leaking, and hand you a prioritised plan for closing it. If you want help putting it in place, that's available, and anything we recommend is checked first by a specialist with a cybersecurity background, so improving how you work doesn't quietly create new risk.
Like the rest of our work, this can stand on its own or come out of a broader diagnostic.
Who this is for
Founder-stage and scaling businesses who are doing well enough that digital is clearly important, but haven't had the time or the right person to think about it properly.
We're looking for businesses who've had mixed results from agencies, and who want someone to tell them what they actually need rather than sell them what they happen to have.
If you're not sure whether we're the right fit, the diagnostic is the right place to start. The worst outcome is a clear picture of your situation and a report you can take anywhere.