How I work
The bit most agencies would rather you didn't ask about
Everyone is impressive before you sign. What matters is what happens in month three, when the invoices are going out and you're trying to work out what you're actually getting. So here it is, in advance.
Who you deal with
You deal with me. Every time.
There's no account manager, and no junior doing the work while someone senior attends the meetings. You get my mobile number, and I answer it.
Some jobs need a specialist — a photographer, a marketplace expert, a developer for something unusual. When that happens I bring in people I've worked with before, tell you who they are and what they're doing, and remain both the person you speak to and the person accountable if it goes wrong. What doesn't happen is you being sold by me and then quietly handed to someone cheaper once the contract is signed.
What you can expect from me
- A reply to any email within one working day
- A call whenever you want one, not just when it's scheduled
- A written update at the end of every month
- A heads-up before anything changes on your site
- A straight answer when something hasn't worked
- The name of anyone else who touches the work
The monthly note
What you get every month, and what you won't
The most common complaint about this industry — at both ends of it — is a monthly report full of charts that answers nothing. If you can't tell from it what somebody did with your money, it isn't a report. It's a receipt with decoration.
Here's the format instead. Three questions, plain English, written by me. Short on purpose. Below are two real-shaped examples: one from a small business engagement, one from a compliance programme. Same three questions either side.
Example — small business, not a real client
March update
What I did
Rewrote the four main service pages so each one names the town and the job, because you were only showing up for your company name. Fixed the contact form, which had been sending to an old inbox since before I started — that's the likely reason for the quiet February. Compressed the gallery images; the homepage now loads in about a second and a half on 4G instead of six.
What it changed
Eleven enquiries through the form, against three last month. Two of those came from the bathroom page, which didn't rank at all in January. Too early to call it a trend — ask me again in May.
What's next
Getting you onto three trade directories for the backlinks. I need twenty minutes of your time to get the details right. I'll send a calendar link.
Example — compliance programme, not a real client
March update
What I did
Completed requirements capture for workstreams 4 and 5, each requirement traced to a CAF outcome. Reviewed the managed service contract against the Enhanced Profile obligations and found three gaps — most significantly, no contractual obligation on the supplier to notify you of a security incident inside any defined window. Took that to commercial and legal on the 14th.
What it changed
The contract gap is now on the risk register with an owner and a date, which it wasn't before. Two of the five workstreams moved to "evidence complete" at the stage gate. Workstream 3 slipped — the asset inventory is less complete than the last submission implied, and I'd rather tell you that now than in the audit.
What's next
Scoping the asset discovery work properly rather than patching the existing inventory. I need an hour with the OT engineering lead and access to the historian.
Why it looks like this
You should be able to read it in two minutes, understand every sentence, and know whether you're getting your money's worth. If a month was quiet, it says so. If something slipped, it says that too — you're paying either way, and hiding it just means you pay for the same problem twice. Note that both examples above contain a piece of bad news. That is deliberate; a report that never does is not a report.
What you won't get
- A PDF of graphs generated by a tool I didn't read
- "Impressions" and "reach" quoted as though they were money
- A RAG status that has been amber for eighteen months
- Jargon that makes the work sound harder than it is
- Silence, followed by an invoice
Ownership
Everything is in your name, from day one
A lot of people discover, at exactly the wrong moment, that they don't own their own website. The domain is registered to the agency, the hosting is on the agency's account, and leaving means starting again. The enterprise version of the same trick is a consultancy that keeps its methodology proprietary, so the artefacts you paid for can't be maintained by anyone but them. Both are a quiet form of hostage-taking.
Your domain and accounts
Registered to you, with the logins in your hands. Hosting, analytics, Google Business Profile and ad accounts all set up in your name with me added as a user. Remove me and everything keeps running.
Your site or your shop
Built on a platform you can take elsewhere. No proprietary system only I can maintain, and no licence that stops working the day you stop paying me.
Your documentation
Requirements, process maps, traceability matrices, evidence packs and business cases — in your own systems, in standard formats, written to be picked up by whoever comes next. No bespoke templates that only make sense to me.
The test
If I disappeared tomorrow, could somebody else pick this up? On a compliance programme that question has a regulator attached to it, so the answer has to be yes. On a small business website it's just decency. Either way it's the standard everything gets written to.
Terms
How you leave, whenever you want to
Project work — a website, a shop, a fixed-scope assessment — is quoted at a fixed price and paid in two parts: half to start, half on delivery. If we agree a change mid-way, we agree the cost of it first.
Ongoing small business work runs month to month after the first three months. I ask for three because search work genuinely can't show anything meaningful in less — that's not a sales tactic, and anyone promising results in six weeks is selling you something. Embedded compliance work runs at a day rate against an agreed number of days per month, reviewed at the end of each phase. Either way: thirty days' notice and no exit fee.
When you go, I hand over everything and help your next person pick it up. I'd rather you left well and told someone.
What I need from you
You can delegate this. You can't hand it over completely — and anyone who tells you otherwise is planning to do very little.
- About an hour a month, usually one call
- Straight answers about what's actually profitable for you
- Photos of real jobs when you have them — they beat anything I can buy
- A quick review when I send something for approval
- A heads-up when the business changes direction
Ask me anything on this page
If something here sounds too good, push back on it — on a free call, at no cost, with nothing to sign. That's a much better test of whether I'm any good than a page I wrote about myself.
