Engage
Neither do most people who land here, and that is fine. Here is how we find out, and how the work runs once we do.
The first step
I cannot tell you what you need from a homepage and a hunch. Maybe your words are the problem. Maybe the words are fine and the site is burying them. Maybe you are three months from a rebrand and none of this is the right moment.
So the first step is always the same. We talk for twenty-five minutes, I read your site beforehand so none of it is spent catching me up, and we go looking for the easy wins together.
You leave that call with something you can use whether or not we ever work together. If there is a fit, I will tell you. If there is not, I will tell you that too, and it costs you nothing either way.
Your website address, and one line about what is bothering you. That is genuinely all I need to come prepared.
If you have numbers, bring them. How many people land on the site, how many get in touch, and how many of those become customers. Most owners have never worked out that percentage, and it is usually the most interesting thing we look at.
Book the callHow the work runs
Everything I take on runs in six week cycles. Long enough to do work that actually matters, short enough that you are never trapped in something that is not going anywhere.
One outcome, written down before anything starts. Not a wishlist. If we cannot name it in a sentence, we are not ready to start.
Short check-ins, not status theatre. You see the work while it is still changeable, which is the only time your opinion is worth anything.
At the end of six weeks something is live. Then we look at it honestly and choose whether to run another cycle. Plenty of people keep going, and plenty run one and stop. Both are a good outcome.
How I work
Almost every messaging process starts by asking the people who already bought. I think that is the wrong room. They are the ones the old narrative happened to work on, so all you learn is why the thing you already say worked on the people it already worked on. That is not research, it is a mirror.
The interesting customer is the one you do not have yet. The bigger contract, the better fit, the account you keep losing to somebody else. So the work starts by defining that person properly, then testing whether your words would survive first contact with them.
It is also why this does not take as long as it used to. AI shortens the research. It does not do the thinking, and the thinking is where this is won or lost. Anyone can put the question to a model. Knowing which question to ask, which answer is worth anything, and which one is the model agreeing with you because you led it there, is the part that still needs a guide. That is the part I do with you.
Your existing customers still matter. They just come up as evidence of what has been working, not as the brief for what comes next.
What comes out is a framework, not a campaign. Every page, ad and email after it gets measured against the same sentence, so the next decision is quicker than the last one.
CFO Simplified has been running theirs for three years. Brunner Accounting for six. There are more of them on the work page.
What a cycle might be
Which one depends entirely on that first conversation, so treat these as the shape rather than the menu.
Your Words Expert
Research, competitor analysis, and a working definition of the customer you want rather than the one you already have. Then the sentence everything else hangs off. You keep it and can take it to whoever built your site.
Your Senior Webmaster
Hand me the site and stop thinking about it. Written, designed, built and maintained, and it works on a phone as well as it does on a desktop.
Before you ask
It depends on what the six weeks are for, and you will know the number before anything starts. The brainstorm call is free and carries no obligation.
No. The words are yours and plenty of people take them to whoever built their site. It is only a website project if you want it to be.
Good. This is a short specialist stretch of the work, not a replacement for anyone. Once the message is settled your team picks it back up and everything they were already doing starts working harder.
Something is live, and we decide together whether to run another cycle. Plenty of people run one and stop, which is a perfectly good outcome.
No. Chicago clients get dinner to kick things off and you do not, but the work runs the same anywhere.
Set up a call and let’s go look for the language on your site that could be working harder. Small changes you can make this week. You will leave with something useful whether or not we go further.