// Process
A small site full of pricing pages and case studies hides the most important question: what does it actually feel like to work with this person? Below is the unglossy answer.
// 01 — The arc
Six phases over the typical retainer. Audit-only engagements stop at phase 02; project work runs through 04.
A 30-minute call where I ask uncomfortable questions, you ask whatever you want, and one of us decides this is or isn't a fit. No deck, no slides, no follow-up sales nurture sequence — if it's a "no," it ends in this call.
I get read-only access to GA4, GSC, Ahrefs, your CMS admin, and the Notion/Drive folder where strategy lives. I read everything for two days. Then we have a working session where I show you what I found — including the things you already knew and the two or three things you didn't.
The output of the diagnostic, made operational. Three lanes — Kill (things to stop doing), Ship (things to start), Watch(things to revisit in 90 days). Every item has a 1–10 ICE score, an owner, and a "by-when." We talk through the kill list together because that's where the political energy lives.
Standing 60-minute weekly call (Tuesdays, usually). I'm in your Slack. I sit on your editorial standups when relevant. Roadmap items move from todo → doing → shipped. Most weeks I ship two to three items myself; the rest I help your team unblock.
Every quarter we sit back and look at what shipped, what didn't, and what changed. Watch list items get a real verdict (kill or ship). I write the next 90 days. Engagements that no longer make sense end here, gracefully — no contract trickery to keep you on retainer.
Every retainer ends. I keep a running "succession doc" from day one — when you hire your in-house Head of SEO, they read it and start running. I help interview them. I sit in their first month of standups. I leave when they don't need me.
// 02 — Operating principles
Six things I won't compromise on, even when asked nicely.
Most growth problems are subtraction problems. The first roadmap I deliver always has a longer kill list than ship list, and that surprises people for about three weeks.
I write the strategy in a doc. The deck happens only once the strategy survives a working session unchanged. Pretty slides covering bad strategy is a tell.
I show up to wins. I rehearse your director before the board readout. I send the Slack thank-you to whoever did the work. Consultancy is a service business; service first.
If you no longer need me, I'll say so before you do. I'd rather end an engagement clean and have you tell three people than stretch it and have you tell zero.
Every decision, every model, every spreadsheet. When I'm gone, your team has a running playbook. They never have to ask "wait, why did we decide that?"
You always work with me directly. There's no junior account manager because there isn't one to hire. The trade-off is I take fewer clients than I could; the upside is your work is mine.
// 03 — Standard deliverables
Every retainer ends with these in your hands. Yours forever.
1-pager · PDF
Notion / Linear
Looker · GA4 · GSC
Notion · 30+ pages
JSON · documented
A discovery call costs nothing and ends in a clean yes/no. Worst case: you get an outside opinion for free.