How I Work As Your Strategic Growth Partner

Free · Virtual or in-person · No obligation

This isn’t a sales call dressed up as a consultation. I genuinely don’t know yet whether I can help you. And you don’t know yet whether I’m the right fit for what you’re carrying.

This call has one job: work out if there’s a genuine match. Not just whether I can help — but whether you’re ready to be helped in the way I work.

So here’s what we actually do in that hour. You tell me where things are right now — what’s being tried, what’s failing, and why you think it’s failing. We talk about what good looks like for you at 3, 6, and 12 months. I’ll surface a couple of quick wins or frameworks on the spot — to show you how I think. You’ll leave with something useful regardless of what happens next.

I’m evaluating whether you’re coachable, whether you’re open to a genuinely customer-focused approach, and whether I believe I can make a real difference. You’re evaluating whether I’m someone you can trust with your business.

Both things matter equally. If there’s a real match — if I can see a genuine opportunity and you feel the relief that comes from talking to someone who actually gets it — we talk about going further. And if there isn’t, I’ll be honest with you.

Free · Virtual or in-person · Offered only when I believe I can genuinely help

Not everyone gets a second free session. That’s not gatekeeping. It’s honesty.

If, after the first call, I believe you’re ready, and I can deliver real impact, I’ll offer a second session. This isn’t standard practice. It’s earned.

We go deeper here. Business capabilities, capacity constraints, tools, systems, blockers, and team dynamics. I’m building a picture of what’s actually possible. The more honest you are in this conversation, the more useful the work that follows.

If there’s a team in the room — even a team of one — this is where we map that properly. Not just who’s there and what their job title says. What they’re actually carrying. Whether they’ve been asked to do more than they have the framework for. Whether authority was consciously delegated or whether it just kind of happened over time. Whether there are any agency or freelancer relationships running in parallel that nobody’s fully in control of.

I’ll also be honest if I see something that needs a difficult conversation. If a team member isn’t coachable, if a platform has become a tangle of overlapping tools, if an agency relationship has quietly become a liability — I’ll say so. Not to alarm you. Because the statement of work I put together needs to reflect reality, not a tidy version of it.

This conversation is where I decide how to shape the engagement. And it’s where you start to get a sense of what it actually feels like to have someone ask the right questions about the machine you’re running.

Scoped · Honest · Not a detailed promise

I only scope work when I’m the only growth partner you’re having a conversation with. If that’s where we are, I’ll put together a Statement of Work for you.

It won’t be a detailed delivery plan. I won’t know all of that until I’ve had proper access to your business and the strategy work is done. Anyone who promises a detailed roadmap before they’ve done the diagnostic is guessing. I don’t guess.

It’s an honest outline. What the engagement looks like — the shape of the strategy phase, how many hours I expect it to take, what we’ll focus on first, and how the time-and-materials model works for your specific situation. If there’s a team to factor in, or agencies already running, the SoW reflects that. It’s written so you can read it once and know exactly what you’re agreeing to — and what you’re not.

Standard · Clear · Equal on both sides

Once we’re aligned, I send a standard Strategic Growth Partnership Agreement. Written in plain language — because ambiguity in contracts creates the same problems as ambiguity in marketing.

I act as your Strategic Growth Partner — not a vendor, not a hired hand. Either of us can walk away at any time, for any reason. No notice period required. No hard feelings baked in. I explain the pricing model in full below.

You own the IP for everything I specifically develop, design, and build for you. We’re both covered by standard NDA and privacy terms. There’s no lock-in. The only thing keeping us together is whether the work is worth it.

I carry full professional indemnity, public liability, and cyber insurance. Evidence of cover is available on request.

Mandatory · The most important work we do · Everything else follows from this

This is where I earn my place.

Strategy days are non-negotiable — they are the engine of the entire engagement. I will not skip them, shorten them without good reason, or move to implementation before the strategy is nailed. Any agency that does is playing the guessing game. And guessing is how budgets disappear without accountability.

I interview you and any team members. I go deep into your business — why you exist, what you actually sell, how you operate. Then I work backwards through your customers’ world. What are they anxious about before they buy? Who else is involved in their decision? How do they find you? What alternatives are they using or considering to solve their pain? Where are those alternatives failing them? I pull every review, testimonial, sales transcript, and customer service thread I can get my hands on.

I run Jobs-to-Be-Done analysis — your customers don’t buy your product or service, they hire it to make progress on something. I map the Four Forces driving that: what’s pushing them to seek change, what’s pulling them towards you, what anxieties are holding them back, and what habits are keeping them where they are. Then I surface your differentiating wedge — the thing only you can own.

Jobs-to-be-done customer interviews: If you can set aside an extra budget for me to speak to your customers directly, I strongly recommend it. Nothing tells me more about why customers buy from you than hearing them describe the discovery journey that led them to you. Budget roughly two hours per customer interview for coordination, the session, and post-processing. The businesses that invest in this step come out with a compelling strategy and positioning that their competitors genuinely cannot replicate. Because it’s built on evidence, not opinion.

Every conversation (with stakeholders and customers) is recorded, transcribed, and analysed. I look for the patterns that aren’t obvious, the gaps worth connecting, and come back to you with a draft strategy.

We regroup, review, and get aligned before anything moves forward. Your sign-off matters. You’re confirming that the strategy I’ve built reflects reality as we both know it — not trusting me (or you) to guess.

The recordings, transcripts, and strategy documents belong to you. They’re not a consultant’s working files — they’re your business assets. For everyone inside your company and anyone outside it who needs to understand what you stand for and work from it.

The hours/days we need for this stage are agreed in the Statement of Work — some businesses are more complex than others. I’ll tell you what I think is necessary and why. Expect a minimum of ten hours, often more.

Before we start, I’ll send you a list of everything I need: reviews, testimonials, sales transcripts, customer feedback, previous campaigns, and internal data. The more you bring to it, the faster and sharper the work becomes.

Strategic · Prioritised · Signed off by you

Once the strategy is signed off, I build a prioritised backlog of growth experiments — the tactical plays that put the strategy to work.

Not a wish list. Not a generic marketing checklist. Hypotheses — built from what we actually learned about your customers, and the gaps we found.

I treat every tactic as a hypothesis. I might be right. I might be wrong. We’ll know by the evidence. Staying curious instead of precious about the plan — that’s the difference between growth work and expensive wishful thinking.

We evaluate and prioritise the backlog together. You understand the reasoning behind every priority. Nothing goes into the plan because it seemed like a good idea in a meeting. Together, we decide what gets greenlit.

Then we go.

Hands-on · Iterative · Transparent · Measured

Most consultants deliver the strategy and step away. That’s not how I work. With me, the same person who developed the strategy is the one putting it into practice — so nothing gets lost between thinking and doing.

Getting the foundations right

First, I need the keys. To avoid endless back-and-forth and burning time on coordination, I’ll need admin access to your systems — website CMS, analytics, ad accounts, CRM, wherever the work lives. This enables me to move quickly and consolidate everything into a single reporting view. I adopt GDPR-safe working practices throughout. No data is retained after the engagement ends. You’ll always know what I have access to and why.

All data systems get wired properly. I audit and set up everything that needs to be in place — Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Ads, Meta Pixel, event tracking, conversion tracking, revenue data, form submissions, CRM connections. Cookie consent systems too, if needed. Without clean data, you can’t measure anything. And if you can’t measure it, you can’t grow it. I’ve done this for decades. I do it fast.

Defining success

We define what success looks like before we start chasing it. Once tracking is clean, I set up a weekly key metrics sheet and a Looker Studio dashboard. We work through the AAARRR framework — awareness, acquisition, activation, retention, referral, revenue — and define your North Star metric and the three key drivers sitting beneath it. The first month or two, we establish benchmarks. Then we set targets.

Everything gets connected — top of funnel, middle, bottom — so I can see what’s actually driving results, not just what’s getting clicks.

The working rhythm

You’ll never wonder what I’m doing.

Weekly or fortnightly — depending on scope and need — I screen-record and narrate the metrics: what’s happened, what’s happening, what we’ve learned, and where we’re headed. Short clips, ten to fifteen minutes. Every video is transcribed and logged. After each report, I encourage a catch-up call to co-shape what’s next — adjust, scale, stop, start.

I use AI/LLM tools where they genuinely help — research, transcription, analysis, drafting. But I never feed your confidential data into anything that trains on it. Every AI-generated output is reviewed and edited by me, personally, before you see it. A list of core tools I use is available on request.

Once every quarter, we step back and take proper stock. A review of how things have been progressing and whether the partnership makes sense in its current form. For both of us. This is also the moment where either of us can say “this isn’t working” without it being a crisis.