Who I do great work for, and who I turn down
I take on three new clients a month. That is not a scarcity tactic, it is how many I can onboard properly while still doing the work for everyone already on the books - I do all of it myself, so the number is what it is.
Because of that, saying no is most of the job. This page is the filter I actually apply, written down so you can check yourself against it before either of us spends any time.
A local service business where a customer is worth real money
Clinics, trades, professional practices. If one new customer is worth hundreds or thousands over their life with you, the arithmetic works and a handful of extra enquiries a month pays for everything. If a customer is worth twenty dollars, it does not, and no amount of good work changes that.
Somewhere between about $200k and $5M a year
Below that the fee is too large a share of revenue to be sensible. Above it you generally want a team rather than one person, and I will tell you so.
Australia or New Zealand
I know these markets, I know what the local packs look like here, and I have measured them. I would be guessing anywhere else and you would be paying for the guess.
Single site or several - it genuinely does not matter
A one-room clinic is as good a fit as a six-branch group. What matters is whether the work suits what I am good at, not the shape of the business. Multi-location gets talked about most because the data is most interesting there, not because single sites are second best.
You want to understand it, not just receive it
The clients I do my best work for read the reports and push back on them. If you want a supplier who sends a PDF you never open, I am more expensive than you need.
You can wait two quarters
This compounds rather than switches on. If the business needs leads next week, spend the money on ads instead and I will say so on the first call rather than the fourth month.
You need results this month
Nothing I do works that fast. Anyone telling you otherwise is either buying links or counting something that is not customers. This is the most common reason I say no, and it is not a judgement about the business - it is a mismatch of timeframes.
A brand new site with no trading history
There is real work to do here, but it is cheaper and better done by getting the basics right yourself for six months first. I would rather tell you that than take the retainer.
You want someone to blame rather than someone to work with
If the last three providers were all useless, the fourth probably will be too. Occasionally that is genuinely bad luck. More often something in how the relationship is set up is doing it, and I am not going to be the one who fixes that.
The site cannot be changed
If nobody can edit the pages, or every change needs three months and an agency ticket, the work cannot happen. I will ask about this early because it is the single most common reason a good plan produces nothing.
You want a lock-in contract to feel safe
Everything I do is month to month, on purpose, because a contract that stops you leaving also stops me having to earn it. If a twelve-month commitment is what makes you comfortable, we want different things.
Anything in a field I would have to learn from scratch
I have a real book in clinics, trades, psychology, real estate and local retail. If your industry is nothing like any of those, someone who already knows it will beat me, and I would rather point you at them.
None of those are insults. Most of them are timing or arithmetic, and several describe businesses I would happily work with in a year. Being told no now is a lot cheaper than being told yes and finding out in month four.
If you think you are a fit, here is exactly what happens
No call to book and nothing to sit through. The whole thing is written, in this order, and you can stop at any step.
You send your website
A form with your site and an email address. No call to book, no calendar to negotiate, and nothing is sold at this point.
Your part: Two minutes.
I run the analysis and send it back
A written report on your actual site - what you rank for now, where the money terms are going instead, and which of the two problems you have. You get this whether or not we work together, and plenty of people read it and fix things themselves.
Your part: Read it. Argue with it if you think it is wrong.
A questionnaire, if it looks like a fit
What you sell, what a customer is worth, which services you actually want more of. This is the part that decides whether the work is worth doing, and it is where I turn people down.
Your part: Fifteen minutes, and honest answers rather than tidy ones.
A price, with the reasoning
A recommended tier and why that one. The prices are published, so this is not a negotiation - it is me telling you which of the published options fits and what I would do first.
Your part: Decide.
The prices are published, so you can rule me out on cost without talking to me. I would rather that than a discovery call that exists to avoid the question.