Customer growth for service businesses

I help excellent businesses build excellent distribution.

How people find you, choose you, come back, and send their friends.

I have spent twenty two years unlocking value from data. The last eight were at Nedbank, in a centre of excellence for customer acquisition and lifecycle management.

The standard there is high and the people are exceptional. That is where I learned what excellent distribution looks like when it is built properly.

Now I do that same work for smaller businesses. It starts with a website, and the website is the smallest part. Read my story.

Talk it through, or see your own picture in five minutes.

My story, and why I am doing this

I trained as an engineer. Then I took a master’s in computer science, and later an MBA. Deep technical skill on one side, and how a business actually makes money on the other. Putting those two together is the whole of what I do.

At Nedbank that meant using data to decide who to talk to, and what to say to them. The work was rigorous and it was measured, and I am really proud of what we built there.

I would still be doing it. My wife’s career opened a door in Canada that was too good to leave on the table, so we took it as a family and moved to a small town in Nova Scotia.

What AI can do now is why one person can build, for a small business, the kind of distribution that used to need a bank behind it. The building blocks are cheap. Knowing which ones your business needs, and putting them together properly, is the work.

So you get a great deal more than a website.

Everything I sell runs on my own business first. The guides, the assessments, the follow-up. You are looking at it.

More about me

So what am I selling?

When I left corporate I went looking for leverage. Where is the value that nobody is unlocking?

I think I have found it. An excellent business is usually sitting on a great deal of value it never sees, because how good it is does not show up properly in the world.

That does not fix itself. Being excellent at something does not mean anyone will find out. The work is good, the customers who know are loyal, and everybody else has no idea you exist.

An average offer with excellent distribution beats an excellent offer with average distribution, every time.

Everyone knows this. The people who act on it are running very profitable businesses.

We are taught that the best work wins. So we pour our time into the work, and almost none into who hears about it.

Average offer Excellent distribution Excellent offer Average distribution
The crowd along the top is how many people each business reaches.

“If you have an excellent offer but you’re not thinking about your distribution, you are leaving significant value on the table.”

Who this is for

Excellent service businesses. Your customers love you. The rest of the market cannot tell how good you are.

You are excellent at the work. You do not have the time or the attention to be excellent at telling the world about it too.

That is a harder problem than it looks, and it is hardest for the best businesses.

Why it is hard, and the way out

It is not for you if

  • you sell products online
  • you only want ads run
  • you want a prettier website with nothing behind it

Here is my model of distribution, on one page

Every service business runs on the same parts. How people find you. Why they trust you. How they choose you and pay you. Why they come back and send their friends.

Together, those parts are your distribution. This is what it looks like when you can see all of it at once.

Get Found

A great site nobody sees is a billboard in a jungle.

Earn Trust

They found you. Now they are deciding whether to believe you.

Get Chosen

A visitor with a job to be done, and the small mechanical steps most practices leak at.

Keep & Grow

The profit is in the second sale, and in the money stage nobody systematises.

Hover over any block, or tap it on a phone, to see what it does.

A free assessment, five minutes

You don’t need every block. You need your few.

There are seventeen blocks in that picture. Almost nobody needs all of them.

The hard part is knowing which ones. So I built an assessment that shows you where to put your energy first.

What it costs

Everything starts with the baseplate, which is the site and the foundations under it. You pay once to build it, and monthly to keep it working.

You add only the blocks your business needs. Each one has its own price, and building several at once costs less than building them one at a time.

Every price is on the pricing page. There is nothing to ask for.

See every price

I wrote down everything I know about this

Nearly sixty plain-language guides covering every block in the picture. How a business gets found, trusted, chosen, paid and referred.

They are free and they ask nothing of you. Read them and do it yourself if you like.

I also share what I am thinking about

Essays as I write them, on the work and on running a business.

All writing

Questions people ask

Who do you work with?

Owner-run service businesses where one new client is worth real money. Think accountants, mortgage brokers, clinics and consultants. If a new customer is only worth a few dollars, the numbers rarely add up.

Is this just a website?

No. The website is the front door, and it is the smallest part of the job. What brings you work is everything around it. Being found, being trusted, being chosen, and being remembered.

What does it cost?

Every engagement starts with the baseplate. That is US$2,200 to build and US$220 a month. You add only the blocks your business needs. Every price is published on the pricing page.

How do I know it is working?

We agree one number that matters to you, like new bookings a month. We compare it with your last year, so we only count the real difference. You get a full report at three months.

Can you guarantee I will be booked out?

No, and nobody honestly can. Booked out is the aim. What I am accountable for is one number we agree on before I start. Where your records go back a year, my monthly fee stops if that number has not gone up the way we agreed by month six.

Can you get ChatGPT to recommend me?

I can make it much more likely. Nobody can guarantee it. Anyone who says otherwise is selling you something.

What happens first?

We talk. Tell me what you are working on and I will give you a straight read. If it looks like a fit, you run the full assessment, so we are both working from your real numbers. Then I build first, and you decide once you have seen it.

Tell me what you’re working on

Say what you are trying to fix and I will give you a straight read. If it is easier to talk, pick a time that suits you.

I read every message myself, and I reply within 24 hours.