Fifteen years, condensed.

Where this came from.

I learned the craft, watched it change, and saw a particular kind of business, the independent one with two staff and a ten-mile catchment, get left behind because nobody had built a service for them. They were too small for the agencies that knew the work, and too busy running a shop to learn the work themselves.

The bigger shift is more recent. People are not just typing "[thing] near me" into Google any more. They are asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, and they are getting recommendations that bypass search results entirely. SEO alone is no longer the whole game. Independent businesses need to be the answer when the question gets asked, wherever it gets asked.

I love this work.

How a working relationship starts.

Every engagement starts with the same free audit. I read your form properly, walk past your shop where I can, and put it together myself. It tells you three things you could fix yourself this week, and three things I would do for you if you wanted a hand.

If the audit surfaces work that will earn back, we talk. If it does not, I will tell you that too. I do not propose engagements without a clear outcome attached. A marketing retainer that does not pay back does nobody any favours. After the first month, the relationship runs on what the monthly report shows, in plain English, on the first.

A note on where I work from.

I live in Wanstead. I drink in the cafes I write about, queue at the bakeries, and walk past the same shops on my way to the post office. That helps because the things people who run a business often miss are the things their customers feel first, and you can only see those from the customer side of the counter. It is also why my first audits were posted through letterboxes on Saturday mornings. The work itself travels well to anywhere a high street still matters.

How the work gets done.

The studio is small by design. Most of the work is mine end to end: the audit, the website, the Google profile, the writing, the monthly report. When a job calls for hands I do not have, like proper photography of your kitchen at dinner service, I bring in people I have worked with for years and run the brief myself. You get one point of contact, one invoice, and one person who has read every email since the audit.

What I will not do.

• Mark up your ad spend. You pay Google or Meta direct.
• Take on more clients than I can stay close to personally.
• Lock you into a long contract. Thirty days notice from either side.

Matthew