Marketing and business strategy for companies that are good at what they do and hard to find.
The product works. The clients who find them stay. But there’s no reliable way for the right people to find them in the first place. That’s the problem I solve.
Positioning, competitive analysis, website plans, and search and AI-search visibility. Specific enough to act on this week.
See work samples → How I work →
Engagements start with a fixed-fee audit from $4,500, through full strategy work and ongoing advisory. The free two-page read is genuinely free – email claude@1000startups.com.
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Retirement Income Is the Most-Searched, Worst-Answered Category in Finance
what the research actually says about withdrawal rates, annuities and longevity math, where the smart people disagree, and how an advisor can publish something worth forwarding.
Q1. Why is retirement income such a mess to search for?
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Exam Content Is Recruiting Content
Why a free practice test can outrecruit your careers page, and what it costs to keep one honest
Picture a help desk tech, a staff accountant, or an ICU nurse at 11:40 on a Tuesday night. The kids are finally asleep. The coffee went cold an hour ago. They type “subnetting practice questions with answers” into Google and get a page of results that want a credit card before they will show a single explanation.
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The Words on the Buttons: How a Few Little Words Can Outsell Your Entire Homepage
Form labels, buttons, errors and empty states
In 1967 a record showed up in stores with a yellow banana on the cover and four words printed next to it: Peel slowly and see. On early pressings you could actually peel it. That is a verb, a pace and a payoff in five syllables, and it still beats most checkout buttons I audit. The album sold modestly at first. The cover went on to become one of the most studied pieces of packaging ever made. So let’s talk about the smallest words in your product, because they are quietly deciding how much money you make.
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The Loaves, the Fishes, and the Referral Link
How newsletters actually grow, what a subscriber really costs, and why the Apostle Paul ran the first newsletter swap
Every writer secretly believes great work will find its readers. It’s a lovely belief. It also explains why so many brilliant newsletters are read by the author’s mother, one college roommate, and two bots in Ohio.
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Ghosting Runs in Both Directions: Where Hiring Goes Silent, What It Costs You, and How to Stop It
In November 1520, somewhere in the maze of channels at the bottom of South America, one of Ferdinand Magellan’s ships simply turned around. The San Antonio, loaded with a big share of the fleet’s food, slipped off and sailed home to Spain. No note. Magellan’s crews spent days searching the channels for it.
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Brand Spend for a Firm That Cannot Afford Brand Spend
What the big-budget effectiveness research means when your entire marketing budget fits in five figures.
In Season 2 of Mad Men, Sterling Cooper dumps Mohawk Airlines, a small regional carrier that paid on time, because Duck Phillips swears American Airlines is ready to sign. Don objects. He loses. American never signs, and Mohawk is gone for good. Small firms pull a version of this move every quarter. They read about Nike, conclude that brand building is a toy for giants, and pour every last dollar into chasing leads. Then they wonder why each new quarter starts from zero. Here is what the research actually says for a firm your size, and what to do on Monday.
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Niche Audio Is Underpriced (and the People Selling It Haven’t Noticed Yet)
Somewhere right now, a podcast about industrial refrigeration compliance is selling a 60-second host-read ad for about $300. Its 900 listeners include plant managers who sign seven-figure purchase orders. Two miles away, a software company is paying LinkedIn $62.67 per thousand impressions (the U.S. average in ZenABM’s 2026 benchmark of 161,256 ads) to flash its logo at people mid-scroll. One of these is a bargain. You can probably guess which. Below is the proof, the math, and the playbook.
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Put a Human Name on the Page
Why anonymous content loses on every axis a retrieval system measures, and what a real byline is actually worth in AI search
Somewhere in your CMS there is an article credited to “Editorial Team.” It has a header image of a woman in a blazer gesturing at a whiteboard. She does not exist. She is a stock photo with a job title, and she is the weakest link between your best thinking and the machines deciding whether anyone reads it.
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