Positioning & Messaging for Founders
Simplify your offerbefore creative.
I help founders get their positioning straight - before they spend on design.
So the right customers get it immediately, and buy.
Here’s the thing: if people don’t get it, they don’t buy it.
Takes 30 seconds. No sales pitch.
You’re losing customers who should have been yours.
Not because your business isn’t good enough - because people can’t buy what they don’t understand. Most of the founders who call me have already spent money on a new website, packaging, or brand guidelines. The problem is still there, because it was never a design problem.
Every month it stays unfixed, it’s costing you sales you should have already closed.
“In four words, you summed up what we do, why we do it, and why we're good at it. It was all too simple and too obvious, and we'd completely missed it. All of us looked at each other and went, yeah.”
Nobody’s ever explained it in a way that makes people act.
You know your business inside out. But every time you try to explain it, you watch people’s eyes glaze over - or you get the same clarifying question for the hundredth time. That’s not a you problem. It’s a messaging problem.
Easier to understand
You stop being the only one who can explain what you do. Customers grasp what you do in seconds, not paragraphs. Your team, your partners, and your buyers all describe you the same way.
Easier to buy
When the message lands, the buying decision feels obvious. You stop competing on features and start being chosen on fit. Sales cycles shorten because explanation gives way to recognition.
Easier to brief
Once the offer is simplified, every downstream decision gets easier. Internal teams and agencies all have one document to build from. No more briefing the same brief twice.
Why the perspective is different.
I’ve spent 25 years on both sides of the table - agency-side leading creative at top branding and packaging studios in London, client-side as Head of UK Brand and Packaging Design at Tesco and Global Head of Packaging Design at ColArt. I’ve seen what strong brand decisions look like, and what the wrong ones cost.
My approach is grounded in how the brain actually makes buying decisions - and why most brand work misses that entirely. The method walks your offer through the customer’s eyes, not yours. Plain English. The work is rigorous. The output is simple.
I work with founders and MDs of established businesses, typically £5m-£50m, across consumer, sport, health, and professional services - and directly alongside their marketing and sales teams to simplify the messaging so people ‘get it’.
“Our packaging to date has been adequate but could do an awful lot better. We didn't have the confidence to determine what would make it better.”
How the work goes.
See it from outside
We step back from the business and look at it through customer eyes - not founder eyes. A founder excavation interview. Customer-truth research from reviews, forums and competitor data.
Say it simply
We work out the one true thing the business should be known for. Then we agree the five lines - in plain English the founder, the team, and the customer can all repeat.
The rest follows
You walk away with five lines and a clear plan for where they go - the website, the deck, the sales conversation, the brief to any creative partner. One message, repeated everywhere.
Depending on what’s needed, that might mean a messaging roll-out plan or ongoing support into execution - but it always starts with getting the five lines right.
Five sentences. That’s what actually gets used - in sales calls, on your website, in your pitch deck, in your LinkedIn bio.
One stops them scrolling. One makes them feel understood. One makes you the only real option. One sells who they become. One closes it.
Ready to talk? Book a call
Not sure yet? See how clear your site is - the quickest way to find out if your messaging is the problem, before you spend on creative.
Takes 30 seconds. Four scores. Five findings. One summary.
From endless clarifying questions and glazed expressions, to the moment people just get it - and buy.
Everyone else does the explaining for you now.
Why this approach exists.
Most brand work starts with creative because that’s what clients ask for. New website. New pack. New identity. The problem is rarely solved, because the problem usually isn’t creative. The founder knows their business so well they can no longer see how strangers experience it. Everyone agrees the brand isn’t working - but no one is looking upstream at the offer itself.
Behavioural science tells us how decisions get made. People don’t buy the best product. They buy the product they understand fastest. The one whose difference lands before they’ve finished picking it up. That’s not a design problem. It’s a positioning problem.
The result is a brand the customer recognises themselves in. Easier to understand. Easier to buy.
Find out what your customers see - before you spend on creative.
Four scores. Five findings. One summary. The Brand Simplicity Audit reads your website the way a customer’s brain does. No pitch. Just diagnosis.
Already know it’s a messaging problem?
Booking a call is the right decision.