Fifteen years, three chapters.
I didn't plan on marketing. I became a marketer the way most founders do — by having no one else to do it. Then I got interested, then I got good at it, then I built a career out of doing it at a few different altitudes.
Before any of this, I ran an online training platform. I was the founder, which meant I was also the marketing director, the SEO lead, the copywriter, the customer support rep, and about eleven other things at once. I knew marketing mattered and I didn't have time to get good at it — so I did what most founders do. I hired agencies.
The results were mediocre. Not terrible, not obviously broken — just mediocre in the way most agency work is mediocre. Strategy that looked identical to what they were probably selling three other clients. Content that read like everyone else's content. SEO that moved slowly if it moved at all. I paid the invoices and wondered whether I was just unlucky, or whether this was what the whole industry looked like from the inside.
When I sold the business, I decided I wasn't going to be on the frustrated side of that table again. I'd either learn how to do the work myself or I'd find out why the agency model produces what it produces. It turned out to be both.
I spent years working at Surfer SEO and MarketMuse — two of the platforms that shape how search content gets built in practice, not just in theory. Most SEO content you read online right now was touched by one of those tools at some point in its life.
Working platform-side teaches you two things that nothing else does. First: you see thousands of companies' SEO strategies, which means you see what actually works repeated across completely different businesses, and you see what doesn't work repeated just as often. Patterns you'd never notice as a one-company operator become obvious.
Second: you understand where the tools end. SEO software can do a lot, but there are decisions and judgement calls the software can't make for you. A strategist who's worked inside the tools knows which decisions those are. A strategist who's only used the tools from the outside often doesn't.
After the platform years, I took a director of marketing role across a group of six companies — different industries, different audiences, different revenue stages, same leadership team. It was the best education I've had in how agencies, freelancers, and in-house teams actually work in combination.
I was the person receiving the agency deliverables, paying the invoices, and deciding whether to renew the contracts. I ran the interviews for in-house marketers, wrote the job specs, handled the firings. I saw what different budgets and different team shapes produced in practice, not in theory.
That's the experience I brought into this consultancy. I don't think agencies are bad — I think they're an execution layer, and execution without senior strategy on top of it is how most marketing money gets wasted. I built this practice to be the strategic layer that goes on top.