Before you hire anyone, you want to know if you'll actually get along. So: here's what I'm good at, what I'll turn down, and why the first thing we make together is small enough that being wrong about me barely costs you anything.
A single sentence about your market, sharp enough that someone could disagree with it out loud, written down so the whole company argues about the same thing.
Names, product vocabulary, and the rules that keep interface, marketing, and team speaking one language. I work in multiple languages, and transcreate market by market rather than running things through translation.
Figuring out what your product should flat-out refuse to do, then making that refusal something a customer can see — not a line in a doc nobody opens.
I'd rather show you the thing than describe it: a mark on real surfaces, a screen you can click, a launch page you could ship tomorrow. A deck promises anything. A prototype has to work.
I take a few engagements at a time and go deep on each one. That's most of what you're paying for: one set of judgment on everything, and work your team can keep using after I'm gone.
A contained sprint for the first visible move: a position read, a naming or identity direction, and one artifact you can put in front of real people.
Identity system: mark, vocabulary, voice, guidelines, and applications. Delivered as a practical system your team and vendors can build from.
A working surface, prototype, or launch artifact that tests the sharper direction in public or near-public form.
I don't, and neither does anyone else this early. The first engagement is sized so you can see and use a direction before committing to a bigger one.
Then we find out early, while it's still cheap to change course. That's the reason to start small.
Sometimes, and I'll do it well. But if the safe version makes you harder to point at, I'll say so before we start.
You'll get pushback when I think a choice hurts the goal, and a straight explanation of why. You still make the calls.
Because what you're buying is one person's judgment, applied to everything at once, so nothing falls between the cracks. Hire a second me and you get two half-attentions instead of one whole one — which is the opposite of the point.
On the last day you get the work, the record of every decision, and the memo. The real test is six months out, when I'm long gone and someone new asks why the logo is that shape — and you can actually answer them.
Answer the three questions →