I have had a small niche consulting business since late 2015 helping small medium businesses do better online and generating leads for them through marketing channels like paid ads (PPC), Search engines (SEO), Social media and email among others.
I don’t promote it here on this blog or talk about it but I’ve had some wins last year despite running it in the background almost on autopilot. I got so busy last year with my main focus a lot of my other businesses came second. But this may have helped me with the local consulting business I actually tripled the client book and delivered better results than in 2023.
Pat myself on the back feeling. But it made me think about what I overlooked last years this is a reflection gratitude post in honour of my small achievements.

Selective Onboarding Criteria:
I don’t take on everyone who reaches out to work with me. Ive been doing it long enough to know its more like a partnership than a service. I need inputs from the client to be successful and there are some people & business types I just can’t work with.
Early on 2024 I got a referral from a college who wanted me to work with his friend who wasn’t tech savvy and who was not reactive on email or phone and I didn’t really want to take them on based on those two bits of information. I thought about it and the more I dug into their business I realised they may be disengaged because they are bleeding out.
So I pushed on and started onboarding them, lucky they live close by as they suck at phone calls and emails. After onboarding them I got a real insight into the business and its pain points and intuition was spot on he founder was disengaged because he thought he had tried EVERYTHING to make his business work and it wasn’t growing.
After some initial work doing the basics getting things connected, some light tutorials for them and basic business operations education the founder started texting and emailing lol it sounds weird to say but he had a spark again. I really think owning a business is tough, and if you don’t get taught how to do it the responsibilities can crush you.
Once the marketing kicked in they saw the value in doing the things we talked about and putting the focus on their marketing channels to get in front of potential customers. It took time almost 7 months but the leads came in and they had the best year ever. It was more hands on than I like to be but for a good cause I can extend myself to make sure the client is engaged and committed to making it work. This was a huge win personally because I felt like Gordan Ramsey walking into a shithole kitchen and expecting the basics to be business as usual. So huge win
Hire Smart Fire Fast
In the early months, I hired a hungry marketing graduate who wanted to dabble in a role where she could do more than just manage accounts to build her skills. I had reservations about her commitment to stay with me after she learned these skills and I tell you this, listen to your instincts. This young woman got what she needed and leapfrogged from me to a big agency role.
I wasn’t gutted but I was disappointed. Well we push on and look for a replacement. I found a young guy who I knew from some local acquaintances in the community who wanted a first job and knew his way around computers. These types of first hires are good and bad but only bad if you don’t give them the right direction.
He picked up the role and responsibilities quite fast. He wasn’t too confident with clients but that’s teachable with experience. I found him to be a pretty resourceful guy if I showed him how I generally approach a problem and what type of solution I want for that problem he would be researching and coming to me with a problem and his solution based heavily on Google, Reddit and Perplexity. Good for him.
He comes with the small details that I appreciate, manners, common sense and attention to detail. The female worker who left me was lacking attention to detail, wasn’t great with manners and lacked common sense.
So right now he’s crushing it and Im not too worried about the service delivery. Hire smart and invest in educating your junior employees. I appreciate his efforts and made sure to give him a decent reward for his work this year at holiday time as a bonus.

Quality of Work
Something I had completely overlooked was the level of work we were putting out and just how much better it was this year just passed. We had featured content in some big name editorials, social media features and landed some juicy backlinks and our processes haven’t changed much from the previous years.
I put it down to evolving our relationships with our network, using AI copilots to help hone in on the brand and their strategic targets as well as the attention to detail from the team. It’s a small team but it’s an effective team.
Technical Prowress Matters
I run a very small team, we don’t attend fancy events, or conferences or network much with other agencies. We are the type of studio that just operates and gets it done without shiny objects and spotlights.
I say all this because I met with a large office supplies organisation in 2023 wo loved what we were about and our delivery model and just our topic matter expertise in what we discussed. But the CMO thought we were too small to compete with large agencies even though they would charge them 4x more than we would. So they didn’t sign up with me and went to a big flashy agency.
Well it turns out that the flashy agency knew about as much about AI search results, product search results, Google shopping ads as my pet dog does and completion burned the marketing budget on-brand content and photoshoots over anything that returns actual ROI (return on investment) meaning they were all wank and no bank.
We got that callback early in the year to meet up and do the handover and try to help recover the brands position and help make their sales. They said whatever you presented to us before we want that. They were very apologetic and said that our studio size does not matter and that results matter more.
I love to hear it and my bank balance loves hearing that as well considering we charged 3x what we originally quoted stating a *Failed to see the value tax on our services delivered 🙂 and that’s some sweet icing on the cake. We know our sh#t and we can outwork, out maneuver any flashy wank and bank agency we need to go up against.
Another win another moment silently sitting here nodding my head to the sound of success.

Improved Processes
In my spare time (very limited spare time) I had the chance to build some super basic software for my team to do some specialised keyword research flows and I made some updates to the software that really streamlined research phases for our clients.
I love the Golden Keyword Ratio tactic made popular by a guy called Doug Cunningham, look him up if that interests you. But I built a tool that can use that method, and it helps give me some emerging zero click keywords that we often use to sniper attack trends as they emerge. Its proven a game changer for my team.
The win here is me focusing on what my guys needed to do their work, building something to improve that workflow and then coming back to tinker and rework it so it does an even better job. I don’t get the luxury to do this very often so I really enjoyed having the time to sink my teeth into that

Client Relationship Building
This next point I am personally pretty chuffed with. Straight up I am a massive nerd, I am socially awkward and really short sharp and blunt with people who are not my wife or my close circle of friends. This character trait is not amazing for business and always causes me a bit of anxiety when meeting clients being such an awkward social encounter.
My goals for the year were to step outside of my comfort zone, that included being more social and actually being a normal person. I took it upon myself to socially mingle with my clients and hang out away from work and get to know them. In my head this was like such a waste of time and way would I ever do this. But it wasn’t that bad at all and I kinda enjoyed myself a bit hanging out with some new people who Id had interactions with and were comfortable with my social awkwardness.
Note to self be more outgoing, try new things, meet new people and invest in those you know.

Organising my 40,000 thoughts per day
My brain fires a lot of info at any given time of the day, I have at least 40,000 business ideas a day and no time to act on any of them so there’s a lot of stuff floating around in my head at any one time, plus family life, my main work focus, my health, my friends and other useful stuff.
The limited space in my head needs to be organised regularly to make sense to me. I’m sure I can not be the only one who has this problem.
I’ve always used Notion, but this year passed I really geeked out on Notion for a lot of processes, automatons and organising everything and its really helped me lock down and prioritise my big goals and even those small ideas that I keep circling back to. I highly recommend Notion for business, for personal and for startups.
If you need help with setting up your Notion boards or projects reach out. In the internal Animoca Brands Slack group dedicated to Notion hacks and tips I’m referred to as our go to Guru along with Nick.Z (see below)

And that my friends is a reflection on something I had completely overlooked in 2024 and did not provide enough attention to, that I thought may actually fold in on itself but it actually bloomed into a really special year for me.
I hope you found this informative and it gave you a peak behind the curtain on one of my side hustles. Thanks for reading.