I love doing client discovery calls
There is a peculiar privilege that comes with being invited into somebody else's business.
For a little while, you get to borrow their world. You ask the questions they've stopped asking because they're too close to it. You meet founders who've spent years building something extraordinary but struggle to explain, in a sentence or two, why anybody should care. You sit in meetings where everyone agrees the marketing "isn't quite landing", despite nobody being able to point to exactly what's wrong. Usually I find it isn't one thing. It's a hundred small things, each pulling in a different direction.
I've always loved that stage of discovery with a new client. I really do.
It’s not because I enjoy finding faults, but because I enjoy finding clarity for them.
Long before I worked in marketing, journalism taught me that the most interesting answers usually follow the simplest questions. Who is this really for? What problem are we actually solving? Why does your website sound like every other company in your industry when your business clearly doesn't? Those questions have followed me everywhere. From boardrooms in London to founders in Dubai, from HR technology startups finding their feet to crypto lending platforms challenging traditional finance, from family-run ecommerce brands to law firms navigating some of the most sensitive conversations a family will ever have.
I’d see other freelancers who started doing this at a similar time I had, who’d write about picking a niche to really be successful. I used to wonder if I was doing it wrong, by not doing that. And then people often ask whether it's difficult moving between industries.
Truthfully, I think staying in one would be harder. I preferred and still prefer the variety. I learn from other industries, and apply them to others. It’s my competitive edge and I really do love it. I love that I can think about notebooks and sharpeners in the morning, and switch to family law in the evening after putting the kids to bed.
Every new business gives me permission to become slightly obsessed with something I've never thought about before. That makes it exciting for me, because I am learning at the start and I’m asking the obvious questions that no longer get thought about. At various points, I've found myself trying to understand why someone would borrow against their Bitcoin instead of selling it, how neurodiverse customers navigate an ecommerce website differently, what persuades somebody to trust an HR technology startup with their first international hire, and why the language an attorney chooses can change whether a family finally puts an estate plan in place. My search history is a wonderfully confusing place. I'm not entirely convinced Google knows what to make of me anymore.
The industries are wildly different. The questions rarely are.
Strip away the jargon and most businesses are wrestling with the same challenge: How do we explain what makes us different in a way that people genuinely care about?
