When the Idea Still Has That Feeling.
There's a particular energy in the room when someone is finally putting their dream out into the world.
Not a rebrand, not a refresh, not a strategic repositioning. Something that didn't exist before and now, with the right help, might. I've been in that room a lot over the years and it never gets old. The nervousness, the passion, the complete openness to possibility. Established businesses come with history, with habits, with the weight of how things have always been done. Startups come with none of that. Just the idea, the person behind it, and everything still to play for.
What I love most is the learning. Every new client is a new world to step into. Over the years I've learned about reflexology and yoga, stage sets and lighting, artisan furniture and eco villas, financial investments and luxury concierge, a double-baked quinoa product and mortgages, a Buddhist centre, and a midwife. I come to every one of those briefs genuinely curious.
You can't do good strategy work from the outside. You have to understand what someone has built, why it matters to them, and who else in the world is going to care.
That's where strategy comes in. Founders are often too close to their own idea to see the gaps, and that's not a criticism: it's just what happens when you've been living inside something for years. An outside eye, asking the right questions, can spot things that feel obvious once you name them. One client selling a double-baked quinoa product to cafés hadn't considered providing a standard measuring cup alongside it, something that would let them sell in bulk and tell the story of exactly how many servings a bag contained. A small thing. A completely obvious thing, once someone said it out loud. That's the work I love most. Not the logo or the website, but the conversation that makes everything that follows make sense.