Voice — writing
Notes from the operator's chair.
Long-form writing on agency operations, agentic AI, GEO, and the visibility war between SEO and AI search. Updated when I have something genuinely worth saying — not on a content schedule.
Agency
GEO is not SEO with a new name
Treating generative engine optimisation as a sub-discipline of SEO is going to cost you the next decade.
8 min read
Diligence
The biggest under-priced risk in 2026 digital deals
Most diligence reports still treat AI search exposure as a footnote. For a meaningful share of digital businesses being bought today, it's the most important number on the page.
8 min read
Agentic AI
Stop building chatbots. Start building agents.
Most companies treating AI as a faster autocomplete are missing the actual leverage point. The real unlock is one level up — workflow automation, not interaction automation.
8 min read
Investing
What an angel actually offers (and why most don't)
Most angel money is smart money in name only. Founders raising at pre-seed should know what to ask for — and what to walk away from.
7 min read
Four-day week
The four-day week is a hiring strategy, not a wellness perk
We've operated four days a week since 2022. The most under-discussed benefit of the model is the kind of person it brings into the building.
7 min read
Diligence
What I check in 60 seconds when given a website to diligence
A tactical first-pass framework for digital due diligence. The four signals that tell you whether the asset is healthy before you've even opened a spreadsheet.
6 min read
Four-day week
What actually broke in the first 6 months of the four-day week
The honest version. Capacity misjudgments, client communication friction, senior burnout, meeting drift — and what we did about each.
8 min read
Diligence
The brand-keyword trap: why most paid ROAS claims fall apart under audit
A meaningful share of reported paid ROAS is brand traffic that would have converted anyway. How to spot it, and what it means for valuations.
7 min read
Four-day week
The economics of a four-day week, in real numbers
Year one to year three, like-for-like. Revenue per head, gross margin, attrition, hiring cost, time to productivity, cost per billable hour. The honest financial picture.
9 min read
Diligence
Five red flags I've never seen in a deck but always find in a real audit
Content concentration, technical debt, key-person risk, attribution lies, and the single-page traffic dependency. The risks that don't make it into the data room.
8 min read
Four-day week
Why most four-day-week experiments fail
The five mistakes that kill the model. Treating it as a perk, underpricing the operational redesign, weak leadership discipline, sloppy client communication, and using it as a cost-cutting move.
7 min read
Diligence
Why the 100-day plan is more important than the diligence itself
Diligence tells you whether to do the deal. The 100-day plan tells you whether you can make money on it. They're not the same thing — and most buyers under-invest in the second.
7 min read
Agency
What the March 2026 Google Core Update actually rewarded
Detailed analysis of the winners, losers, and structural patterns in the most recent Core Update — built off the data we tracked across [our client portfolio](/agency-management).
8 min read
Four-day week
How meetings die under a four-day week (and the rituals that replaced them)
Specific meeting taxonomy, cancellation rules, and the async-first defaults that took their place.
7 min read
Investing
The deck that gets a yes from me in under five minutes
Anatomy of a pitch deck that wins an operator angel. Eight slides, in order, and the things each one needs to do.
7 min read
Agency
The agency operating model I run on a four-day week
Specific operational changes that make a four-day fully-remote week sustainable in a services business — async-first defaults, meeting hygiene, capacity planning, the lot.
8 min read
Investing
Distribution risk is the only risk worth spending serious time on at pre-seed
Most early-stage failures are GTM failures, not product ones. The risk that's hardest to assess from a deck is the one that matters most.
7 min read
Investing
Why I lean toward marketing-tech and agency-adjacent SaaS
Sector thesis from an operator angel. Where my background lets me add real operator value, and where I deliberately don't write.
6 min read
Agency
The slow death of the brand-keyword strategy
Branded organic search is shrinking. The agencies built around defending it are quietly running out of road.
8 min read
Investing
SEIS as diversification when you also operate a business
Portfolio philosophy from someone whose primary income is operator income. Why [early-stage angel investing](/investing) makes sense in a way that traditional 'invest in stocks' advice doesn't.
6 min read
Agency
The 30-minute paid audit anyone can run today
A practical framework for non-specialists. Five things to check on any Google Ads or Meta Ads account in under 30 minutes, with benchmarks and red flags.
8 min read
Agentic AI
Anatomy of a real agentic workflow — the amivisible.co audit pipeline, taken apart
A full case study of how we built and shipped an agentic system for AI-search-visibility audits. The architecture, the failure modes, and what we'd do differently.
11 min read
Agentic AI
The leverage point 90% of marketing AI projects miss
Workflow automation vs interaction automation — the same underlying technology, two completely different return profiles.
7 min read
Agentic AI
How we got 400 hours a month back on the Marketing Signals team
Internal case study: the agentic systems we built for our own agency operations, and how to find the equivalent leverage in yours.
8 min read
Agentic AI
What you need before you can ship an agentic system into production
Tooling, observability, error handling, escalation paths, quality assurance loops. The boring-but-essential layer that most teams skip.
8 min read
Speaking
What I'm speaking about in 2026
Three theses I'm actively developing on stage. GEO is structurally different from SEO, agentic AI is workflow not interaction, and the four-day week is a hiring strategy.
6 min read
Speaking
Why I'm shifting to corporate workshops over conference keynotes
The leverage difference between speaking to 500 people once and working with 15 senior leaders for half a day. The economics, and what it changes about how I prepare.
6 min read
Speaking
The talk I won't give anymore
On changing your mind in public. The argument I made for two years that I no longer believe — and what I think now.
5 min read
Older work
Older articles live on Search Engine Journal, The Drum, and the Marketing Signals blog. Linked below where relevant.