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“Do what you love” or “do what you’re good at” is lousy advice for starting a business.

I’ve been a casual photographer for over a decade. I mostly ever did it for fun, but I always wondered what it would be like to monetise. People had told me my artwork was pretty good, so I figured it was worth trying.

So, I began my very …

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It’s harder than ever to get noticed online.

We look at everyone else and immediately feel outmatched.

Everyone else is publishing faster.
They’re all scaling harder.
People are playing a bigger game and you feel left behind.

It feels like you’ve showed up late to a party that’s already full.

So, you publish relentlessly…only to …

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Longform writing is much easier than shortform writing.

That might be a hot take, except to anyone who’s tried digital writing more than a few times, you probably know what I mean. I’ve been writing medium/long-form for a few years, but it’s only more recently I took an honest shot at writing shortform.

It’s been…a mixed expe…

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Starting and running a business can be a complete mindfuck.

When we begin, we’re constantly overthinking.

Will this work?
Has this been done before?
What about my list of 1001 reasons that this is a terrible idea?

Then, when we are up and running, it’s just as bad.

Why isn’t this working?
What if someone steals my idea?
Worst of…

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The worst thing about building an online presence is the feeling of screaming into a void.

You can spend hours writing and perfecting.
You can include a level of detail unmatched by similar articles.
You can talk about things you know are popular.

Yet a day, a week, a month after yours has gone out, you haven’t heard anything. Har…

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When it comes to conversions, “more effort” on your website can be a liability.

You’ve researched your products and written about them in unmatched detail. You’ve built something comprehensive and beautiful.

You’ve done everything right.

Yet, sales aren’t improving. Traffic might even be doing well, but…people aren’t buy…

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You can spend hours perfecting a piece of work, only for it to flop.

All those nights researching.
The time it took you to write it out.
Then, worst of all…the countless hours spent perfecting it, making sure it was the best possible version of your work it could be.

You slam the publish button. You eagerly await t…

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When hardly anyone visits your website, it feels like nothing else matters.

Numbers are down. Revenue isn’t picking up. You can practically hear a breeze blowing the tumbleweed across your storefront. What you need is to get more people through the door, and you’re ready to throw the kitchen sink at it.

Because when web tra…

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2025 was the year I realised an attitude which had carried me through my career had been silently failing me.

Eleven years of working as a software engineer had taught me to be incredibly careful. I’d never start a project without knowing exactly what I needed to do, and how long it would take. If there was anything I was…

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Over the last 3 months, SEO became a very different challenge to the one I expected.

I went into it with a head full of advice. I had a strong sense that I needed to do it “right”, and that if I missed something important early on, I’d pay for it later. But what surprised me wasn’t how much there was to learn, even though there wa…

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Sometimes, when calamity hits, your gut tells you: “This time is different.”

I’d just started my last job as a software engineer. A few months in, around the time my probation was due to finish, I met with my line manager.

“We appreciate your contributions…”
Sure.
“But we feel like your improvement has plateaued…”
A few more polite li…

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We love thinking that our effort entitles us to people’s attention.

We can spend hours planning and writing an article, waiting for the perfect moment to take a picture, or tweaking the sound balance in a piece of music. But when all we hear back is crickets? It’s tempting to get hacked off with the world.

Here’s the thing: being i…

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Protocol is a newsletter for people who want more attention, reach, and traffic—and are looking to understand more clearly how it happens.

Marketing isn’t easy. Getting your work in front of the right people isn’t easy. Often it feels like we’ve tried everything—and to no avail. So, why aren’t things working the way they should be?

If you’re running a business and struggling to get traction, this is probably for you.

The mission statement

I recently made a huge transition in my life.

I spent over a decade (far too long) as a software engineer. In that time, I became exceptional at “technical” thinking. But the career never sat well with me. So, when the time came to make a leap, I jumped ship. I entered the world of Search Engine Optimisation as a solo practitioner.

The switch was…not as elegant as I’d hoped.

The reality? The shift has been amazing. It’s shown me the blind spots I’d developed through years of building software and outsourcing big decisions/marketing to others. But trying to get eyes on my work for the first time was jarring. It’s taken experimentation, hundreds of hours of reading and writing, and—most of all—time, for things to start making sense.

My mission is to make these systems legible so our efforts stop feeling random.

There won’t be any quick wins or hacky solutions to anything here. This is purely about focusing our effort on building the right systems for the right people over time.

You’ll get deep explanations, unusual takes, and personal experiments. You’ll get stories of my own growth as a digital marketer.

Here’s the simple promise:

The more time you spend with my writing, the more differently you’ll think about attention, marketing and why so much of it is so badly misdiagnosed.

Subscribe now

My promise

In this Substack, I’m going to share:

• How to think about getting the right people into your business. 10 of the right people will always trump 1,000 who don’t care.

• Why many obvious methods to get more traffic don’t always work, and how optimising the wrong things can mask problems instead of fixing them.

• The hidden filters we usually neglect that prevent people from buying. Most decisions are made before a visitor ever reaches an offer.

• Stories of trial and error. SEO experiments, creative projects and real moments of learning.

• I’ll give you every part of my mind, through ideas, mistakes and frameworks that have changed how I operate in this space.

In return? I just want to make you think. I want to push you to examine your blind spots. And if anything I write has made you think differently, even for a moment, then I’m doing my job well.

So, sign up now so you never miss a single edition of Protocol.

If something in your marketing feels broken, this is a good place to start.

Subscribe now