A coach once told me I should be booking 25 potential client calls a week.
Err… OK.
That coach is not writing this post.
This post exists so neither of us has to do that. It’s a rundown of who I’m probably not the right fit for, so you can work that out before we get anywhere near a call. Because asking for help is actually a bit vulnerable. You’re not buying a spa day here. You’re turning around and saying “I need someone to sort this out,” which takes guts. The least I can do is be upfront about where things tend to go sideways.
So. Here it is.
You’re struggling to explain what you want
I do not expect you to arrive with a perfectly formed brief. Half the online business world will tell you to have your entire vision mapped out in a colour-coded Notion dashboard before you speak to anyone, ideally with a mission statement and a five-year plan and a theme song. I am not that person, and if you’ve met that person, I’m sorry.
Creating the brief is part of what I do. I will ask a lot of questions, and none of them are a sign that I think you’ve done something wrong. They’re how I get the full picture.
But I’m not a mind reader either.
If we’re working together, especially at the start, you need to be willing to pour your brain into mine. That takes time and a bit of trust. I’ve had clients who assumed they’d asked for something when they hadn’t, or who thought I’d just… intuit what they needed. If you want someone who works by telepathy, I genuinely hope you find them. I’m not that person.
You think my calendar bends to yours
Being available on a certain day does not mean I’m working on your project on that day.
We agree deadlines. Your work gets done to those deadlines, not to the new one that materialised at 9pm on a Wednesday because something has become A Situation. We’ve all been there. I’ve been there. I am not, however, a Situation-response service. If things change, tell me and we’ll figure it out properly. But project management doesn’t work if one person gets to move the goalposts whenever the energy hits them.
I’ve had a client assume “I’ll be online Thursday” meant “I’ll be free for an 8am call on Thursday.”
It did not mean that.
Your business fundamentals aren’t there yet
This one is partly on me, because I’ve taken it on before when I shouldn’t have.
Before we work together, I look at your website. Not to snoop, and not because I’m expecting everything to be polished. I’m looking for green shoots. Clear enough copy that I can tell who you serve and what you do. Some evidence that clients get results: testimonials, case studies, a coherent “here’s what working with me looks like.” It doesn’t need to be a whole production. It just needs to be something other than vibes and a stock photo of a sunrise.
I’m also thinking about whether your business is making enough money to support you. I don’t need your exact figures. But if it isn’t sustaining you yet, the work I do isn’t what you need right now. You need to sort that first, and there are people better placed to help you do it. (The ones with the countdown timers will tell you a new funnel is the answer. It is, genuinely, never the answer. I don’t know why we keep having this conversation as a society.)
What I’m not looking for: perfection. Broken links? Colours slightly off? Copy that’s a bit rough in places? Fine. A hot mess is completely normal, especially early on. Making a mess is part of figuring out what works. I expect people to arrive in varying states of chaos.
What I am looking for is clarity. Not perfection. Clarity.
You hired me, but you’ve decided you know better
Hot mess: fine. Deciding halfway through that you’ve actually cracked it yourself and would I mind just implementing your solution: less fine.
I’ve had clients ask me to go and figure something out, then inform me when I came back with the answer that they’d also figured it out and their solution was better. Okay. Why did you hire me, then?
A client needed checkboxes in a spreadsheet. I explained why interactive checkboxes weren’t really how Excel worked, offered a couple of options depending on what they actually needed. They insisted. Went off to Fiverr. Came back triumphant.
Reader, the “solution” was the font changed to Wingdings with a box drawn in the cell that you couldn’t tick.
The project goal had not been achieved. The client was delighted. We were not a good fit.
If I tell you something isn’t going to work and explain why, I need you to engage with that. We can disagree. We can talk it through. But I’m not here to implement a solution I can see won’t solve the actual problem, no matter how many people on a Reddit thread said it would at 2am.
You don’t do contracts
This is a business. Not a hobby, not a side project, not something I squeeze in between my real job. Contracts protect both of us and I won’t work without one.
I’ll also be straight with you: if your first instinct is to go through every clause with a fine-tooth comb and challenge each one, that tells me something about how the working relationship is going to feel.
The “I just work on trust” crowd have cost a lot of good freelancers a lot of money, so questions are absolutely fine. A full forensic audit of a three-page contract, on the other hand, suggests we’re probably not the right fit.
So who is a good fit?
Someone running a real business, clear enough on what they do that I can see it on their website without needing to lie down afterwards. Someone who communicates, even imperfectly. Someone ready to hand over the tech stuff and let me get on with it, without needing to crowdsource my recommendations on Facebook groups afterwards.
If none of the above has put you off, or some of it had you nodding along thinking “yes, exactly, why is this so rare” then have a proper look around. Read a few posts. Get a feel for how I work.
If this is you: email me. Tell me who you are, where you’re at, what needs sorting. That’s it. We can get going from there.
