The situation
They are not comparing practices. They are looking for the right person to send this to, and they decide on whatever they can find.
Somebody has a speaking slot to fill, a case to refer, a seat to nominate for, or an instruction to place. They are working out whether it should be you, and they are doing it privately, from whatever turns up under your name. Most of what would settle it exists only inside an institution you do not control.
Where it fails
Everything findable about you was written by somebody else.
Someone types your name. What comes back is a profile on the hospital’s site or a bio on the firm’s: three paragraphs from a communications team, beside a photo taken at an induction years ago. It lists your qualifications and the year you joined. It doesn’t say what you think, what you take on now, or why it should be you rather than the forty others with the same letters after their name.
The appointments aren’t where the real loss sits. A programme chair needs a speaker. A nominating committee needs a name. A colleague two cities away is trying to remember who to send a case to. Each one searches, finds a staff listing with three lines written by someone in communications, and moves on. You never hear about it. Work that doesn’t arrive makes no sound.
And you know how it reads. You can’t publish testimonials or claim outcomes, and much of what would genuinely reassure someone is either confidential or not permitted. What’s left is the same careful, defensible language every other practice uses, which is why no one can tell any of you apart.
Everything that would settle it is either confidential, not permitted, or was never written down.
How it works
Every stage ends with something in your hands, and a decision that is yours.
Four stages, in that order. You can stop after any one of them and keep what it produced. That includes your positions set down in writing, which is worth having whoever ends up building the site.
- 01
The first conversation
You write, through the contact page or straight to my inbox, and it helps to say which of these you actually want more of, whether that is referrals, expert instructions or a board seat. I read it myself, and nothing drops into an address nobody owns. If what you need is not what I do, I say so and point you somewhere better.
You keepA reply from me, not from an autoresponder.
- 02
The part that was never written down
We start with where the work you want actually comes from: who refers, who instructs, who nominates, and what each needs to see before your name goes forward. Then we get your positions out of your head and onto a page. That part usually takes hours of talking, because the rules restrict what you may claim, not what you may think, and what you think is the only thing that sets you apart.
You keepA written brief, and your positions set down in your own words.
- 03
Design and build
Strategy, design and build stay in one pair of hands. The site is built for the search that actually happens: your name, typed by someone with an opportunity and three minutes. What you take on, what you’ve written, where you’ve spoken and what you’ll consider are all clear in that time, on a domain that’s yours rather than an institution’s you might leave.
You keepA staging link under your own name, not your institution’s.
- 04
Launch, and what you keep
It goes live in your accounts: domain, hosting and the words. There is upkeep, though. You speak somewhere, you publish something, you take on a different sort of case, and a page that records none of it quietly suggests the last few years were uneventful. Keeping it current is either you, once I have shown you how, or me on a monthly basis.
You keepEvery account in your name, and nothing in it only I can open.
You are never asked to commit to a stage before you have seen the one before it.