Hi, I'm John
Started in face-to-face sales selling milk, water filters, cars, and oil. Got obsessed with the psychology of why people buy after reading about an envelope from 1928 that made an extra $4,000 in sales (about $72,000 today) by changing seven words. Built my first website in 2005 when SEO was the wild west, ranked health pages on page one of Google, and have built over 100 sites since. Now I write researched content and conversion copy for businesses across multiple niches, with a writing engine behind it that I've spent two years building.
The envelope story
In 1928 a marketer was staring at a postage envelope. You know the bit where it says "stick stamp here"? He changed that out and replaced it with seven words: "A penny here will bring back dollars."
Same envelope, same audience, same offer. The new version pulled in an extra $4,000 of sales, which is roughly $72,000 in today's money. I read that story and got hooked. Tiny words move people in ways nobody sees coming, and that is the whole game I've been playing for forty years now.
The sales years
Started selling face-to-face in my teens and never quite stopped. B2B and B2C, cold calling, door knocking, phone systems, cars, milk, oil, water filters. Strange list, I know, but the training was unreal.
People rarely tell you the real reason they hesitate. They give you surface objections like price or timing or "I need to think about it", but the real one is buried somewhere underneath. After enough years you learn to answer the unspoken question before they ask it. Bit creepy, probably, but effective. I made plenty of mistakes along the way too, the kind that still wake me at 3am twenty years later, but those mistakes taught me more than any course ever could.
What stuck with me from those years is that markets shift constantly, technology shifts faster, but people are remarkably consistent. Same fears, same shortcuts, same buying triggers as a hundred years ago.
Twenty years of SEO
While the sales work was happening, I built a health website and ranked multiple pages on page one of Google. SEO back then had no rulebook, just experiments, watching what worked, doing more of that. You could get away with things twenty years ago that would get you laughed at today, or penalised, or both.
So I spent years learning the fundamentals that survive algorithm changes rather than the tricks that die in the next update. Search intent, entity relationships, why some content ranks and other content sinks without trace. Voice search now, AI search now, half-formed questions typed into ChatGPT at 11pm. The platforms shift. The human psychology underneath does not.
What changed in 2023
AI changed how content gets made, but it also broke the bottom of the market. Every business now has access to the same models, the same prompts, the same plug-and-play tools that everyone else has. The result is a flood of technically-correct, commercially-dead content that nobody reads, nobody links to, and nobody buys from.
That gap is what I spent two years building for. The writing engine behind my work is the part that turns AI from a fancy autocomplete into something useful. I won't tell you what's in it, but you'll see what it does. It produces researched content that gets ranked and cited, and conversion copy that sounds like it came from a person who actually understood your business. Across multiple niches, in your brand voice, fully sourced from primary research.
The thing nobody tells you is that AI writes words and does it well, but it cannot build strategy, audit a site against its real competitors, or translate your business goals into a search visibility plan. That part still needs someone who has done the work for years. You will struggle to swap me out for a chatbot.
What I've done (proof, not waffle)
A B2B content agency was spending 5-8 hours per content brief, with their senior writer doing admin with a thesaurus. I rebuilt their content production workflow around the engine, and they doubled their output without hiring anyone new. The senior writer got her actual job back.
A local service business was stuck on page three for their main keywords for over a year. I rebuilt their search strategy around intent rather than keyword stuffing, got them onto page one within four months, and they had to promote internally just to handle the new enquiries.
A coach who used to dread writing emails (the kind of dread where you open the laptop, stare at the screen, then suddenly decide the kitchen needs deep-cleaning) now sends one a week, fully in her voice. She used to send one email a quarter and watch her list shrink. Now she broadcasts weekly and her readers actually show up.
What I do, and who it's for
I write researched content first. Articles, pillar pages, comparison pieces, FAQ hubs, the lot. Built for SEO, GEO (the new layer for AI search visibility), and AI citation across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Fully sourced from primary research, structured to rank, written in your brand voice. I work across niches... automotive engineering, garage flooring, financial services, B2B SaaS, coaching, e-commerce, and anywhere words need to do commercial work.
Conversion copy is the other half. Landing pages, sales pages, ad creative, email sequences, lead magnets. The lesson from face-to-face sales is that people don't buy when you tell them to. They buy when you remove the thing stopping them. I once rewrote a single landing page headline and doubled enquiries in a fortnight. Same page, same traffic, same offer, seven different words. Sound familiar?
Best fit: content agencies who need a senior pair of hands without a senior salary, e-commerce brands tired of product descriptions that read like the warehouse wrote them, coaches and consultants who need authority content but no time to write it themselves, and anyone whose AI-generated content is technically correct and commercially dead. If you recognise yourself in any of that, you're in the right place.
How I work
You deal with me, not a junior account manager. Support is one email or one phone call away.
I'm patient with teams, transparent with budgets, and direct when something will not work. If something can work, I show you the simplest path. I'm the kind of perfectionist who keeps tinkering until the work feels right rather than perfect, and sometimes that means rewriting a draft at midnight or simplifying something that looked impressive but did nothing useful. Fancy and useful are not the same thing.
I can't work with everyone, and I'll tell you straight if I'm the wrong fit. Life is too short for bad matches, and you will still leave with at least one useful idea before we part company.
My philosophy
Keep it stupid simple. Yes, the grammar is backwards on purpose, and the pedants who notice are the same pedants who were already overthinking it.
Help people first, properly, with no strings. Give value before you ask for anything in return and people will not flinch when you do ask. That is the whole game. AI is a powerful tool. The skill is knowing when not to trust it.
Want to find out if we're a good fit?
Three steps:
Click the button below and answer a few short questions.
We have a proper conversation about what you're working on, what's eating your time, and whether I can help.
If I can help, I tell you exactly what that looks like and what it costs. If I can't, I tell you honestly and point you somewhere that can.
No pressure and no pitch involved. You leave the conversation with a clear answer either way, and at least one usable idea regardless of whether we work together.
Still on the fence?
Fair enough. Email me your biggest current marketing or AI headache and I'll reply personally with at least one usable idea, whether we end up working together or not. Reply will be from me, not an AI. Yet.
Help first. That's how this works.