HOW I CAME TO THINK THIS WAY
My career has been shaped less by writing than by listening.
I didn’t understand this when I started.
When I first began working with businesses, I assumed my contribution would be measured by the quality of the words I produced.
Over time, I realised that the quality of the writing depended on something else entirely. It depended on the quality of the understanding that came before it.
That realisation developed gradually – one conversation, one client, one project at a time.
The longer I worked with businesses, the more I noticed a pattern.
Very few businesses struggled because they lacked expertise. Most struggled because they were simply too close to their own business to see it from the outside.
What felt ordinary to them was often the very thing their clients valued most.
The challenge wasn’t discovering something new. It was recognising something that had been there all along.
That observation changed the way I approached every project. Instead of arriving with answers, I began arriving with questions. Instead of trying to shape a message too quickly, I gave it time to emerge.
The work became less about writing … and more about paying attention.
Learning to notice
Writing and observation have more in common than people realise.
Both ask us to slow down, to notice what others overlook, and to recognise patterns that only become visible when we stop rushing towards a conclusion.
Some of the most important things I’ve learned have come from moments that could easily have passed unnoticed.
A client describing a problem they thought was unimportant.
A story shared over coffee.
A remark made almost as an afterthought.
Those moments aren’t rehearsed. They’re simply true.
I’ve learned to trust them.
More often than not, they reveal the heart of a business far more clearly than any prepared presentation.
Every business has its own voice
One of the privileges of this work is meeting business owners who care deeply about what they do, getting to know their businesses, and understanding what makes them different. Then helping them express that with clarity, honesty and a voice that is unmistakably their own.
There is no single way a business should sound. Nor should there be.
My aim has never been to make businesses sound alike. It’s to help them sound more like themselves.
When that happens, communication becomes more natural as those behind the business recognise it immediately, and they no longer feel they’re reading marketing copy.
They feel they’re hearing their own voice, perhaps a little more clearly than before.
Curiosity as a discipline
People sometimes describe curiosity as though it’s simply a personality trait.
I’ve come to think of it as a discipline.
It means resisting assumptions, asking one more question, and being willing to admit that I don’t yet understand enough to write well.
That isn’t always easy.
But some of the clearest ideas I’ve written have only appeared after I stopped trying to reach a conclusion too quickly.
Still learning
After more than thirty years, people sometimes ask whether I have found the formula for good business writing.
I don’t think there is one.
Every business teaches me something I didn’t know before.
Every conversation adds another layer of understanding.
Perhaps that’s why I still enjoy this work as much as I did when I first began.
Not because I have seen it all.
Because I know I never will.
Looking back, I don’t think my career has been defined by the number of websites, brochures or company profiles I’ve written.
If it has been shaped by anything, it has been shaped by one conviction – understanding deserves our time.
Once we understand something clearly, expressing it becomes infinitely easier.
That conviction has become the foundation of everything I do.
It is, in many ways, the journey behind The Business Writing Way.
Good business writing doesn’t only communicate what the business wants to say.
It answers what the client wants to know.