Writing
Written while doing the work.
45 articles on comparison platforms, digital marketing, selling, negotiation and leadership — grouped by subject rather than date, because none of it was written to be news.
Comparison platforms
How the ranking businesses work from the inside.
A Country Page Is Not a Local Site
Going global with a comparison platform is mostly copying: a template, a domain, a flag. Becoming local is a different job. What topseos's country sites showed about who a local page is really for, from 2009 to 2018.
ReadBefore Anyone Is Looking
A comparison platform starts with no buyers and no providers, and each side wants proof of the other. How topseos got through that in 2008 and 2009, from the emails, including the numbers that were not flattering.
ReadName the Category the Way the Buyer Searches
On a comparison platform the category is the product. How I named, split, scoped and cut categories across fifteen years, from my own specs at the time.
ReadCharging the Companies You Compare
Can a comparison platform charge the companies it compares and still be useful to the buyer? My platforms did charge them, including for specific positions at monthly prices. What that looked like from 2009 to 2025, how it was disclosed, and where the model starts to cost trust.
ReadWhat I Thought the Moat Was
Twenty years of comparison platforms taught me which advantages were really mine and which were on loan. The honest version, including the parts that did not hold.
ReadTen Was the Default. Five Was Right.
A comparison platform built for one market can be copied to another, but not every rule travels. Country sites in 2010 and a single-city platform in 2024, and the day I reversed a national default for a local one.
ReadWhy Most Comparison Sites Fail
Building a list of providers is the easy part. Comparison platforms fail on supply and demand, categories, local relevance, money, distribution and trust. Twenty-four years of building them, including the ones that went quiet.
ReadWhat 24 Years of Running Review Platforms Taught Me About Reviews
I have built and run comparison platforms since 2002. The useful question about a review is never whether it is positive. It is whether you can tell who wrote it, and on what basis.
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Digital marketing and AI
Demand, channels, and what actually moves a number.
A Website From Scratch, in 2026
If I were building a company website today, this is the list. Most of it is unglamorous: plain HTML, real evidence, addresses that never break, and analytics that measure enquiries rather than visits. Each point is how this site was actually built.
ReadBuilt for Google, Rebuilt for Answers
For twenty years I built sites to rank in Google's list of links. In 2025 the list started getting pushed down by AI answers, and an old site could not simply be retrofitted. What changed, from my emails at the time.
ReadCalling the Ones Who Left
Former customers will sometimes tell you what current ones won't, if you actually call them. In autumn 2023 DMA did, one by one, and wrote down what they said.
ReadBuying Channels: What I Paid For and What I Skipped
Trade-show booths, display impressions, PR, email and search. How I have decided which channels to put money into, in my own words at the time.
ReadShipped, Seen, Counted
Marketing has a shelf life, so speed matters. But speed is only half of it: I want to see that the thing went out, and what came back.
ReadRented Land
Any audience you reach through somebody else's system can change underneath you. I learned it as a tenant of Google, and I have been the landlord to hundreds of companies who rented visibility from me.
ReadSEO, AEO, GEO: Where the Money Goes
Three acronyms, one budget. I would not pick one and ignore the others. Traditional search is still the foundation, answer engines are the next reader of the same material, and most of what is sold as an AI ranking hack is not worth paying for.
ReadSEO Isn't Dead. The Results Page Changed.
Search did not end. The thing a searcher sees first changed, from ten links to an answer, and fewer people click past it. What the numbers say, what Google says, and what that means for anyone who depends on being found.
ReadWhat a Crawler Actually Receives
AI crawlers are not one thing. Some train models, some build search indexes, some fetch a page because a user asked. Many do not run JavaScript. What that means for what they see of your website, from current documentation and from how this site was built.
ReadWhen I Took Google to Court
In 2014 Google removed every one of our websites from its search results. We sued. We got further than anyone expected, and in 2017 we lost.
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Sales leadership
Selling what takes more than one conversation to buy.
Activity Is Not the Number
Calls, connections and lead counts are easy to report and easy to feel good about. A sales quota is a revenue number. What I asked of sales reports, forecasts and paid lead sources at DMA between 2019 and 2024, and what a missed number should trigger.
ReadClosing Is a Promise
Two emails, two years apart, about the same problem: what a customer experiences after the sale is made, and who is responsible for it.
ReadWho I Sell To, and Who I Don't
Filtering a market is mostly saying no early: to budgets that cannot work, to buyers who want guarantees, and to lists that are not already spending.
ReadLarge Accounts Are a Different Sale
A formal RFP from a large retailer and a list of clients paying $5,000 a month or more: two moments at DMA, in 2018 and 2024, when the right move was to change the process rather than work the usual one harder.
ReadThe Bigger the Cheque, the More It Runs on Trust
How I buy when the stakes are high, and what that taught me about selling: with someone I trust I decide in minutes, and with a stranger I ask for proof I can visit.
ReadPostponing Again
When a month depends on a handful of recurring deals worth a few thousand dollars each, one postponement changes the month. A spring and summer of DMA's pipeline in 2024, from the daily reports and my replies.
ReadWhen the Prospect Mentions a Competitor
Three times a buyer put a competitor in front of me, what I said, and how it turned out. Not all of them went my way.
ReadNetworking Is the Follow-Up
Meeting people is the easy part. The relationships that turned into something were the ones where someone closed the loop, on time. One of mine where I didn't.
ReadKnowledge, Skill and Discipline: What I Actually Check
Three words for what makes a salesperson good, and the emails where I held people to each of them.
ReadTuesday Mornings at 8:30
In 2018 I negotiated hard for a sales training program for DMA's salespeople. The price was the easy part. Showing up every week was the hard one.
ReadWhen the Client Thinks You're a Vitamin
Buyers keep painkillers and cut vitamins. What that has looked like from both sides of the cancellation email.
ReadGet Them to 9.5 Before the Demo
A salesperson scored 7.5 out of 10 on a practice pitch. My answer was a number: 9.5 before he demos for me. What the gap between them is made of.
ReadSelling Comes First. Then Count It.
A salesperson's job is to sell. How I have defined the role, and the few numbers I ask for to find out whether the selling is happening.
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Negotiation
Preparation, leverage, and the room itself.
Before Anyone Talks About Price
By the time I discuss a number, most of the negotiation should already be done. What I wanted to know first, from three completed deals: an office in 2012, an investment I looked at in 2019, and a property in Bangkok I spent over a year on before agreeing a price.
ReadDiligence That Ends in No
A building in 2010 and a software company in 2020: two acquisitions I looked at hard and did not make, and the paid search that produced nothing. Walking away is one of the outcomes diligence is for.
ReadLeverage Is a Fact, Not a Tone
Real leverage is an alternative, information, time or the ability to walk. None of it needs raised voices. Small examples from my own negotiations, and one where my tone did the talking instead.
ReadPrice Is One Term
I almost never want to negotiate on price alone. The terms around the number, such as whether to lease or buy, credits, payment schedules, delay penalties, the right to walk, often matter more. Completed deals from 2012 to 2022, and one presale where I asked too late.
ReadThe 90 Days I Asked For
In 2019 I negotiated for a premium one-word .com. The price mattered less than one term: a free 90 days to find out whether the business was really there.
ReadThe Clause About Leaving
On a recurring contract, the monthly price is the number everyone argues about. The term and the way out usually matter more. Two negotiations from my emails, in 2015 and 2020.
ReadWhat I Mean by Fair
"Fair" is the most abused word in negotiation, usually meaning "what I want." When I have used it, in emails from 2012 to 2025, it has meant three specific things: what we agreed, what something is worth to us now, and risk that runs both ways.
ReadWhen the Deal Gets Large
Above a certain size a negotiation stops being two people agreeing a number. Financing, tax, lawyers, title and the other side's constraints all arrive at the table. Three completed negotiations, and one I walked away from without solving the problem the seller had told me about.
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Leadership
Running the team and making the call.
Not Needed for Everything
The goal was never for me to disappear from my companies. It was for them not to need me for every routine decision. Five years of emails show how far that got, and where I still jump in hard.
ReadSafety to Learn
From late 2021 to early 2023 DMA ran a culture programme with an outside facilitator, across our own team and our delivery partner's. A survey said people did not feel safe to learn. What we tried, what I approved, and why it ended.
ReadSystems and People
I studied computer science with a minor in psychology at Purdue. It looked like an odd pairing in the 1990s. Most problems I have met in business since have been in one of those two places, and the hard ones are in both.
ReadWhat Counts as Normal
Before I was eighteen I had lived in India, North Korea, Indonesia and Thailand, and then I moved to America. Each place taught a different version of what is normal, obvious and authoritative. In business, that is a reason to distrust defaults.
ReadWhen the Work Happens in Another Company
DMA delivered its work through a partner and team network of more than 200 people. What changes when the people doing the work report to someone else: handoffs, a single point of contact, commitments, reporting, and knowing when to stop.
ReadWhy I Still Go Back to School
Kellogg and ISB in 2020, Wharton in 2021, Stanford in 2023, Harvard from 2024. Why I kept enrolling while running the businesses, in what I wrote at the time.
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