The audit format came from frustration. I wanted to show business owners exactly what I was seeing — competitor by competitor, platform by platform — rather than just telling them things were broken. The research takes hours. The reports are long. That's deliberate. When you've built something with your own hands, you deserve more than a generic checklist.
But the real reason this exists goes back further than that. I've had conversations with people who wanted to visit local businesses — actually wanted to go — and searched for them online, and couldn't find the information they needed. Opening hours, what the place actually offered, how to get in touch. So they simply decided not to go. That's when it really clicked for me: being good at what you do isn't always enough. If people can't find you, understand you or figure out how to visit you, you can lose the opportunity before you've even had a chance to earn their business.
I'm not trying to build the biggest agency. I'm trying to be the most useful one — the person who actually looks at your business, figures out what's going on, and helps you fix it. You aren't being passed from salesperson to account manager to developer. You get me.
Steady Drift isn't a conventional agency, and it isn't trying to be one. The name is deliberate: no manufactured urgency, no hype, no pressure to close. We work with a small number of clients on purpose, because quality erodes the moment it's spread across too many accounts at once. If we're at capacity, we say so — a waitlist is a sign of a healthy business, not a problem to paper over with a discount.
How I actually work
- Research first, always. No recommendation gets made before understanding the business, its customers, and its actual obstacles. No templates, no assumptions.
- Honesty over the sale. If the research says you don't need what you came in asking for, I'll say so — including in the audit itself.
- Few clients, on purpose. Capacity is deliberately limited so quality doesn't degrade to fit volume.
- Launch is the beginning, not the finish line. A website or profile that goes live and then gets ignored is in slow decline from day one — the work stays engaged after launch.