Problem 1: Your proposition is complicated, and people aren’t getting it

You know what you do and why it matters. Getting anyone else there takes twenty minutes and a whiteboard — and you don’t get twenty minutes.

So the website hedges. The sales deck lists features. Three people describe the business three different ways, and none of them is wrong, which is the problem.

Who this is for

• Startups approaching launch, where the story has to convince investors, first customers and early hires — three audiences who want three different things
• Teams launching a new product, where the science is sound but the explanation isn’t. Yet
• Founders whose business has outgrown the language it launched with, and who keep meaning to fix the website
• Organisations mid-pivot, where the strategy has moved and the story is still describing the old company
• Comms leaders who’ve inherited messaging nobody can remember, including the person who wrote it

What I do

• Positioning and messaging
• Brand strategy, guidelines, and tone of voice
• Mission, vision and values that hold up when someone asks you to prove it
• Website strategy and copy, from architecture to every word
• Sales decks and investor materials
• In-product writing where every word has to be accurate, compliant and kind at the same time — onboarding, guidance, results, the difficult screens

How we get there

We start with a conversation. Then I interview the people who already know: founders, staff, customers — sometimes the ones who left. The answer is usually already in the room, phrased badly by four different people.

Some of this work has been for regulated products, where the words themselves are part of what gets approved. Writing that survives clinical, legal and accessibility review while still sounding like a person is a discipline in itself. Once you get this right, everything else gets easier.

“Retaining Nicki as our communications partner was a wise move… This has led to us winning new contracts with non-governmental and governmental organisations in the global west and sub-Saharan Africa. She is strategic, creative and someone who you can absolutely trust to help you nail your messaging and make sure it holds true.” — Maria-Yassin Jah, Aspuna

See this in practice →

Aspuna Group, BT Lynx, SmithsonHill

Problem 2: What you know is trapped in your head

You’ve been doing this for twenty years. You’ve explained it at dinner parties, on panels, and to a taxi driver who didn’t ask. You’ve started writing it down more times than you dare admit.

You’ve assumed the problem is finding time to write it. It isn’t.

The shape only becomes clear once you’ve said it out loud to someone, in order. Someone asking questions in the right places.

That’s hard to do alone. It needs someone you trust enough to keep asking until it’s there.

Who this is for

• Leaders with a book in them, a folder of notes, and no clear run at it
• Coaches and practitioners whose method is the asset — and currently only works when they’re in the room
• Technical founders whose expertise is the differentiator, and who lose people about ninety seconds in
• Executives writing keynotes, essays or thought leadership between everything else
• Anyone sitting on something important, looking for someone safe to untangle it with

What I do

• Turn complex expertise into something people can understand, remember, and use: a book, keynote, essay, framework or body of thought
• Ghostwrite books, from interviews to finished manuscript
• Co-author, where my name sits alongside yours
• Developmental editing on a draft that’s stalled
• Keynotes and signature talks
• Long-form essays, blogs, white papers, and articles for publication
• Turn the method you use instinctively into a framework other people can follow

How we get there

I ask the questions. You think out loud. I listen for what matters — and for the thing you say in passing that suddenly makes everything else make sense.

Then I draft, you react, we refine. It ends with something tangible that goes out under your name.

“Nicki has an uncanny knack of taking content that is well-researched but not readily accessible and editing it in a way that retains the depth but increases the readability significantly.” — Glenn Wallis, founder of Exigence and co-author, Leader iD: Discover your leadership profile

See this in practice →

First Aid for Feelings, Stretch: Leading beyond boundaries, How to become a Talented Performer

Problem 3: You know you’re doing remarkable work. The people who decide what happens next don’t.

Somebody in your organisation is doing something remarkable. Possibly several somebodies. None of them will tell you about it, because to them it’s just Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the funder wants evidence, the board wants a story, and the people best placed to write it are the people doing the work. So nobody writes it. The funder gets numbers instead. Useful numbers, perhaps. But numbers alone don’t tell you what changed, why it mattered, or who made it happen.

It usually takes someone from outside to notice. Everyone inside has stopped seeing it.

PR and journalism trained me for this. Microsoft is where I first did it at scale — two years, a door into every part of their UK business, and a brief to find the proof buried inside it.

Who this is for

• CSR, impact, EDI, and sustainability leads whose work is invisible outside the building, and increasingly inside it
• Transformation and change leaders mid-programme, where nobody can explain what’s happening and everyone has stopped asking
• Charities and social enterprises who need to show funders what actually changed, not just what was spent
• Comms leaders who know the stories are there and have no route to them

What I do

• Impact reports and CSR storytelling
• Case studies and partner stories
• Transformation and change communications
• Staff onboarding and training materials
• Whitepapers and policy papers
• Ongoing editorial programmes — newsletters and story pipelines as an in-house reporter on retainer

How we get there

Interviews across teams and projects, including the people nobody thought to ask. I listen for what isn’t being said alongside what is. Then I bring back the stories your organisation has been carrying without knowing it.

You end up with something the outside world can see — and, often, with staff who understand their own organisation better than they did.

“Nicki’s initial work with me was on uncovering some of the stars of the company — ‘Hidden Heroes.’ The team look forward to reading her amusing and insightful pieces. The stories have been so successful that we now use Nicki to write for our customer newsletters too.”
— Paul Thomalla, CEO, Stratus Technologies

See this in practice →

Waterstones, Ormiston Families, Cambridge Social Ventures

And if it started life in a machine

Plenty of what arrives now was drafted by AI. That’s fine — it’s a decent first gear.

But first gear isn’t where you want to stay.

I can tell you what makes it read like AI, what’s missing, and where your voice has disappeared. Then I put back the specifics only you know, the point of view you’ve earned, and the bits a reader would actually repeat to someone else.

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