It was a mild weekend in February, and I was sitting by a lake.
I’d been reflecting on my day job, and I realised something was missing. I was working hard, trying to make a success of myself – but nobody really cared. Not really. The people I was serving were just going to work, like me. They weren’t the business owners I used to help, and that was the thing I was craving.
I wanted to help people who needed it. People who would genuinely appreciate it, because the work would make a real difference to their lives.
The work that came before
I’d already done a handful of website projects over the years – ad-hoc things, mostly friends referring people my way. Sitting by that lake, I found myself thinking about an old client I’d helped with some small changes once before.
I knew they weren’t reaching their potential online. Not even close. So I started researching how they were perceived online, how they compared to their competitors, where the gaps were. I wanted to help them, and I knew they needed it, they just didn’t know where to start.
That’s when Small Tweaks was born. The moment I realised I needed to do work that was meaningful and work that actually made a difference.
(That client, by the way, is someone we still work with regularly today, helping them give the best possible service to their customers.)
What a decade in data centres taught me
Before this, I spent around ten years in the data centre world. My time was split between helping customers directly and managing the infrastructure their businesses relied on.
These people trusted me to protect their business. To keep them online so they could sleep at night. I understood from the start what a responsibility that was. It was daunting, but that’s exactly what drove me to do a great job. When someone is trusting you with the thing that keeps their livelihood running, you don’t cut corners.
It taught me how to build systems that are stable, reliable and resilient. Not chasing every shiny new piece of technology, but staying current and moving with a healthy scepticism. Knowing the difference between something that’s genuinely better and something that’s just new.
And it taught me something about small business that I’ve never forgotten. Small business is special. It’s real, normal people who put their house on the line to start something. People who quietly don’t pay themselves one month so they can pay their team. I had to look these people in the eye, and they had to trust me. That stays with you.
Why “Small Tweaks”
I’ve always paid attention to detail where others haven’t and it almost always pays off.
I’ve lost count of the times I’ve watched people ignore small details that seemed so obvious to me. Details I knew would make a difference. Because here’s the thing: small details add up. They compound over time, and they’re what put you far above everyone else.
The reverse is true too. Something that feels tiny in isolation, left ignored, compounds in the other direction. It’s what leaves a business quietly struggling to keep up with competitors, without ever really understanding why.
That’s where the name comes from. We care about the detail and we understand the difference that small tweaks make over time.
What I believe
I see a lot of small businesses that look, from the outside, like they’re not even trying.
But that’s not the truth. The truth is they care deeply about keeping their business alive – the technology industry has just failed them.
The media would have you believe that everyone is on their way to coding humanoid robots to do their housework. The reality is that most small businesses don’t know the first thing about SEO, or how their email accounts actually work. And worse, they don’t know where to start. All while every big technology company is spending billions to entice them in, each one insisting their product is the thing that will change everything – it’s completely overwhelming.
I want that to change.
I want those people to feel like they’ve got someone they can call. Someone they can talk to for honest advice, who’ll hold their hand through the process. Because not everyone needs to become a technology expert. We need the skills they specialise in too – the plumbing, the care, the craft, the service. They should be free to focus on that, knowing the digital side is in good hands.
Where this is going
My ambition for Small Tweaks is simple. I want it to be the place businesses turn to when they need to understand their digital presence and work out what’s actually worth doing.
Not a list of everything that’s wrong. A clear sense of which changes will genuinely push the needle helping them win more customers, improve the experience they offer, and save time through smarter ways of working and a bit of education along the way.
It started by a lake, with one business I wanted to help.
The goal now is to do that for as many as I can.