Most businesses spend their time telling you why you should work with them. This page does the opposite. Because I’d rather be upfront and honest if we are not meant to be.
Untangli is not for everyone, and that is on purpose. The work goes better for both of us when we are clear from the start about who it suits and who it does not. So before you get in touch, here are the situations where we are probably not your best option.
If a few of these sound like you, no hard feelings. You will save yourself a call, and I would rather point you in a better direction than take on work that was never going to land well.
Below are some of the reasons why I may not be the right fit for you:
- You are looking for a specialist or an expert in one specific field
- You want guarantees that you will scale and grow
- There are too many layers of approval to get anything done
- You want someone who says yes to everything
- You are not willing to get outside your comfort zone
- You want to pay by the hour
- You want someone on-call 24/7
- You just want a pair of hands to tick off tasks
- You are shopping purely on price
- You are not willing to hand over access or trust the process
- You want a quick fix and are not interested in the ongoing side
1. You are looking for a specialist or an expert in one specific field
If what you need is a developer to build a custom website, a designer to craft your brand, a solicitor for a contract, an accountant to file your returns, a social media manager to run your channels, or a dedicated website maintenance service, Untangli is not that. Those are deep specialisms, and you deserve someone who lives and breathes each one.
What Untangli does is sit across all of these areas and keep them organised, joined up, and working together. I will tell you when you need a specialist, help you find a good one, and make sure the rest of your setup supports their work.
But if you only have one narrow, deep problem, hiring the right specialist directly will serve you better than hiring me. Yes, I have worked various sectors of the digital industry, but Untangli is not a place that touches on them.
2. You want guarantees that you will scale and grow
I can give your business cleaner foundations, calmer operations, and more of your time back. That’s the purpose of Untangli. And when you have more time, you will be able to allocate more time focusing on running your business to scale and grow.
What I cannot do is promise that this turns into growth, revenue, or scale. Too much of that depends on your market, your offer, and the work only you can do.
If you are looking for someone to underwrite your success or hand you a guaranteed outcome, we are not a good match. Untangli removes the friction that holds you back and then gives you the space to take it to the direction that you want to go towards. What you do and how you want to use this space that is up to you.
3. There are too many layers of approval to get anything done
The model works best with founders and business owners who can make a decision and act on it. There may be times where having one or two more people can also add value. But a lot of the value comes from moving quickly: spotting something, agreeing a fix, and sorting it.
If every small change has to pass through committees, sign-off chains, board meetings or several other people before anything happens, the momentum disappears and so does most of the benefit. I have seen first-hand many scenarios where a project requires multiple approvals and needs to go through so many people, which ends up slowing the company down and holding them back.
All while the competition moves ahead of the game.
I have been into too many environments where there are a number of red tapes to jump over, or the board has to intervene and despite what’s best for the business even if they are not involved in the running of it.
While it’s unlikely you’ll have a board (thankfully), since I work best with small businesses that has less than 50 employees, if you are in that kind of environment, you will need a different kind of support to the one I offer.
I will tell you straight when something is a bad idea, out of scope, or not worth your time and money. Part of what you are paying for is a second opinion from someone who is on your side but not afraid to disagree.
If you are after a pure yes-person who simply does as they are told without question, you will find me and the whole process frustrating.
I want to protect your time, your budget, and the quality of what gets done. And having some pushback is part of the process. I will be there to listen to your ideas and barriers that you are facing, if it’s part of the scope, and may offer solutions.
But I can’t agree to everything as it will not give you what you paid for. Which is to sort out your operations and give you more time back to grow.
One of the biggest red flags I hear in almost every brand and organisation that I have been a part of is when the answer to why do they do a particular task in a certain way is the dreaded “because we’ve always done it this way”.
I’ve never been in a situation where that response is a positive one. I would argue that it’s never a positive statement in any environment.
Getting properly organised usually means trying new tools, dropping old habits, changing how you work, and doing a few things differently from how you have always done them. I’m certain that the biggest difficulty you will face is changing your tried-and-tested routines and habits. And there’s nothing wrong with that, as we are all human and we are to be more comfortable with familiarity.
But none of it is scary, just different and maybe awkward, but I will guide you through every step.
Untangli is priced on the value and the peace of mind it delivers, not on a time sheet. You pay a fixed monthly retainer, so you always know what it costs and you never have to watch the clock.
If you specifically want hourly billing, with every minute logged and invoiced, that is not how I work. The fixed model exists so we can both focus on getting things sorted rather than counting hours.
And there won’t be any time sheet for me to give you. It will be based on the scope and agreement on what we plan to do on a monthly basis.
7. You want someone on-call 24/7
This is a fractional partnership, not a full-time hire glued to your email inbox and awaiting your call. I work with you on a clear, regular rhythm of check-ins and agreed response times, and that is what keeps the service calm and sustainable, while allowing to have an impact in your business.
If you need someone available at all hours, ready to jump the moment you message, you are really looking for a full-time employee or an assistant. That is a different role to the one Untangli offers.
Untangli is an operational partner, not an extra pair of hands to manage your admin. The value is in the thinking: working out what needs doing, why, in what order, keeping it all running and making it run faster and more efficiently than ever before.
If all you want is someone to hand a list to with no strategy or judgement attached, a virtual assistant will do that more cheaply and you will feel you are overpaying me.
9. You are shopping purely on price
If the only thing that matters is who is cheapest, Untangli will rarely win that comparison, and that is by design. The pricing reflects the experience, the breadth across digital, operations, and admin, the calm that comes from having it properly handled, and the genuine care that goes into helping your business run well and succeed.
But most importantly, the value of the output.
There is nothing wrong with being careful about money. But if price is the single deciding factor, you will likely find someone cheaper, and you should go with them. I fit best with people who want it done well, not done at the lowest cost.
That said, the time you spend in your business is more expensive than how much is our services. Because, you know, time is money. Consider calculating how much time you will get back if we help you untangle your operations. That will be much more worth of your time (no punt intended) and you may find that you will save money in the long term.
10. You are not willing to hand over access or trust the process
To untangle your setup, I need real access: to accounts, systems, login details, sometimes the financial side. And once we agree on an approach, it works best when you let me get on with it rather than approving every tiny step.
If handing over access makes you deeply uneasy, or you find it hard to let go of control, the partnership will feel like hard work for both of us. Trust is the thing that makes the whole arrangement run smoothly, and without it, very little gets untangled. And your operations will not perform any better.
11. You want a quick fix and are not interested in the ongoing side
Operational chaos is a bit like how I manage my daughter’s hair; you have to stay on top of it by maintaining it on a regular basis. Leave it and it gets tangled again, worse than before, making it even more difficult to untangle and making it smooth again.
The real value of Untangli comes from auditing your process, setting things up properly and then keeping them that way.
If you only want a one-off blitz with no interest in maintaining it, the benefit will slowly unravel and you will be back where you started within months, if not weeks or days. And what a waste time and money that would be for you.
I would rather work with people who want it to stay sorted for the long term, not just look for it to be sorted in a week.
So who is Untangli for?
Luckily for you, there is a separate post on who Untangli is perfect for.
But in short, if you are an established solo founder or small business owner, with a team of less than 50 people, who is brilliant at the work itself, but drowning in the behind-the-scenes side, you are ready to hand it over, want to try a few new things, and let someone trusted keep it all running…
…then we will most likely get on very well.
If that sounds like you, get in touch and let us have a proper conversation about it.
Ready to get it sorted?
Start with a discovery call. You show me the mess, I tell you what it’d take to untangle it. No obligation.
