Welcome to the vibe check page!
Where you work out whether a Zoom call with me would make you smile – or pretend that Calendly never sent you the link.
I'm Peta - hi!
Before I jumped, head-first and pandemic-fuelled, into the world of marketing with a baby on my hip and banana bread in the oven, I spent 15 years as a youth worker.
It’s a weird job, one where you find yourself talking about sex, English Literature, arguments over who let who sit where at lunch, divorce, death, and the best tactic on Fortnite, all in the space of 60 minutes. You build relationships from scratch with naturally suspicious individuals who don’t want to be your friend, and don’t need another grown-up telling them what to do.
The plan was to stay a long time. I was bloody good at it.
But life is weird, and cruel, and unexpected. So: marketing (eventually).
That background is the whole reason I do this work the way I do it, because the most important thing I learned in 15 years of working with young people is that everyone has their own shit going on. You never know what’s going on in people’s lives. So you should always treat their attention with care and respect.
Which is why I’m deeply uncomfortable with sales tactics that take people’s pain points and poke at them until they get their credit card out.
Your future clients are searching desperately for someone who understands them, who speaks their language, takes into account their background, their experience, and the life they’re actually living. They don’t need to be made to feel worse first.
You're using the wrong map
The Hero’s Journey, Storybrand, the PAS formula: every marketing framework you’ve been handed runs on the same engine, individualism, manipulation, and one person riding in to save the day.
That’s the story capitalism and patriarchy like best. And if you’re building something relational, collective, and a bit more complicated than “I had a problem, I bought the thing, I’m fixed now”, it’s no wonder it all feels like wearing someone else’s shoes.
Making yourself likeable, staying bland, not wanting to rock the boat, sanding down the edges of your work so it fits into a 7-stage brand story framework: these are all ways the dominant system keeps you small, in your little hobby of a business, (the one that your family and friends don’t quite understand because you do it from your laptop).
But you are not small. And there is a different story structure.
The Heroine's Journey
The Heroine’s Journey is networked, cyclical, rooted in what a protagonist builds with other people, It’s the shape that shows up in the work most of my clients are actually doing, and it speaks to their people.
My Regenerative Story Framework maps your business onto that structure across five phases:
- 🌱Uprooting,
- 🌱Composting,
- 🌱Germinating,
- 🌱Sprouting,
- 🌱Rooting
It holds the full complexity of what you do for people, rather than squashing it into an arc that loses the best bits.
And it’s the thread running through everything I build with clients, from brand messaging strategy to the emails your audience actually opens.
What it’s like to work with me
People buy people. You can work out what someone sells from a 4-minute conversation and a glance at their website. What you can’t work out, until you spend a little time with their writing, is whether you trust them, whether they think the way you think, whether the thing they’re selling is built on the same values you’re trying to build your business on.
So here’s what you get with me:
- 🌱 deep research into your audience (without you having to lift a finger), so the messaging is built on what they’re actually saying rather than what we think they mean
- 🌱an approach that lets you co-regulate with your audience rather than poke at their pain points
- 🌱copy that sounds like you on your best day, rather than you doing an impression of someone your business coach told you to be.
I care hugely about the way the world works and about how people are treated. I’m a feminist, an anti-racist, and a committed LGBTQ+ ally, socialist in outlook, and clear-eyed about the fact that politics cannot be separated from anything else in life, including the language we use to sell things.
If you think Farage is a “cheeky chappy” or have ever liked one of JD Vance’s tweets, then we are not a good fit. But if you’re building a business that reflects those values, and you’re exhausted by marketing frameworks that were built by the wrong people for the wrong kind of business, then I suspect we’ll get along brilliantly.
But Peta, we've only just met!
Fair. If you want to take some time to get to know me before we become besties with matching friendship necklaces, taking down the patriarchy, why not download one of these?
The Regenerative Story Map
Map your story in a way that holds all the nuance of what you actually do for people, rather than flattening it into a tidy hero arc that loses the best bits.
Squeeze More From Your Social Proof
Stop getting polite praise, and start learning more about your audience, what they need, and how to talk to them effectively.
Messaging on Purpose
6 short, coffee-length episodes that will help you see what messaging actually is, why it matters, and how to build it on purpose instead of stapling it together as you go.