Engineer first, paid search second.

I started out fixing engines.

Royal Navy first, working on Harrier jets. Then offshore as a marine engineer. Years of treating machines as systems: understand how the parts connect, find the fault, fix the cause and not the symptom.

That's still exactly how I look at a Google Ads account. It's a system. Good inputs in, good results out. Put crap in and crap is what you'll get back. Most underperforming accounts aren't suffering from one big problem. It's death by a thousand cuts: small faults compounding until the whole thing leaks money.

Into paid search, in 2014.

I moved into PPC and spent the best part of a decade agency-side. I started as a specialist and worked up to Technology Director at one of the UK's leading independent agencies.

Along the way I built the automation behind 400-plus client accounts and launched one of the first agency-run CSS platforms in the country, scaling it to 300-plus ecommerce businesses inside 18 months. I managed millions in ad spend. More to the point, I learned what separates an account that quietly works from one that quietly bleeds.

Then I started again, in a spare room.

In 2023 I left the director job and started Run The Numbers. The reason was simple. Too many agencies win the client with a senior pitch, then hand the account to whoever has capacity, so results swing wildly depending on who picks it up.

I wanted the opposite. No contracts, senior people on every account, and reporting that tells you the truth about your money rather than burying it under impressions and clicks. It started in a spare room and now runs from an office in Middlesbrough.

The work, over the years.

Across my career I've worked on paid search for brands including ASDA Tyres, Biffa, New Era, The Alnwick Garden, Trade Radiators, Lucy Pittaway, Crafters Companion, RAC, ModelSport, WheelSpin Models and Great British Outfitters. These days my focus is businesses spending roughly £1k to £50k a month, the ones who get treated like an afterthought everywhere else.

When I'm not in an account.

I'm a Yorkshireman, an introvert, and a father of three. Running a business when you'd rather not be the centre of attention is its own challenge, and one I write about now and then.

Outside work you'll find me out on the bike, up a hill with the local mountain rescue team, or at home with Katie and the kids.