How We Work, Who We Are

How we work matters as much as what we do.

The tools, platforms and tactics change constantly. What stays consistent is the way decisions are made, how relationships are built and how complexity is handled. Over the years, we’ve learned that the best work happens when there’s trust, clarity and a shared way of thinking.

TDLR:

How we work matters as much as what we do

• We simplify complexity through listening, curiosity and care

• We build long-term, trust-led relationships with purpose-driven brands

Our approach is shaped by four values: communication, curiosity, confidence and empathy. Not as abstract principles, but as behaviours we return to every day. This approach helps us stay grounded when the world around us changes as rapidly as it does, and gives our clients a sense of steadiness, too.

This is what it actually feels like to work with us.

Communication

How we talk to clients matters. But how we listen to them, and to the world around us, matters more.

One of the most meaningful things a client has said to me was simple: “You take such care to listen to us.” Sophie, the brilliant founder at Floks, said it almost in passing, but it stayed with me.

Listening isn’t a soft skill. It’s the foundation of good work. We listen for pain points, for hesitation and for the things that don’t quite get said out loud. As we grow as a team, this matters even more. We’re deliberate about building a team that listens first, before it acts.

The work we do can be complex. Algorithms change. Platforms shift. Meta, Google and organic channels rarely sit still for long. It can quickly feel noisy or overwhelming, particularly for founders who are already stretched for time. Our role isn’t to add to that noise, but to make sense of it.

We see communication as both an art and a science. The science is in the data, the testing and the ongoing experiments. The art is in how we translate all of that into something clear, calm and actionable. Excellent communication makes the complex feel manageable. It allows founders to trust the process without having to live inside the detail.

Like a Michelin-starred meal, you don’t need to be in the kitchen to enjoy the result.

Most of the people we work with are time-poor. They trust us to do the work, read the data carefully and communicate what’s happening next, and why. Our job is not to overwhelm with information, but to create clarity and confidence at each stage of the journey.

That approach is one of the reasons many of our client relationships are long-standing. We’ve worked with Cimmermann for over ten years and Community Clothing for more than five. Those relationships aren’t built on constant performance or grand promises. They’re built on consistency, transparency and mutual trust, and that takes time.

I really believe that, just like yoga, communication is a practice we learn and refine every day. When it’s in place, good decisions follow.

Curiosity

My dad, my biggest champion when I was an unruly teenage girl, always said the same thing to me: question everything.

He was eccentric in many ways, but he was also deeply curious. Curious about the internet generation, the stories behind the chefs he loved, and the strange and unexpected moments he encountered in everyday life. A sense of wonder followed him around.

He saw something in me that made me think it was ok to think differently.

At its heart, our work is about creative problem-solving. You can’t solve meaningful problems without questioning why things are the way they are. Why has a channel been prioritised? Why a message has landed, or fallen flat. Why something has always been done a certain way, and whether it still makes sense.

Curiosity permits us to pause before acting. To resist default answers. To look again.

Much of our work starts with simple questions. What if we tried this instead? Why do people respond this way? Why has this worked before, or not worked at all?

There are no silver bullets in marketing. Just a series of experiments and hypotheses, tested through language, design and medium.

Asking good questions allows us to see a brand and its audience from different points of view. It helps us move beyond surface-level metrics and into something more human. Curiosity opens up an understanding of psychology, how people think, what motivates them and where hesitation comes from. In that sense, curiosity naturally leads to empathy.

For us, curiosity keeps the work alive. It stops marketing from becoming mechanical or dogmatic. It allows strategies to evolve as brands grow and as the world around them changes. It also creates space for learning, not just for us, but for the founders we work alongside.

When curiosity is present, decisions feel less defensive and more exploratory. There’s room to test, adapt and learn without fear of getting everything right the first time.

Confidence

I’ll start this truthfully. With a busy brain that’s exceptionally rejection-sensitive, confidence is something I’m always learning.

“Fake it till you make it” is often offered as advice, but I’m not sure anyone ever really makes it when it comes to confidence. Even Beyoncé, apparently, comes off stage after a performance and asks, “Was that ok?”

What I’ve learned over the years is that confidence grows when it’s rooted in purpose and belief. When you know what matters to you, you start to build a quiet bank of evidence that you can draw on when decisions feel hard.

We don’t see confidence as loud certainty or unshakeable belief. We see it as something quieter and more practical. The confidence to make a decision. The confidence to pause. The confidence to say no when something doesn’t feel right, even if it looks good on paper.

In purpose-led businesses,s especially, confidence can feel complicated. Founders often carry a deep sense of responsibility to their teams, their customers and the wider world. That weight can make decision-making feel heavier and riskier.

The purpose-led world leaves little room for empty promises. People are increasingly thoughtful about what constitutes good business, and rightly so. Values without substance don’t stand up for long.

Our role is to help create the conditions where confidence can grow. Clear communication reduces uncertainty. Curiosity replaces fear with understanding. Together, they allow decisions to be made with intention rather than urgency.

Confidence also shows up in restraint. In choosing not to chase every opportunity. In trusting that doing fewer things well will compound over time. In being comfortable with experimentation, knowing that not every test needs to work to be valuable. We’ve turned down some genuinely lovely opportunities for this reason, and while it can feel scary, it’s also deeply affirming.

For us, confidence isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about being willing to move forward thoughtfully, to learn as we go and to trust that good decisions are rarely made in a rush.

Empathy

I’ve always been an empathetic bookworm. As I constantly tell my teenage girls, emotional intelligence will get you much further than academic intelligence.

Empathy is the biggest deal to me in my work at Three of Us. I came into marketing by the side door after studying film, not business, and that shapes how I see this industry.

When we read stories or watch films, we practise empathy. We step into other lives, other points of view and other ways of seeing the world. Reading, especially, slows you down. It asks you to listen. It teaches you to notice nuance.

That way of seeing carries directly into how we work. Marketing is about people, and people want to feel seen and heard more than anything else.

Empathy allows us to understand not just what people do, but why they do it. Why do customers hesitate? Why founders feel stuck. Why a message lands or quietly misses the mark. Without empathy, marketing becomes transactional. With it, it becomes relational.

Empathy shapes how we communicate. It’s why we listen carefully before offering solutions. It’s why we’re thoughtful about the pressure founders are under and the decisions they’re carrying. It’s why we take care with money, expectations and pace.

It also shapes how we approach growth. We don’t believe in strategies that extract attention or urgency at any cost. We believe in bringing people along for the journey, respecting their intelligence and their time.

For us, empathy isn’t separate from performance. It’s what makes sustainable performance possible. It allows communication to land, curiosity to deepen and confidence to grow. It’s the value that holds everything else together.