I've rewritten copy on projects that were never supposed to include copy. The founder comes in with a brief for a website redesign. Shares what they have. Usually AI-generated, sometimes written by someone on the team who was trying their best. Always technically accurate. Almost never convincing. Most founders shopping for a website are actually shopping for sales. They just don't realise the copy is the missing piece yet. In the last 10 projects I've worked on, 8 came in as design-only briefs. Every single one ended with copy in scope not because we did a good job at upselling it but because the moment a founder sees what their page feels like when the copy actually talks to a real person, the AI-generated version stops being acceptable:) The design alone can't do it all when the words are doing nothing. Fix the words. The design does the rest. And the ROI speaks for itself.

I ask 1 question before every project starts. "What would your best client say to a friend about why they chose you, in the exact words they'd actually use?" Most founders pause longer than they expect to. The ones who answer immediately specifically, in plain language almost always have the easiest projects. The positioning is already there. My job is just to make it visible in the design. The ones who struggle are usually running better businesses than their brand suggests. They know what makes them different. They've just never translated it into language that works for a stranger. That translation gap is where most brand problems actually live. Embedded in the answer to that 1 question.

The "translation gap" framing is spot on. Founders who can answer that question without pausing already think like marketers, they just don't know it yet.