19 October 2026 · Guy Turner
We kept getting hired for the second job. So we changed what we sell.
For most of its life, Turner & Co sold the thing people asked for. Copy, content, campaigns, a white paper, a training session. We were good at it, and we still are. But if I look honestly at the work I'm proudest of from the past few years, almost none of it was the job we were originally hired to do. It was the second job, the one that only appeared once we'd started asking questions.
Maria Iannantuoni hired us to reposition her Perth finance brokerage and rebuild its website. Then she came back with an idea for a lending app, and within about three months LoanPrep was a compliant business, approved to advertise and in market. The website was the first job. The commercial model, the financial modelling, the documents, the approvals and the coordination between developers, agencies and advisers were the second. StatBreak brought me in to get an expensive technology build back on track. That turned into product direction, a partner-led route to market and an investment case. Hey Sister! became three years of work for Tasch, the last two as its fractional marketing lead, across both consumers and pharmacies. Each time, the brief was the doorway, not the room.
Why the brief is rarely the whole story
None of this surprised me, because I spent the first part of my career inside the problem. I worked across digital, sales, data and commercial strategy at News Corp, then ran the data and strategy functions at Community News in Perth, then led commercial strategy and insights at The West Australian. I helped right-size and restructure two media businesses through to successful acquisitions. In every one of those organisations, the request that landed on my desk was a symptom. Advertising revenue was soft, so someone wanted a new campaign. Audiences were drifting, so someone wanted a redesign. The real work was usually underneath, in the commercial model, the data nobody was reading properly, or a decision that had been put off because it was uncomfortable.
Tasch arrived at the same place from a different direction. She has spent twenty years in communications and fifteen in digital and performance strategy, with a psychology degree behind it and copy that has run in Vogue, Marie Claire and Gourmet Traveller. She ran digital transformation inside the Department of Health in Western Australia. Her instinct is to test small before anyone argues big, and to let the numbers settle the debate. Between the two of us, we kept finding that the most valuable thing we could offer a client was not another deliverable but a clear view of what actually needed doing, in what order, and then the willingness to stay and help do it.
What we've changed
So we've rebuilt the business around that. Turner & Co now does commercial strategy and delivery for businesses that want to bridge the gap to corporate without carrying a roster of creative, content, advertising, legal, consultancy and financial specialists to get there. We still write, research and run campaigns, and we still take on a well-defined piece of work when the brief is genuinely right. What's different is that we start by making sure we're solving the right problem, and we're upfront that sometimes the answer is a smaller job than the client expected, and sometimes a bigger one.
We've also been specific about when people tend to need us. Most businesses don't plan in growth, and don't act in decline. When things are growing, nobody wants to stop and ask whether the systems, people and documents can carry what's coming. When things plateau, everyone has a theory and nobody has evidence. When things decline, the decision gets put off until the options have narrowed. Those three moments, growing, plateauing and declining, are where an experienced outside view earns its keep, and they shape how we work: a scoped review when the problem needs investigating, a defined project when the direction is clear, and ongoing fractional leadership when a business needs senior people involved over time.
Two other things have moved to the centre. The first is research. Original market research used to mean a large invoice and a long wait. For our own ventures we've built research engines on public data, including Spain's official tourism statistics, and turned the results into published work and tools people actually use. That approach is now something we offer clients, because evidence in your own name is one of the most persuasive things a business can own. The second is preparation. A lot of our work ends with a business being ready for the people who give formal advice, whether that's a lawyer, an accountant, an investor or a grant body. We prepare the brief, and qualified counsel gives the advice. It saves fees, and it saves deals.
What hasn't changed
The name stays. It's still the two of us leading the work, which means clients deal directly with the people responsible for the thinking and the delivery, not an account manager relaying messages. We're based in Nicosia, we work with partners across Australia, the United Kingdom and Austria, and we keep building things in public through Turner & Co Labs, because the fastest way to understand a market is to put something in front of real people and watch what they do. And we remain stubbornly practical. We don't believe in handing over a strategy deck and disappearing. If the plan is right, we'd rather help make it happen.
If you run a business that's growing faster than its foundations, has stalled after a strong start, or is losing ground and doesn't yet have a convincing plan, the new site has a short questionnaire that asks about your situation, not your contact details, and suggests a sensible place to begin. Or simply get in touch. Tell us what you're working on, and we'll tell you honestly whether we're the right people to help.
