For a long time I believed that if the work was good enough, the work would do the talking. Do it properly, do it consistently, and people would turn up.
Most of us build our businesses on that belief. It is the reason so many great operators stay quiet.
The two guests below took that belief apart, from opposite ends of it.
I sat across from Tristan. Twenty years designing gardens in Perth. Eleven of them at Tim Davies before he walked. Eight years running his own studio, 27,000 people following his Instagram.
I asked him why the work isn’t enough on its own.
He told me people don’t come to you. They come after they have seen you seven times, or 11, or 52.
Then I sat across from Sian. She runs social media for our clients at Design Studio Perth. Degrees in public relations and international relations. She started out running the accounts for the cast of a Johannesburg reality show and never left the industry.
I asked her what actually happens to a business that stays quiet.
She told me it is standing in your own garden shouting that you have a business. Your neighbours hear you. The people who need you never do.
Here’s what I’m sitting with.
Being brilliant has never been the thing that gets you found. It just felt fairer to believe it was.
And the ground has shifted again. As of July 2026 your social posts are turning up in Google search results, and Google now reports on which search terms are sending people to your Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube content. The posts you thought were disappearing into a feed are being read, filed and served to someone looking for what you sell. Your brand is not how you look on a grid anymore. It is what a search engine, an AI and a stranger all decide about you before you get a word in.
I see it in me too. We write the Design Studio Perth newsletter and send it whether or not anyone answers, and most months it feels like it goes straight into the void. Then someone replies who has been quietly reading it for two years and is finally ready to talk. People follow us for 18 months to two years before they ever say hello.
The small thing I’m doing this week, and it takes five minutes.
Search your own business name. Then open your own socials as if you were a stranger who needs what you sell, and look at the date on the last post.
Whatever you find there is the answer someone already got about you.
One will show you what 20 years of presence actually looks like. The other will tell you what it costs to stay invisible. Tristan first.
EPISODE 151: Tristan Pierce
With Tristan Pierce, Founder of Tristan Pierce Landscape Architects, Perth
Tristan spent 11 years at Tim Davies leading award-winning design work, then left because he had gone stale. Eight years on he has a small team, a residential studio that designs but refuses to build, and a very unsentimental view of what actually brings the work in.
What you’ll take away:
- Seven, 11 or 52. How many times someone sees you before they ever make contact
- What an alfresco really costs, said out loud in the first hour, before anyone gets a shock
- Why he parked his logo, went with plain text, and built the studio anyway.
▶ Listen here: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout
Different chair. Same message.
EPISODE 152: Sian Lindeque
With Sian Lindeque, Social Media Manager at Design Studio Perth
Sian describes her job as trust, not posts and captions. She takes owners who are brilliant at what they do and invisible to the people who need them, and makes them seen. She is blunt about what is working, what is a waste of your money, and how long it really takes.
What you’ll take away:
- 70% of business owners would lose the deal on how they look online, before they open their mouth
- Followers are a vanity metric. The numbers that actually tell you it’s working are somewhere else
- Where social goes next: grungier, messier, and the AI-polished brands that get found out.
▶ Listen here: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout
P.S.
If Google is now reading your posts, the question is what your brand is telling it.
I keep a handful of free Brand Discovery sessions aside each month, just for TRBLC listeners. One hour, with me. We look at where your brand is actually landing and what’s holding it back.
