Questions, answered
without a sales call.

Advisory seasons typically begin six to eight weeks after first contact, to allow the diagnostic call, scoping and your own calendar to settle. Single-document intensives can often start within a fortnight — decisions with dates attached get priority. Keynotes depend on the season; autumn tends to close by June.

Both, deliberately blended. The diagnostic fortnight and the first working sessions benefit from being physically in the room; document-level work between sessions travels happily by post and video. For UK and European clients the split is usually one on-site block plus remote sessions thereafter.

Access to the real record — the papers, letters and decks that actually circulate — and the names of two or three people whose judgement the documents are supposed to carry. A quiet hour with each during the diagnostic does more than any kickoff workshop.

Yes, gladly. Confidentiality is the first deliverable of the practice. Engagements run under written terms with confidentiality and conflicts provisions standard; institution-level compliance processes are familiar territory.

I do. The practice has no associates, no licensee network and no junior bench. When you engage Max Witting, the person in the room, on the call and in the margins is Max Witting — which is also why the practice stays small and the diary honest.

Fixed in writing, never day-rate drift. Advisory seasons from £24,000; document intensives from £6,500; workshop days from £4,200; the on-call arrangement from £2,400 per month; main-stage keynotes from £7,500. Each quote is fixed after scoping and includes preparation.

Every engagement and keynote includes the preparation it needs to be good: programme calls, document reading, the written brief, post-event notes. You will not receive a separate line for the hours that make the work work — they are the work.

Yes: the voice audit (from £9,500) is designed as a standalone instrument with a decision attached — its fee is credited in full against a season booked within six months. The monthly letter, of course, is free.

A standing pool of donated days goes to organisations whose work I believe in — usually public-interest, education or the arts, always at my discretion and never as a marketing scheme. Ask; the answer is sometimes yes and always honest.

Invoiced in stages that follow the work: a third to secure the dates, the balance at the close of the engagement or event. Thirty-day terms for organisations; longer arrangements by written agreement. VAT additional where it applies.

Possibly. The test is not your sector but your product: if judgement is what clients buy and documents are how it travels, the work applies. I have taken engagements with institutions, scale-ups and one cathedral chapter. The diagnostic call exists precisely to test the grip.

No. Comms consultancy starts from the audience outward: channels, messages, campaigns. This practice starts from the argument inward: positions, structure, judgement — and how they survive the room. The two disciplines meet happily but are hired for different problems.

With pleasure — they are often the work's biggest beneficiaries and its sharpest early critics. Programmes can be scoped to include the writing team as partners in the house voice rather than casualties of it.

Then I will say so at the diagnostic and the engagement will not proceed. A meaningful share of diagnostics end with the honest answer that the issue is strategy, structure or a decision being avoided — naming that is worth more to you than a season of eloquent papers.

Weekly, and it is half the practice. The declinations page on 'Who I work with' exists so you can self-select out before either of us spends a call. A practice built on saying everything says nothing.

Two to four months is comfortable; autumn main stages tend to close by June. That said, single cancellations occasionally open dates at short notice — the availability enquiry costs nothing and is answered personally.

Tailoring is the product. Every booking includes a programme call and, where the client permits, short interviews with attendees. The argument stays constant — that is the craft — but its evidence, examples and stakes are rebuilt for your room.

Recording for internal use is fine and encouraged. External publication of full recordings is by written agreement — the arguments are the livelihood, and several have future homes in books and essays.

Yes — that is the ghostwriting engagement, and its three rules are on the Writing page: no invention, the author's ear wins, no content-mill cadence. The thinking must be theirs; the craft makes it survive their calendar.

It doesn't, directly. The letter is the practice's public notebook — free, monthly, and the best qualification test either of us has. Subscribers who later become clients already know how I argue; clients who never subscribe are owed the same honesty anyway.