Which service should I start with?

Most clients start with the free AI Visibility Heatmap, because it tells you whether you have a visibility problem worth fixing before you spend anything on solving it. The audit verdict points you at the right starting service: Discovery and Strategy if positioning needs work, Foundation if positioning is settled and the infrastructure is the gap, or a combination of both on the way to Growth if you mostly need consistent execution. The audit is designed to answer this question for you.

Can I buy each service individually, or do I need to buy them all?

The AI Visibility Heatmap is free and optional. Discovery and Strategy and Foundation can each be bought as standalone fixed-fee projects with their own complete deliverables. Growth, however, requires Discovery and Strategy and Foundation to have been completed first, because Growth runs on top of the strategic and infrastructural work those projects produce. If you have done significant equivalent work elsewhere, those earlier engagements can be reduced in scope, but they cannot be skipped.

Can I skip the free heatmap and go straight to a paid service?

Yes. The audit is a free diagnostic, not a prerequisite. Most founders who skip it enter at Discovery and Strategy or Foundation, depending on where their gap is. The audit is short and gives you a written heatmap regardless, so it is usually worth doing first, even if only to confirm what you already suspect.

How do the It's a Shovel services connect to the Founder Visibility Stack?

The Founder Visibility Stack™ is the underlying methodology behind every service. The audit measures the current state of your stack. Discovery and Strategy designs what each layer should look like. Foundation refreshes the layers that need refreshing. Growth runs the layers, producing visibility across AI assistants, peer networks, search engines, press, LinkedIn, and events — which compounds into pipeline.

What if my pipeline currently comes from referrals and is working fine?

Referrals are a strength, not a strategy. Referral pipelines tend to be unpredictable, undifferentiated by client quality, and vulnerable to single-source risk. The work It's a Shovel does is designed to make your existing referral pipeline more consistent and to add a second, independent channel of better-qualified enquiries from buyers who found you through their own research. Most clients keep their referrals; they stop being entirely dependent on them.

Are there minimum contract terms?

No. Discovery and Strategy and Foundation are fixed-fee projects with no ongoing commitment. The Growth retainer is monthly, with 30 days' notice on either side. The AI Visibility Heatmap is free.

Is It's a Shovel only for businesses in professional services?

No. The services are designed for founder-led businesses with a long buyer journey, where reputation, authority, and visibility shape who gets onto a shortlist. That includes advisory and professional services, financial services, sustainability and B Corp businesses, specialist B2B, and hospitality and tourism. The common thread is the buyer journey, not the sector.

What happens after I send an enquiry to It's a Shovel?

You will hear back personally from Jessica within one working day. Most first conversations are 30 minutes and end with a clear recommendation for which service is the right place to start. There is no formal sales process and no proposal team.

Services

Turn your reputation into a client pipeline

A free diagnostic, a strategic foundation, a six-week refresh, and an ongoing reputation engine. Every service is delivered personally by Jessica Whitcutt MCIPR, with thirty years of reputation work behind FTSE Top 20 brands.

It's a Shovel offers four services for founder-led businesses: a free AI Visibility Heatmap, a Discovery and Strategy project, a Foundation refresh, and a Growth retainer. They form a single logical path from diagnosis to pipeline. Start where you are. Most clients begin with the free heatmap.

Get your free AI Visibility Heatmap → See how the services work together ↓

From visibility to pipeline, in four steps

The four services follow the Founder Visibility Stack™ in sequence. The AI Visibility Audit diagnoses where you stand. Discovery and Strategy defines what to build. Foundation refreshes the infrastructure you already have. Growth runs the engine. Each service stands alone, but together they form the complete path from invisible to cited, found and hired.

Diagnose

AI Visibility Audit

You see exactly where your business stands in AI-generated answers, alongside three competitors.

Define

Discovery and Strategy

You have a 90-day execution plan and the positioning to make it land.

Refresh

Foundation

You have the website, LinkedIn, and content infrastructure to be cited, found and hired.

Grow

Growth

You have an ongoing reputation engine producing a steady, less referral-dependent pipeline.

Every stage is grounded in the Reputation with Purpose framework, a proprietary, codified methodology first published in 2017.

You do not need to buy all four. Most engagements begin with the free heatmap, and the heatmap verdict recommends the next step.

The four services in detail

The AI Visibility Heatmap tells you where you stand on the three things you most want to be famous for. We run queries across the major AI engines and produce a simple one-page visibility heatmap showing, at a glance, who appears where for those phrases, and where the visibility gap is widest.

You keep the heatmap whether or not we work together again. It is the cleanest way to find out whether you have a visibility problem worth fixing, before spending anything on solving it.

What's included

Three keywords or key phrases of your choosing, queried across the six major AI engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overview, Google Gemini, Copilot)
A side-by-side visibility comparison with three competitors of your choice
The one-page visibility heatmap
Key findings and the most important gap and the first action to close it

Get your free heatmap → Or upgrade to the full AI Visibility Audit →

Before you refresh anything, you need to understand your market. Discovery and Strategy is a two-to-four-week project that defines the positioning, messaging, content architecture, and offline visibility plan your business needs to be found by the right buyers, on the right channels, for the right reasons.

It is the work that makes everything afterwards work. The output is a single integrated strategy document, not a stack of decks, and a 90-day execution plan you can take to any provider, in-house or external. Most clients then continue with Foundation or Growth, but you are not committed to either.

What's included

Competitor and market analysis across both traditional and AI search
Positioning and messaging architecture, including the founder's personal narrative
Content strategy across the Founder Visibility Stack™, online and real-world
Website content review and rework brief (developer-ready)
LinkedIn presence refresh recommendations
90-day execution plan with named deliverables and sequencing

"Onpro Consulting reached a 'next level' stage in our company journey. We needed to crystallise our thoughts on our strategy and positioning statement. Jessica took us through a very structured, thought provoking process that added real value to our business."

CEO, Onpro Consulting

Engagement model: Fixed fee, agreed up front, paid in two instalments. No long-term commitment beyond the project.

Learn more about Discovery and Strategy →

Foundation is the six-week project that refreshes and augments the visibility infrastructure you already have. Most founder-led businesses have a website, a LinkedIn presence, and a content history. What they do not have is the AI-readable structure, the messaging clarity, and the content architecture that gets them cited by ChatGPT, recommended in peer networks, and found in search. Foundation closes those gaps without starting from scratch.

The work is delivered personally by Jessica Whitcutt MCIPR, with thirty years of senior reputation experience and a published methodology behind it.

What's included

Website content review, rewrite, and AEO/GEO refresh of existing pages
AI-readable schema markup and technical AEO foundations added to your current site
LinkedIn profile rebuild for the founder, plus a content cadence template
Founder messaging document: how to talk about what you do, in writing and in person
90-day content launch plan, ready to execute or hand to a content provider

Optional add-on

HubSpot CRM setup with pipeline stages, lead capture forms, and integration with your refreshed website. Scoped to the size of your existing contact database and team.

"Jessica has helped us to develop a strategic content approach and key messaging for our executives to use across various platforms, helping us to align our leaders with the most pressing issues in our industry. As a group that understands the importance and value of reputation, we were thrilled to find a consultant who could add such great value from both a strategic and practical perspective."

GM, Corporate Communications, BMW Group Australia

Engagement model: Fixed fee, agreed up front, paid in two instalments. No long-term commitment beyond the project.

Learn more about Foundation →

Growth is the monthly retainer that takes the foundation you have refreshed and runs it. It works on both halves of the Founder Visibility Stack™ at once: the online layer (LinkedIn, content, AI visibility, press) and the real-world layer (speaker opportunities, networking, partnerships, peer recognition). Both compound. Neither works on its own.

The retainer is built for outcomes, not hours. Typical clients begin appearing in AI-generated recommendations within 90 days, with pipeline impact — more enquiries, better-qualified conversations, faster sales cycles — showing up between months three and six.

What's included every month

Strategy
Online positioning
Earned media
Real-world positioning
AI visibility measurement
Business development support

"I have learnt a lot from working with Jessica about what executive profiling can do and she has been nothing short of exceptional. She has had a huge impact on my social media profile. It's been a fantastic experience working with her."

Chief Product Supply Chain Officer, Unilever

Engagement model: Monthly retainer. No long-term contract. Monthly review, 30-day notice either side.

Learn more about Growth →

Why clients hire It's a Shovel

Why founder-led businesses hire It's a Shovel

The strategic argument for reputation-led visibility is now in the open. The execution at this level is not.

Thirty years of FTSE-level reputation work

Seven years leading reputation for SABMiller (FTSE Top 20) across Africa. Senior in-house and consulting work for Unilever, BMW, PayPal. Advisory projects with multiple high growth businesses in the UK, Australia, Dubai, Singapore, USA and South Africa. This is a track record, not an aspiration.

The Reputation with Purpose framework, first published in 2017

A proprietary, codified methodology, first published in 2017 and set out as a full eight-stage framework in January 2018 (formally published March 2018), that links what your business does, what it stands for, and how that is captured for the world to find. It predates the mainstream corporate purpose movement, the Business Roundtable's 2019 redefinition of corporate purpose, and the ESG investment wave. The principle has been the same since the beginning: genuine authority earns citation; citation earns discovery; discovery drives growth.

MCIPR, delivering personally

No account team. No juniors learning on your business. Strategy and execution from the same person, who is accountable for the result. Jessica Whitcutt holds MCIPR status (Member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations), the UK's professional body for public relations, and works to its Code of Conduct.

The strategic quality previously available only to FTSE-level brands, now accessible to founder-led businesses.

Senior strategic work, scoped for founder-led businesses

Industry benchmarking from the PRCA's UK PR and Communications Census 2025 puts the average UK PR retainer at around £4,700 per month.¹ Independent analysis of 61 UK agencies in 2025 found a near-identical figure of £4,672.² Within those averages, large London and global agency retainers run materially higher; some enterprise reputation programmes are reported at five-figure monthly retainers.³ The work is real, the prices are real, and they exist because reputation, visibility, and pipeline work compounds in measurable commercial value. It's a Shovel exists to make that same work commercially rational at the founder-led scale.

Provider type	Typical scale	Delivery model	Sector emphasis
Global PR networks (top of the UK Top 150)	Enterprise-level monthly retainers	Team-based, often with juniors leading day-to-day	Corporates, listed companies, PE-backed firms
Boutique enterprise reputation practices	Premium monthly retainers	Partially personal, with team support	Founders and executives at mid-to-large firms
Independent UK PR agencies (the wider market)	Around £4.7K/month on average¹	Mostly team-based	Mixed: corporate, consumer, tech
It's a Shovel	Scoped for founder-led £500K to £5M businesses	Personal, MCIPR-delivered, no junior team	Founder-led advisory, professional services, and B2B
Freelance market (e.g. The Work Crowd)	Lower, variable	Variable, not regulated	General PR, mixed seniority

The same category of work the wider UK PR industry delivers at an average of £4.7K per month,¹ scoped for founder-led businesses and delivered personally by a senior MCIPR practitioner.

[1] Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA), PR and Communications Census 2025 (UK edition).

[2] Essential Content, Public Relations Agency Retainer Cost UK 2024–2025, analysis of 61 independent UK PR agencies, January 2025.

[3] PRWeek UK, UK Top 150 Consultancies annual ranking, 2025 and 2026 editions.

Start here

Start where most clients start: with the free heatmap

We will run your business and three competitors of your choosing through all the major AI engines and send you a one-page visibility heatmap. Free, delivered within two working days. You either use the findings yourself or you talk to us about what comes next.

Get your free AI Visibility Heatmap → Or read more about what we think →

Frequently Asked Questions

Most clients start with the free AI Visibility Audit, because it tells you whether you have a visibility problem worth fixing before you spend anything on solving it. The audit verdict points you at the right starting service: Discovery and Strategy if positioning needs work, Foundation if positioning is settled and the infrastructure is the gap, or a focused Discovery and Strategy and Foundation engagement (often at reduced scope) on the way to Growth if you mostly need consistent execution. The audit is designed to answer this question for you.
The AI Visibility Audit is free and optional; you can start there or skip it entirely. Discovery and Strategy and Foundation can each be bought as standalone fixed-fee projects, with their own complete deliverables. Growth, however, requires Discovery and Strategy and Foundation to have been done first, because Growth is the delivery phase that runs on top of the strategic and infrastructural work those projects produce. If you have done significant equivalent work elsewhere, those earlier engagements can be reduced in scope, but they cannot be skipped, because the methodology needs to be applied for the delivery work to compound.
You can. The audit is a free diagnostic, not a prerequisite. Most founders who skip the audit enter at Discovery and Strategy or Foundation, depending on where their gap is. The audit is short and gives you a written heatmap regardless, so it is usually worth doing first, even if only to confirm what you already suspect.
The Founder Visibility Stack™ is the underlying methodology behind every service. The audit measures the current state of your stack. Discovery and Strategy designs what each layer should look like. Foundation refreshes the layers that need refreshing. Growth runs the layers, producing visibility across AI assistants, peer networks, search engines, press, LinkedIn, and events, which compounds into pipeline.
Referrals are a strength, not a strategy. Referral pipelines tend to be unpredictable, undifferentiated by client quality, and vulnerable to single-source risk. The work It's a Shovel does is designed to make your existing referral pipeline more consistent and to add a second, independent channel of better-qualified enquiries from buyers who found you through their own research. Most clients keep their referrals; they stop being entirely dependent on them.
No. Discovery and Strategy and Foundation are fixed-fee projects with no ongoing commitment. The Growth retainer is monthly, with 30 days' notice on either side. The audit is free.
No. The services are designed for founder-led businesses with a long buyer journey, where reputation, authority, and visibility shape who gets onto a shortlist. That includes advisory and professional services firms, financial services, sustainability and B Corp businesses, specialist B2B, and hospitality and tourism. The common thread is the buyer journey, not the sector.
You will hear back personally from Jessica within one working day. Most first conversations are 30 minutes and end with a clear recommendation for which service is the right place to start. There is no formal sales process and no proposal team.

Still have questions? Take a look at the FAQ or reach out anytime.

Get in touch