Why I Started Plain Speak Online Services

I spent eleven years working in laboratories. Leading a team, well-paid enough. But during COVID lockdowns I had the kind of time to think that most of us spend our whole careers avoiding — and I realised I’d gotten everything I was going to get out of labs. It wasn’t my passion. Hadn’t been for a while, if I’m honest.

I started studying networking. Found it genuinely fascinating, but I couldn’t picture myself doing it day to day for the next twenty years. Then I switched to web development and something changed. Every new thing I learned, I wanted to learn the next thing. I could see myself doing this for the rest of my life. After eleven years of showing up, it took me until my early-thirties to find work that actually felt like mine — but better late than never.

I finished a Cert IV in Front End Web Development, started a Full Stack Diploma, landed my first IT role at a managed service provider in Perth, and got exposure to some genuinely complex systems at the Department of Education and in SaaS roles after that. I was building real skills. The question was what to do with them.

My sister’s beauty salon

My sister runs a beauty salon. She’d decided to set up online bookings through Square — researched it herself, configured the services, set the durations and pricing, done basically everything right. She was about 85% of the way there.

The remaining 15% was killing her. She couldn’t get the booking system live, couldn’t get the link onto her Google Business Profile — all the final steps that her clients would actually see and use. She’d spent the better part of two weeks trying to get it across the line. I came over one afternoon, spent less than an hour on it, and it was done.

It wasn’t because I was smarter than her. It was because I was comfortable doing a bit of research, trying a few things, and not panicking when something didn’t work first go. That’s a pretty low bar — but it turned out to be exactly the bar that was in her way.

What struck me wasn’t the problem. It was that she’d already done the hard work. She’d put in the time, she understood her business, she’d built 85% of the solution herself. She just needed someone to remove one final roadblock — and once that was gone, the whole thing worked.

The gap nobody was filling

I figured my sisters situation wasnt unique. Solo operators and small business owners - many of them had already invested real time and money into software or tools or systems. They weren’t asking someone to build them something from scratch. They just needed help getting over the line.

And the options were grim. Figure it out yourself and keep losing hours to it, or pay an agency a fee that would make your eyes water for something that probably shouldn’t cost that much. There wasn’t really a middle ground — someone who understood the technology, understood small business budgets, and genuinely wanted to help rather than lock you into something you didn’t need.

That’s what I wanted PSOS to be.

How I actually run this

I publish my prices on the website. I got sick of hitting “book a call to find out more” when I was looking for services for my own business — my time matters, and so does yours. If something’s in your budget, you should be able to find that out without sitting through a sales call first.

I tell people when they don’t need my help yet. If you’re three months into business and not sure what you need, I’ll point you toward the free stuff first. When the time comes for something bigger, hopefully you’ll remember that I didn’t try to sell you something you weren’t ready for.

And I care whether things actually work for your business — not just whether I’ve technically delivered what was on the brief. A lot of the people I work with are running one-person or small-team operations. Their business is their livelihood. I treat it that way.

None of that is revolutionary. It’s just how I’d want to be treated.

The short version

You don’t need a massive strategy or a big agency. You need someone who understands what’s actually broken, knows how to fix it, and isn’t going to overcomplicate the solution to justify a bigger invoice.