I earned the right to pick my clients
My name is Lee Fuhr. I’ve been doing UX and design work for nearly three decades, agencies first — Sapient, Sony as a client — then in-house at AOL and Teradata, then consulting for B2B software companies. I am good at it, and I’m done with it.
The work stopped surprising me. The problems were the same. The clients wanted the same things. And after a while, I realized that the companies I found most interesting, the ones doing hard, essential work in the physical world, weren’t in my client list at all. They were the ones nobody was taking seriously.
And there was something else. In digital, nothing you build leaves a mark. The product pivots, the company gets acquired, the feature you designed gets sunset before anyone notices it was there. None of it sticks. After enough of that, I started wanting to work with companies that build something real, something you can drive over, walk through, hold in your hand.
So I work with a small number of clients at a time. If I take on too many, none of them get what they’re paying for.
The companies that do real work deserve better marketing than they’ve been getting
The companies I work with now, manufacturers, trades contractors, industrial distributors, have been underserved for years. They get assigned to the junior designer who’s never set foot on a shop floor and can’t hide that he thinks the work is beneath him. They get handed a template and told it’s custom. They get a freelancer who answers emails for three weeks after launch and then vanishes.
The work these companies do matters. Their websites, more often than not, don’t show it. They’ve usually been in business for decades, built a real reputation, earned every job through referrals. Yet their site looks like someone made it on a free afternoon in 2019.
My theory: the best marketing for a company that builds things isn’t clever. It’s clear. It says what you do, who you do it for, and why you’re the one to trust. Then it gets out of the way and lets the work speak. The research backs this up →
From people who’ve actually worked with me
“Cost per lead dropped from $100 to about $20. Sessions and contacts increased threefold.”
“I can count the truly extraordinary designers I’ve had the luck to work with on less than one hand. Lee most certainly makes the cut.”
“The designs Lee created were responsible for more than doubling our customer registration percentage, virtually overnight.”
“Lee is a force to be reckoned with. He has a keen understanding of how people interact with software.”
“He’s more than just a consultant — he becomes part of your team. That close collaboration is where the real results come from.”
“Lee has laser-accurate design sense and a wealth of interaction knowledge. He communicates it so well.”