PrimeSteed turned three this year.
I know our website doesn’t quite reflect that. I’ve been so busy with client work that updating our own site has always fallen to the bottom of the list. From the outside, it probably looks like PrimeSteed is all brand and no substance.
That became especially clear recently, when I started talking to a few digital marketing agencies in New Zealand. I got the sense that they weren’t quite sure whether we were a real, established business.
Fair enough. We hadn’t told our story.
So this is it: the story of why I started PrimeSteed.
It began with a layoff
Back in 2023, the company I was working for was under serious pressure to cut costs. Layoffs were inevitable.
The website I managed was performing well. Traffic was growing, and the work we had been doing was paying off. We had found several opportunities, acted on them, and the numbers kept moving in the right direction.
The problem was not traffic. The problem was the market.
The company was focused on Africa. You can build a huge audience there, but it is much harder to turn that audience into meaningful revenue. User numbers alone do not pay the bills. The business had been losing money for a long time, and eventually something had to give.
Thirty percent of the company was laid off.
I was the only SEO person on my team. I was laid off too.
At first, I did what you are supposed to do: I started looking for another job. Fortunately, I had enough experience that it did not take long to get several good offers.
Then, right as I was about to accept one, my husband was laid off as well.
He is an excellent backend engineer, with years of experience behind him. But in China’s tech industry, turning 35 can feel like reaching an invisible deadline. You may still be capable, experienced, and good at what you do, but the market does not always see you that way.
He could have found another role. But it felt like we would simply be starting the same cycle again.
One day, after a lot of thinking, he said: “What if we went to New Zealand?”
Choosing a different path
Career-wise, staying in China might have made more sense for me.
But I also wanted to see a different world and try a different way of living. So I said yes. I turned down the offers I had and decided to go with him.
One of the companies I had interviewed with did not want to lose me entirely. They asked if I would be interested in working with them part-time as a consultant.
That idea was new to me.
My husband is a backend engineer, but he also knows some frontend development and WordPress. I had spent years working across SEO, website design, copywriting, and image editing. Over time, I had also built relationships with reliable writers and backlink partners.
Between us, we had a useful set of skills.
So we thought: maybe we could do this ourselves.
We registered a small business in my husband’s name, and PrimeSteed was born.
Why PrimeSteed?
There are twelve animals in the Chinese zodiac, and my husband was born in the Year of the Horse.
A steed is a horse with strength and spirit. I liked the image of a powerful horse that keeps moving, keeps running, and does not give up halfway.
That is what I wanted PrimeSteed to be.
I have always loved the name. And I have always believed that we could build something worthwhile around it.
What running an agency taught me
In PrimeSteed’s early days, I worked with three brands.
One was a year-and-a-half partnership. The other two lasted just over four months each.
That may not sound like a long list of clients, but those three projects gave me a completely different perspective from the one I had as an employee.
Big brands vs. small brands
Larger brands are usually clearer about what they want from outsourced SEO.
They may say: “We need this many blog posts published each week,” or “We need this many pages optimised.” Their targets are specific, their processes are more structured, and their budgets are usually larger.
Smaller brands often come to you with a much simpler request: “I need more orders.”
They may not know exactly what kind of SEO work they need. They simply want to spend as little as possible and get the biggest possible return.
That is understandable. But it also means the work is different.
Agency life and in-house life are very different
When you work in-house, you can go deep.
You may only have one or two websites to focus on. You have time to understand the business, think through the strategy, and keep improving your craft.
Agency work is much more demanding.
You are working with several businesses at once. You spend a lot of time communicating, setting expectations, and helping clients understand why SEO is worth investing in before they can see the results.
There is much more I could say about that.
Running an agency is definitely more tiring than being in-house. But it also gave me something I value very highly: freedom.
No commute. No clocking in. More control over how I use my time.
The work I’m proud of
Some people might look at this and say: “Three clients in three years? And two of them only lasted a few months? You can’t have been doing very well.”
But that is not how I see it.
I worked with only three clients, but the people I worked with at those companies are still close friends today.
For one client, I worked with them for a year and a half. We published more than 100 high-quality blog posts, and their blog became the top traffic-driving blog in their industry.
For the other two, I helped build their websites from scratch. Within three or four months, both started seeing clear, visible growth in traffic.
Those projects ended because the companies changed direction. I still feel sad when I think about that.
When I take on a project, I care about it deeply. I treat it as if it were my own.
I love watching a website grow: getting the right content, gaining traction, improving bit by bit, and becoming something stronger than it was before. That process gives me a real sense of pride.
What happened after that?
In July 2024, my husband and I finally arrived in New Zealand.
He began a Master’s degree in IT, and I came with him on a partner work visa.
With him studying, the pressure on me to provide a stable income became much greater. So I made a practical choice. I put the more uncertain agency model aside for the time being and, in September that year, started working full-time as a consultant for the company I work with now.
The work has gone well, and I am proud of the results.
But PrimeSteed was put on hold.
Writing this now makes me feel a little emotional.
I have always wanted a freer way of working. When I was working with those three clients, I was busy and tired, but I was also genuinely happy.
If I could not sleep, I could work late at night.
If I had a quiet weekend, I could make progress then.
I could focus on outcomes instead of being pulled into endless meetings and internal conversations.
For me, that was not a lack of structure. It was a different kind of focus.
PrimeSteed is quiet for now.
But one day, we’ll be back.