Privacy Policy

1. Information You Give Us

When you fill in a contact form or request something, we collect what you type into it. That's usually your name, your email address, and your message. We pass those details to our customer relationship management system so we can reply and keep track of the conversation.

If you subscribe to updates, we keep your email address until you unsubscribe.

2. Information Collected Automatically

Like almost every website, ours records some technical information when you visit:

• Analytics. We use Google Analytics 4 to understand which pages get read, how people arrive, and roughly where in the world they are. Google sets cookies to do this and processes the data on its own systems under its own privacy policy.
• Security and delivery. Our site runs on Cloudflare, which processes requests to serve pages, block attacks, and filter automated traffic. Contact forms are protected by Cloudflare Turnstile, which checks that a submission came from a person rather than a script.
• Site search. Described in section 3.
• Podcast link clicks. Described in section 4.

For the records we keep ourselves, described in sections 3 and 4, we deliberately store a country-level location rather than your IP address, and a broad category of browser or app rather than your full user-agent string.

3. Site Search

When you use the search box, we record the search term you settled on, which section you searched, how many results came back, and the page you searched from. We do this to find out what people come here looking for, especially the searches that return nothing, because those tell us what we haven't written yet.

Searches are recorded once you stop typing, not letter by letter. Before anything is sent, your browser checks the text for things that look like an email address or a phone number, and if it finds any, the search is discarded entirely rather than recorded. We don't want that information and we've built the feature to throw it away before it reaches us.

Please don't type personal or confidential information into the search box.

4. Podcast and Product Links

Links from our podcast show notes and episode pages to our products pass through a redirect on our own site. When you follow one, we record which episode and which link you came from, along with a country and a broad browser category, and we add a tracking code to the destination address. If you later fill in a form on that destination, the code lets us connect the enquiry back to the episode that prompted it.

This is how we work out which episodes are actually useful to people. It isn't shared with advertising networks.

5. Cookies and Similar Technologies

We use a small number of cookies and similar browser storage:

• Analytics cookies set by Google Analytics, which recognize a returning browser so visits aren't double counted.
• Security cookies set by Cloudflare to keep the site available and to run the Turnstile check on forms.
• Session storage that holds a random identifier for the current browser tab. It lets us see that a search, a link click, and an enquiry came from the same visit. It contains no name, email, or account, it isn't shared with anyone else, and it's erased when you close the tab.

You can block or delete cookies through your browser settings. Blocking them won't stop you using the site, though some things may behave differently.

We currently use Google Analytics for measurement. We don't run advertising or remarketing pixels on this site today. If that changes, we'll list the providers here and describe your opt-out options before we start.

6. How We Use This Information

• To reply to you and to provide what you asked for
• To send updates and content you've asked to receive
• To work out which articles and episodes are worth making more of
• To find the gaps in what we've published, mainly through searches that return nothing
• To keep the site secure, available, and free of automated abuse
• To meet our legal and record-keeping obligations

7. How Information Is Shared

We don't sell your personal information, and we don't share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

We do rely on service providers who process information on our behalf:

• Cloudflare for hosting, content delivery, storage, security, and the databases holding the records described in sections 3 and 4
• Google for website analytics
• GoHighLevel for customer relationship management and email
• Podcast platforms such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube, which have their own privacy policies covering what happens when you listen or watch there

We may also disclose information where the law requires it, or to protect our rights, safety, or property.

8. How Long We Keep It

Enquiries and contact details are kept for as long as we're in touch with you, and afterwards for as long as we need them for our records.

Search records are deleted automatically after 548 days, about 18 months. That's an automated job that runs nightly, not a promise to get round to it.

The other automatically collected records described in sections 2 and 4 are kept while they're useful for the purposes above. Google Analytics data is kept according to the retention period set in that product.

9. Your Choices

• Email. Every marketing email has an unsubscribe link, and it works immediately.
• Cookies. Control them in your browser settings.
• Analytics. Google publishes a browser add-on that opts you out of Google Analytics on every site that uses it.
• Global Privacy Control. If your browser or an extension sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we treat it as a request to opt out of any sale or sharing of your personal information. As explained above, we don't do either.
• Search. Search runs in your browser, so you can use the site without searching if you'd rather nothing was recorded.

10. Your Rights Under US State Privacy Laws

Several US states, including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Texas, and Virginia, give residents rights over their personal information. Depending on where you live, those can include the right to know what we hold, to get a copy, to correct it, to have it deleted, and to opt out of sale, sharing, or targeted advertising. You also have the right not to be treated differently for exercising them.

Not every one of these laws applies to a business of our size, but we'll honor these requests from any US resident who makes one, regardless of whether we're legally required to. Email us at the address below and we'll respond within the time the relevant law allows. We may need to ask a question or two to confirm who you are before we act.

11. Children

This site is meant for business owners and professionals. It isn't directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect their information. If you believe a child has given us personal information, email us and we'll delete it.

12. Security

We use appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect the information we hold, including encryption in transit, access controls, and deliberately collecting less than we could. No website can promise perfect security, but we've tried to limit both what we keep and how long we keep it.

13. Visitors From Outside the United States

This site is operated from the United States and aimed at a US audience. If you visit from elsewhere, your information is transferred to and processed in the United States, where privacy laws may differ from those in your own country.

14. Changes to This Policy

We'll update this page when what we do changes, and we'll move the date at the top when we do. If a change is significant, we'll say so clearly rather than quietly editing a line.

15. Contact Us

Questions about this policy, or want to exercise any of the rights above?

• By email: stuart@mrstuartbell.com