The manifesto · our why
We are anti-marketers.
We started Wonder Works because marketing became the thing people skip: the ads, the fluff, the "engaging content" nobody engages with. We don't believe in shouting. We believe in being worth finding.
The one idea we own is relevance. How people search, scroll and choose has changed more in the last eighteen months than in the ten years before. Most businesses are still marketing like it's 2019. We make businesses relevant to right now: this year's algorithms, this year's search, this year's customers. Current beats loud. Every time.
So we help, we don't sell. We'd rather answer your question than interrupt a stranger. We put our prices on the website. We tell you when you don't need us, and when you need a specialist instead. We cap our client list where the quality lives. And we do the work ourselves, the two of us, personally, because that's the only version of this we'd buy.
What we won't do: fake urgency, vanity metrics, lock-in contracts, jargon, templates, or ever making you cringe at your own marketing.
Wonder Works. We make your business relevant.
The story
How Wonder Works happened
Running a business is hard. Properly hard. Anyone who does it, any size, any trade, has our respect before they've said a word. That's not a marketing line; it's the reason this company exists. We genuinely love helping people build things. It's what gets us up in the morning.
Colin has been an entrepreneur his whole working life: real successes and multiple failures, with no interest in hiding either, because the failures did most of the teaching. Neli is the creative; she thinks differently, sees what others walk past. Together we just work, which is handy, because we're also married. One strategic mind, one creative one, and a shared obsession with growing businesses through genuine stories built around real people.
We're both students of hospitality, the industry where "people first" isn't a value on a poster, it's the only way to survive a Saturday night. You can't fake your way through a full restaurant. That training never leaves you.
Then we watched the world change. The old marketing (pressure selling, tricks, manipulation) was dying, and honestly, good riddance; we always hated it. What replaced it is the thing hospitality taught us from day one: honesty, people first, trust earned slowly and kept carefully. For the first time, the way marketing works matched the way we work. We belonged in the new one.
And AI? AI is why we could finally do this as two people. Not AI doing the creative: that's the slop everyone else is publishing, and you can smell it a mile off. AI in the engine room: workflows, efficiency, the hours of grunt work compressed. So the human hours go where they matter, and we can help more businesses than two people ever could before. Machines in the engine room. Humans on the page.
That was the moment. Home was Blagoevgrad, Neli's hometown, and Wonder Works was the obvious next step. So we took it, in May 2025. A year later: clients across three countries, a client cap we refuse to raise, and this website you're reading, built exactly the way we build them for clients.
Meet the two of us
The two of us
Colin Rooney
Strategy & Commercial
Twenty-five years in hospitality, from trainee chef to global operations: Head of F&B for Generator (11 properties, 9 countries), Head of Country for Selina Ecuador, Global F&B Manager for Mad Monkey, a $7M+ operation across 25+ properties with 300-500 staff. Entrepreneur, operator, and author of THE NO-BS F&B PLAYBOOK: Forge Your Business into a Local Legend. Speaks fluent P&L. Allergic to marketing jargon.
The book is out on Kindle, and a rewritten edition is on the way.
Neli Rooney
Creative & Design
I was ten years old the first time I ran a shop on my own.
It was my parents' convenience store and vending business in Bulgaria. I'd tell my mum to go and rest, then take the day myself: the suppliers, the customers, the opening and the closing. I didn't have the words for it then, but I was learning the thing that still governs everything I design. A business isn't an idea. It's a few hundred small decisions that either work or they don't.
Design came much later. Before it there was America at eighteen with no English and two full-time jobs. Then two pubs in England, fifty staff, a cellar I had to learn from nothing, and menus I designed because nobody else was going to.
Now I lead every piece of creative work we ship: brand, website, packaging, menu, campaign. All of it goes through my hands, in English and in Bulgarian, written and designed natively in both rather than translated and hoped for.
I am still, after all of it, someone who will spend three hours on a curve nobody will consciously notice. I've stopped apologising for that. It's the difference between work that looks fine and work that feels right.
Colin & Neli, on marketing, business and life.
14,300 subscribers and counting. Watch on YouTube →
No polish, no third person
Colin, in his own words
I'm Colin. I'm 52, I'm a learning machine, and I started Wonder Works with Neli because we had too much to give and not enough reasons to hold it back.
I was born and raised in High Wycombe, England. I failed at school because it didn't stimulate me. I had undiagnosed ADHD in an era when that just meant you were separated from everyone else and left to figure things out on your own. So I found my own way of learning, and honestly, that's the best thing school ever did for me.
I spent over 20 years in hospitality and customer experience across four continents and more than 20 countries, reporting directly to CEOs and founders. I understand what makes people tick, what they need before they know they need it, and how to build experiences that earn loyalty.
I went through a very dark period dealing with depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder. It cost me marriages, relationships with my kids, and jobs. It controlled me then. It does not control me now. I'm proud of where I am and what I've built since.
When we launched this company, we used AI for everything. It was fast, it was easy, and it stripped every bit of personality out of what we were doing. We sounded like everyone else. Six months of daily research later, we reset. AI is now a tool we use for speed and infrastructure. It will never replace the human side of what we do.
Today I research, I learn, I understand and I implement. Every single day. I host a podcast where I talk openly about research-backed self-improvement. I love to cook. I write more than I read. And I'm obsessed with becoming a better human, a better partner and a better professional, in that order.
"I don't see my clients as my clients. I only care about what their clients think. Because their customers are the only ones that matter, for both of us."
The lines we hold
What will we never promise you?
Five things you will never hear from us. If you hear them from another agency, ask why they're so confident.
- 01
Instant results.
No one can promise that and mean it.
- 02
Work without strategy.
Every decision needs data behind it, not guesswork.
- 03
Silence when it's hard.
Losing a client through lack of communication would be a failure on our part.
- 04
Vanity over revenue.
Reports full of likes and views that don't connect to your bottom line are worthless to both of us.
- 05
Disrespect, in any direction.
Partnership means partnership. Kind, professional, direct, both ways.
"I would rather your business had 100 views and 10 sales than 150,000 views and 5. Followers, likes and view counts are vanity metrics. They look good in a report but they don't pay your bills."
What it's actually like
How does working with Wonder Works actually look?
It starts with a conversation. Some people prefer a call, some prefer to message. Either is fine. But we need to understand your why before anything else. Most people say their goal is more sales or more money. That's not a why, that's a result. The why is what the result gives you: freedom, security, time with your family, proof that your idea works. Once we understand that, we can build something that actually gets you there.
Every decision we make is backed by research and data. Not opinions, not what we personally like, not what worked five years ago. We test, we measure, we learn from the mistakes and we adapt. Daily.
And we believe in honest, sometimes difficult conversations. If something isn't working, we say so. If your feedback is based on personal preference rather than data, we'll respectfully push back. If we let opinions override research, we can't be accountable for the results. And we need to be accountable. That's what partnership means.
Straight answers
Before you ask.
We need results fast, can you get us a quick win?
Honestly? If you're looking for a quick fix, we're not the right team, and truthfully, nobody is. Anyone promising one is selling you the old marketing. Real visibility compounds: the first signals show in weeks, the results that matter take months, our best case study went from zero to over a million organic views, and it took five and a half. What we CAN do quickly is fix what's broken today: a Google Business Profile nobody maintains, a website AI can't read, a menu selling the wrong things. Quick improvements, yes. Magic, no.
Who actually does the work at Wonder Works?
We do. Colin leads strategy, numbers and words; Neli leads brand, design and everything visual. No juniors, no outsourcing, no account managers between you and the people doing the work.
Where are you based?
Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, Neli's hometown, working remotely with clients across Bulgaria, the UK and the US, in English and Bulgarian.
Do you use AI?
In the engine room, yes, workflows, research, efficiency. On the page, no: strategy, words and design are human. That's why our clients' content doesn't smell like everyone else's.
Why do you cap your client numbers?
Because founder-led only means something if the founders actually do the work. Eight marketing partnerships, five F&B partnerships. When we're full, we say so.
What kind of businesses do you say no to?
Anyone who wants tricks, fake urgency, bought followers, "viral by Friday." Anyone looking for a supplier to blame rather than a partner to work with. And anyone we can't genuinely help: if your problem needs a specialist we're not, we'll say so and point you to one.
What's it actually like working with a married couple?
Efficient. Strategy debates happen over dinner, revisions don't wait for Monday, and neither of us can get anything past the other's standards. The creative mind and the commercial one live in the same house, your business gets both, and they're always talking.
Fancy working with people who actually care?