What I've Learned About Digital in North Devon (After Three Years Here)

When my family and I moved to North Devon three years ago, I assumed the digital gap between the South West and the big cities would be smaller than people said. I had spent a decade in commercial roles at large organisations, and I expected the difference to be modest.

I was wrong. The gap is bigger than I expected. But not in the way you might think, and the real story is far more encouraging than the lazy version of it.

🙅 The Lazy Version, and Why It's Wrong

The lazy version goes like this: rural means behind. Businesses out here are not as switched on, not as ambitious, not as digital. It is a tidy story and it is mostly nonsense.

In three years here I have met genuinely impressive business owners. People running tight, profitable operations. People with real ambition, deep knowledge of their trade, and loyal customers built up over years. The idea that South West businesses are somehow less capable does not survive five minutes of actually talking to them.

What is true is something more specific and more fixable. Many excellent local businesses are being let down by their digital foundations. Not by a lack of talent or drive, but by systems that have never been given proper attention.

🔍 What I Actually See

Here is the pattern, repeated across very different businesses, from hospitality to trades to professional services.

• Strong business, weak systems. A profitable, well-run operation sitting on a CRM that is half set up, or no CRM at all, and a customer list scattered across a notebook, an inbox and someone's phone.
• No follow-up. Enquiries come in, get a reply, and then nothing. No structured way of staying in touch with people who showed interest but did not buy straight away.
• Underused tools. Software being paid for and used at a fraction of its capability, because nobody has had the time to set it up properly.
• Decisions on gut feel. Owners who know their business deeply but cannot easily see the numbers that would confirm or challenge what their instinct is telling them.

🤝 Why I Think the Gap Is Actually Good News

Here is the part that genuinely excites me, and the reason I started Surfon.

A gap is only bad news if it is hard to close. This one is not. The businesses I meet do not need a digital transformation programme or a six-figure agency project. They need their foundations sorted. A CRM set up properly. A follow-up process that runs on its own. Clear reporting. Tools that talk to each other.

That is not exotic work. It is practical, well-understood work, and the return on it is large precisely because the starting point is so far below where it should be. When a business is genuinely good at what it does, fixing the digital plumbing does not deliver a marginal gain. It removes a brake that has been quietly on the whole time.

🌍 Local First, But Not Local Only

There is a reason I chose to base Surfon here rather than in a city, and it is not just that we live here.

Cities are well served. A business in London or Bristol has no shortage of agencies and consultants competing for its attention. A business in North Devon, Exmoor or along the coast often has to look a long way for senior-level digital and commercial help, and when it finds it, the price tag is set for a city market, not a local one.

That is the gap Surfon is built to fill. Senior commercial and digital experience, the kind I built across organisations like The Jockey Club and Goodwood, available to South West businesses without the city overheads. Local first, genuinely. But the work itself travels fine, so if you are further afield and the fit is right, that works too.

🧭 Final Thought

Three years in, here is what I believe. The South West is full of excellent businesses that are not being held back by ability or ambition. They are being held back by digital foundations that nobody has had the time, or the right help, to sort out.

That is not a sad story. It is an opportunity, and a straightforward one. The brake is easy to release once you know where it is.

If you run a business in North Devon or the wider South West and you have a feeling your systems are quietly holding you back, I would genuinely like to hear from you. Get in touch, and let us have a proper conversation about it.