The Outside Looking In

A ground-level look at what it’s actually like to encounter your business.

You know your business too well to experience it like somebody finding it for the first time.

You know what you mean. You know where everything is. You know which bits matter.

Your potential customers don’t.

The Outside Looking In is a fixed-price V&V diagnostic for owner-led businesses and small teams. I experience your business from the outside, work out where what you think you’re communicating and what people are actually experiencing don’t quite match, and give you a clear, practical roadmap for what I’d do next.

No generic audit. No 47-page report padded with traffic lights. No strategy built for a fictional business with twice your team, twice your budget and ten extra hours in the week.

Just a proper look at the business you’ve actually got.

What happens

Before we speak, I encounter the business cold.

I’ll look at the places a prospective customer is likely to meet you: search, website, social channels, offers, messaging, reviews and the route to enquire, book or buy.

The first question I want to answer is simple:

What did I think you did before you told me?

Then we have a 90-minute conversation about what you’re actually trying to achieve, who you want to reach, what’s working, what isn’t, what you’ve tried before and what you realistically have available in terms of time, people and budget.

After that, I go back in with the full picture.

I look at the important stuff: what people understand, where the language gets muddy, whether the interesting thing about the business is actually visible, where trust is being lost, where people are having to work too hard, whether your marketing activity is helping the business objective and where you may simply be wasting time.

And, importantly, I’ll also tell you what’s already perfectly bloody fine and should be left alone.

What you get

You’ll receive The Outside Looking In — Field Notes & Roadmap.

It isn’t written to hit an arbitrary page count. It contains what you need to know and no more.

You’ll see what I thought you did before we spoke, what you told me you’re actually trying to achieve, where those things aren’t quite matching, and the significant things I noticed along the way.

Then comes the useful bit:

If this were my business, here’s what I’d do.

Usually that means three major priorities, in order.

For each one, I’ll tell you what I’d change, why I think it matters and what I expect it to improve.

Then we’ll spend 60 minutes together going through the findings, answering questions and making sure you’re clear on what happens next.

What it costs

£895

That price covers one owner-led business or small team, one principal offer, service area or primary route through the business, and approximately three core public-facing channels or assets.

The process usually takes around two weeks once I have everything I need.

If your business is more complicated - multiple brands, substantially different audiences, several service divisions or multiple routes through the business — I can still do it.

Those diagnostics are scoped individually and start from £1,500.

I’ll tell you the price before we begin.

And afterwards?

You can take the roadmap and implement it yourself.

You can hand it to your existing team, web developer, marketing person or suppliers.

Or you can ask V&V to stay involved.

If you want help making the changes, that work is scoped separately because I’m not going to pretend I know what implementation you need before I’ve actually looked at the business.

There’s no compulsory retainer and no deliberately missing second half of the answer.

£895 buys you the diagnosis, the thinking and the plan.

What you do with it afterwards is entirely up to you.

Think your business needs an outside pair of eyes?

Tell me a little bit about the business and what’s been niggling at you.

Email at caroline@vectorandverse.co.uk

Or contact me via the website