How to write a brief that gets you the right expert

Everything on blue lemons starts from a brief: it's how the expert prepares for your call. A vague brief gets you generic advice, and a sharp one takes about ten minutes to write. This is how to write the sharp one.

Five sentences

A complete brief answers five questions, and one sentence per question is honestly enough.

Where you are: "We're a 30-person food brand doing about £4m, mostly through two big grocers." What's happening: "Our biggest retailer wants to renegotiate terms at the annual review." What you're weighing up: "We don't know whether to hold firm, give ground on price, or offer something else entirely." What's at stake: "They're 60% of revenue, so getting this wrong matters more than anything else this year." And what a win looks like: "I want to walk into that meeting knowing our position and our walk-away point."

An expert can prepare properly from that before a word has been spoken.

Use numbers

"We're growing fast" tells the reader nothing they can use. "From £1m to £4m in two years" tells them nearly everything. Rough figures are fine: bands for revenue, headcount, budget, timeline. Think of them as coordinates. Each number in the brief is a question that doesn't need asking during your paid hour.

Write the honest version

The commonest mistake is writing the investor version of your situation: composed, in control, merely canvassing opinion. Advisers can't do much with the tidy story. The sentence you're reluctant to type, "between us, I think we conceded too much last year and they've noticed", is usually the one that unlocks the call. Everything in a brief is held in confidence, and if you want the formal comfort you can attach an NDA to a booking; it's shared with the expert before you speak.

Say what kind of help you want

Identical situations can want different hours. One person wants a decision pressure-tested. Another is doing something for the first time and wants to hear how it usually goes. A third has a plan and wants someone to find the landmines in it. Tell the expert which of these you are ("mostly I want to know what I'm not seeing") and the conversation starts calibrated.

What to leave out

The company's full history, the industry backdrop, apologies for brevity, and anything you'd naturally say in the first two minutes anyway. Add a link only if it carries real weight; one load-bearing link beats five for-context ones.

Before and after

The weak version: "We need help with our marketing, which isn't performing as well as we'd like. Looking for expert guidance on strategy."

The strong version: "12-person B2B software company, £1.5m revenue, all of it from founder relationships so far. We've hired our first marketer and budgeted £150k for the year, but nobody senior here has ever run marketing. Before we spend it, I want an experienced marketing leader to pressure-test the plan and tell me what we're not seeing. If this budget is wasted we won't get another for two years."

Same company, same problem. The second version gets an hour the first version couldn't buy.

Why it's worth the ten minutes

A clear brief improves more than the advice. Senior people are drawn to problems that are plainly stated and honestly framed, so the brief also affects who leans in. Write the one you'd want to receive.