the first conversation

start here.

Every piece of work we do starts the same way. A conversation about what is actually happening in your business, before anyone says the word solution. This page tells you what that involves, what you get out of it, and who it doesn't work for.

Let's talk See how we work

what actually happens.

01YOU TELL US.Four questions on the form below. A couple of sentences on each is plenty.
02WE REPLY.A person reads it, not a filter, and the reply is about your situation rather than a brochure.
03WE TALK.An hour, free, and not a pitch. We ask about the numbers, the history and what has already been tried. Most of that hour is us listening.
04WE SAY IT.What we think, including when the answer is that you don't need us. That happens, and saying so is worth more than three weeks of finding out.
05WE SCOPE IT.If it's worth going further: a defined piece of work, a fixed fee agreed before anything starts, and a measure we both sign up to.

what you get from the hour.

You're not buying anything in that conversation, and we're not asking you to.

Our read on what is actually blocking growth, said plainly.
The two or three things we would look at first, and why those.
A straight answer on whether we are the right people for it.

what we need from you.

An hour with someone who can act on the answer.: Not a gatekeeper taking notes back to a committee.
The real numbers.: We cannot find a margin problem in a business that will only show us its revenue.
A willingness to be told something you disagree with.: Politely, with the reasoning, and only when we think it matters. But we will say it.

big enough to have real problems. small enough to move fast.

We work best with ambitious owners who are ready to act. You'll get the most from this if:

You believe the business is capable of more than it's currently doing.
You want to know what's actually driving the numbers, rather than what everyone assumes.
You're ready to change how the business works, not only how it's marketed.
You want the systems built for the company you're becoming, not the one you started.
You want someone to challenge the thinking, not agree with it.
You can act once a direction is agreed.

Roughly, that tends to mean 10 to 500 people. It's a guide rather than a rule: a smaller business with real scale, urgency and something to invest fits fine.

who this doesn't work for.

We'd rather say this now than three weeks in. This is not a fit if:

You want someone to post three times a week.
Posting more will not fix a proposition, a conversion journey or an offer. If posting is genuinely the gap we will say so, but it's not what you'd be hiring us for.
You have decided the plan and need a pair of hands.
We're not the cheapest way to execute a decision that is already made, and we would be bad value doing it.
You cannot give us access to the people, the numbers or the customers.
Diagnosis without access is guessing, and we will not charge for guessing.
You want AI because it is AI.
It is part of the toolkit. If the answer to your problem is a pricing change and a phone call, that is what you will get.
You want the decision validated.
If the direction is set and the question is really whether it's right, a second opinion you've paid for is worth nothing.
Nothing inside the business can actually change.
Growth that requires no change is not something anyone can sell you.

None of that makes yours a bad business. It makes us the wrong supplier, which is a different thing and a much cheaper one to find out early.

how long, and what it costs.

The conversation is an hour, and it is free.

A diagnostic is normally two to three weeks. Longer work depends entirely on what we find, and we agree the shape of it with you before it starts rather than after.

On cost: the rate is £62.50 plus VAT an hour, and that is the whole price list. We do not sell packages, because what a company of eight with a conversion problem needs looks nothing like what a company of two hundred with a margin problem needs, and quoting either before we have looked would be a guess. What changes is how many hours a piece of work takes, and you get that in writing before anything starts.

questions people ask first.

Is the first conversation really free?

Yes, and there's no follow-up sequence attached to it. You get an hour, our honest read, and no obligation. If we both think there's something worth doing, we will tell you what that would look like.

What if we're not sure what the problem is?

That's the normal case, and it's why the first step is a conversation rather than a quote. Most businesses can describe the symptom precisely and the cause not at all. Working out which is which is the job.

Do you only work with hospitality?

No. The thinking was built and tested in a real trading business, our own venue, which is why the examples on this site are specific rather than theoretical. The problems it solves are not hospitality-shaped: demand, conversion, margin, operational drag, experience and scale look much the same in a professional services firm or a trade business.

Who will we actually be dealing with?

Orange Jelly is deliberately small, so you're dealing with the people doing the work. There is no account manager between you and the thinking.

What happens to what we tell you?

It is used to have one useful conversation and nothing else. No list, no sequence, no sharing it. What you write about the business is commercially sensitive and is kept where only we can read it. The privacy notice has the detail.

stop circling the problem.

Tell us what's happening, what you've tried, and what needs to change.

Let's talk