"One of the brilliant things about Connectd is that the programme is built so it can be done alongside your day job, and allows you to take it at a more steady rate."
Mhairi Berry, Founder, Market Blueprint Consultancy: I crossed paths with Connectd early in 2025. I had just left my corporate career and was at a pivotal point in terms of what the next stage of my career was going to look like. On one of the many discovery calls I had with the customer team, a couple of things stood out. Number one was the opportunity to have a mentor. I really valued that aspect as I was navigating what was next for me. And number two was that there were different paths available. It wasn't just a one-year programme. It was something that could continue at whatever pace I wanted.
Mhairi Berry: The Academy gave me a really good foundation, both in polishing skills I'd already built throughout my career and in giving me a completely new angle on how to approach the work from a perspective I hadn't considered before.
The other element I leaned into quite heavily was the support from the customer success team. Talking with them about any concerns or questions I had as I went into those first conversations for potential engagements, working with them to find out as much as I could about the teams I was meeting. Just having them as a sounding board before I went into those conversations was really valuable.
Mhairi Berry: For me it comes down to two core things. Having spent a long career at executive level, I want to bring compressed expertise to anyone I'm working with. That's the fundamental number one thing.
And second, it's about prioritising one thing that the founder wants to unlock within a specific timeframe. The biggest successes I've had to date have come from working with a founder on a 30, 60, 90-day plan. Rather than working broadly, I sit in the founder's seat and pick key areas of priority that we unpick together.
Mhairi Berry: For me, this was all about value add. I was genuinely excited to work with a company where I could roll up my sleeves and get involved in their commercial operations, which is exactly my field of expertise as I launched my fractional consultancy.
Specifically, it was around teams, tools, operations, and where the skill gaps were. Some really quick wins came from sitting with the company and the founder and looking at their blueprint approach to the business and their go-to-market strategy. Something I've done many times over in my previous executive career, and really enjoyed doing with a smaller, more focused team.
Mhairi Berry: As I approach new engagements through Connectd, I do my homework on the company and find out as much as I can beforehand. I'll often give my mentor a quick call to sense-check something as I approach a new situation. But for me, it's always about working side by side with the founder to understand their key priorities, and working embedded within the organisation rather than advising from the sidelines, dropping strategy packs and running away. That's the opposite of how I like to operate.
It's really about working towards specific unlocks that move the business forward into its next area of growth or change.
Mhairi Berry: It's a genuinely difficult adjustment for someone coming from a large organisation into advisory or embedded consulting, because you're often doing the job of five people and walking into companies that don't yet have that structure and organisation in place.
My first step is always to approach it with a blueprint, really understand how they're operating today, and then work with the founder on my suggestions. I work step by step, because you can't untie everything within the first thirty days.
From a cadence perspective, across all of my contracts today, it's about aligning the team, having focused sessions, setting KPIs, understanding remits, and then within that first thirty days, identifying the actual skills gaps in terms of people and teams, and working to embed the right foundations for the business to build upon.
Mhairi Berry: People often bring in tooling because they think it will solve their internal challenges. One of my clients was about to sign a fairly sizable contract for a tooling solution without having done enough research. On investigation, the tool they'd been quoted for was way above the scope of what they actually needed.
Another good example with a different client was around the contracts they had in place. One of the first things I look at is the P&L: what's coming in and out on a monthly basis. This company was outsourcing a sizable amount of media and PR coverage without getting the ROI they should have been receiving.
I like to call these strategic pauses. As much as I advise on what I think the next best steps are, quite often clients are doing a phenomenal job getting coverage by themselves. So it's about identifying where that coverage and media is coming from, looking at external partners, and asking whether they still add the value they did last year. That's a question I often pose within the first thirty days of working with an organisation.
Mhairi Berry: You really need to reset your thinking as someone coming from a large organisation, because you're coming in as an external partner. You're not part of the family. You're coming into the family to give help and advice, to help move that business forward, reshape it, or rightsize it.
It's really about being explicit from day one about the value you offer and managing expectations. Rome was not built in a day. It's about prioritising that one thing, that one area of impact, that you're going to bring to the business. Unlock one big opportunity for them, because often the founder will have six priorities they want to address within a very short timeframe.
As an embedded operator, I sit with the team, listen in on calls, and spend much of my first thirty days listening and understanding the organisation before I advise.
Don't underestimate the switch and the change and the pivot. You're going to get out of this what you put in. I was in my early forties when I chose to make this change, and it's a big undertaking. I had completely left my previous position and career and had the space to pause and decide what I wanted to do next. But one of the brilliant things about Connectd is that the programme is built so it can be done alongside your day job, allowing you to take it at a steadier rate, which could be really beneficial for others.
Mhairi Berry: The T2P programme turned my interest into where I am today: the founder of a consultancy business, Market Blueprint, operating globally with great clients found through the Connectd community. I didn't particularly see it landing where it has, but I'm really pleased I did the programme because it's opened up variety and impact, which is hugely beneficial to me through a portfolio career working with all different sizes and scales of business.
And the community here is a wonderful one. People are at the end of the phone if you genuinely need a chat about anything.
Mhairi Berry, Founder, Market Blueprint Consultancy
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