Cedar & Sage
F
Fieldbrook Marketing
The Vault

Question Guide

Internal, not a client deliverable

Five open questions the Vault has flagged about itself, in the order they block work. Each one is answerable by Marcus in a short interview; each answer files as a vault update request that a person approves. The rest of the account is already sourced; section 03 is what not to spend the meeting on.

cedar-sage

Ask these by voice: storystak.bot/demo

The interview walks this list with the client and files each answer back as a vault update request. Asked-once questions never repeat.

01 Blocks copy, positioning, or the next deliverable
Q1 · ask Marcus
Is holiday and landscape lighting a real service line, and what are its terms?
Reviews describe crews hanging winter lighting for long-time maintenance clients. 05-services-catalog.md carries low-voltage landscape lighting as service #4 and calls it the sleeper: the one thing that sells harder as the weather gets worse. It says nothing about holiday installs. If that is a real, bookable service: what is the seasonal window, who can book it, and is it maintenance-clients-only? This is the single most commercially useful answer on the list, because it lands in the dark months when the rest of the calendar goes quiet.
Q2 · ask Marcus
What are the workmanship guarantee's exact terms?
The website says patios are “built to last, guaranteed” and the terms are published nowhere. 06-trust-assets.md is blunt about it: an implication is not a term. Needed verbatim: how many years, what is covered, whether there is a separate plant guarantee, and whether any of it transfers with the house. This gets quoted publicly, so the wording has to be confirmed word-for-word, not paraphrased. It is also, in the Vault's own words, exactly the kind of thing a well-meaning caption invents, and then a crew has to keep.
Q3 · ask Rae
Does a customer email list exist, and where does it live?
Past clients, maintenance-plan members, estimate requests who never booked. The footprint audit calls email “the largest unforced gap in the footprint”: nobody owns it because there is nothing to own. But the site's only conversion path is a design-consultation request form, which means there is no path at all for the person who is interested and not ready, and on a purchase this size, that is most of them. Even a stale list of past clients changes what we can build in February.
Q4 · ask Marcus
Do you offer or partner for financing, and may the partner be named?
10-competitive-landscape.md flags this as a live competitive wound: the volume shops offer financing, we don't, and “we don't do that” is a weak answer to a prospect comparing monthly payments. The Vault already argues that phasing is the better answer: do the part you'll use most this year, come back for phase two. Marcus already does it; it just isn't framed as the answer to the money question. So the real question is two questions: is there financing, and may we make phasing the official reply?
Q5 · ask Marcus
May crew members be named and pictured, and who signs off?
The loudest theme in the entire review corpus is the crew: same faces every morning, site swept at the end of the day. 11-brand-and-visual-assets.md wants people real and candid, never posed, and Stories is the right surface for it. All of that is blocked on one consent question nobody has asked. It costs a crew member ten seconds and a phone, and it is the exact proof a mow-and-blow competitor cannot fake.
02 Open elsewhere in the Vault, not yet on this list
Flagged in the Vault, but not yet in knowledge-base-gaps.md. These are real open items that live inside other files as inline > Confirm: notes. They belong on the interview list too; they just haven't been promoted into the canonical gaps file yet, which is itself worth seeing: the gaps list has its own gap.
Outdoor kitchens
Marcus mentioned on a call that crews now build them. It never reached the Vault, so nobody can write about them. 14-onboarding-and-quick-wins.md
A project minimum
He wants to move up-market. Until it is confirmed, the old posture still governs every piece of copy. 14-onboarding-and-quick-wins.md
Stated timelines
Whether a build timeline may be stated publicly at all, and in what form. 14-onboarding-and-quick-wins.md
Licensing & bonding
Licence, bonding, insurance and trade certifications: ordinary, checkable trust signals the Vault can't currently back, so copy can't use them. One of the cheapest credibility wins available. 06-trust-assets.md
The founding story's specifics
Where the first job was, what it was, how long he worked at the regional outfit, whether there was a partner. An About page can be written from what exists; a great one needs an hour with Marcus and a recorder. 08-founder-story.md
Will Marcus go on camera?
His speaking voice is the strongest content asset on the account and it is completely unused. 08-founder-story.md · 09-social-and-online-presence.md
Why this matters more than it looks All of these have come up, none are confirmed, and every one is the kind of half-known fact that ends up in an ad. That sentence is in the Vault, written before any of this was asked. The system flagged its own exposure and then waited for a person.
03 Already answered: don't ask

Do not spend interview time on any of this. It is sourced, current, and in the Vault.

The numbers
Nine canonical stats, each flagged [verified] or [internal]: twelve years, 1,400+ projects, 4.9 across 260 reviews, a team of 14, a 25-mile radius, and the two planning figures that never leave the building.
The voice
Fully documented, down to the word lists and the one rule that outranks the rest: never competes on price, and copy never apologizes for that. No discounts, no urgency, no countdowns, including in a DM, because a DM is public copy.
The services
All of them, with how each is sold and what it costs to say. Including the seasonal rhythm, which is the whole calendar.
The market
Three competitor types, read honestly, plus the umbrella wedge that none of them can claim at once.
The customers
Their actual language, tagged and quotable, and the reason the craft close-up is the missing content, not the hero shot.
Ask the Vault instead This page is a rendering, not the source. The canonical list is knowledge-base-gaps.md in the cedar-sage scope. Call read_vault_file against it and you get the same five questions with their sourcing. Answers come back as vault update requests, and a person approves every one.