What do I do and how can I help you?
In Summary: I use my 30+ years business experience and my vast range of contacts to help you to get out of trouble and back on track in the most cost-effective way possible. How we work together will depend on what level of help you need and what kind of budget you have available. There are even ways we can work together if you have no money!
Some examples of how we can work together:
- One off advice: I look over your situation and use my 30+ years experience to help you to get a plan together.
- Ad hoc advice: After some initial advice we keep in touch and you contact me whenever you need me.
- Ongoing support: If you are looking for more ongoing support then we can have weekly calls and communication in between – I become your right-hand man in turning around your company.
- Partnership: If you feel you would benefit from having my 30+ years of experienced involved in turning around your company and then growing it to where you want it to be then there are various ways we can structure this.
- Buyout. If you’ve had enough and you want to walk away then I might be able to buy you out – I take on all your issues and you get to walk away immediately.
- Referral. If you need specialist help, from a lawyer or insolvency practitioner for example, then I will refer you to one of my trusted contacts. Often the biggest challenge in getting out of a difficult situation is finding the right person to help you.
As for the different areas I cover I have been an entrepreneur and CEO of my own companies for 30+ years and have therefore had to deal with the full range of business challenges that come with starting a company from nothing and scaling it to a multimillion pound operation. But generally I find owner’s business troubles seem to fall somewhere in the following six areas:
Financial
The number one problem for business is usually lack of cash. And lack of cash can be caused a number of different ways each of which have their own solution
- Can’t get funding for your startup? I can’t tell you the number of poor pitch decks I receive. It isn’t usually the business idea that’s the issue – it’s the deck and the way the entrepreneur is going about pitching it.
- Can’t fund growth? This is a common problem and a nice one to have! Growth always puts a strain on cashflow and there are certain things you can do to get through this
- Lack of sales? Did you used to have a great product or service which has now been undermined by the competition or simply a change in market demand. You need to react quickly and find a new way forward.
- Catastrophic event? Like Coronavirus for example. This requires a very specific course of action and it’s obviously something most business owners (including myself) have had to deal with over the past 12 months.
Worklife
I don’t have any data to support this but based on my conversations with a wide range of business owners I would estimate that over 80% of business owners are working too hard for too little money and are allowing their business troubles to affect their home life. And the odd thing is, if you ask virtually any human being on the planet what is more important “Business and money or health and family?” everybody would say the latter is more important.
Then why are most business owners allowing their business life to affect their health and personal lives? Because social media shouts that we have to work hard, never give up, go the extra mile, just try one more time etc. Working hard has it’s place but you shouldn’t have to do that 24/7 to have a successful business.
My business partner and I worked hard for the first few years and then woke up to the fact that there is more to life than work. We transformed our companies into something that adds to our life rather than subtracts from it and we would never go back. There IS a way to achieve this and I can help you to find it.
Legal
If you are going to be in business for any length of time then you are going to upset somebody somewhere. This could be with an employee (HR issues), a customer or supplier (contractual disputes) or a competitor (intellectual property claims).
I am not a lawyer but I have dealt with all the issues above and many more, and knowing what the correct legal position is in advance of going to a lawyer can save you a lot of time and trouble…
- You can prevent the issue in the first place. For example the vast majority of HR claims are caused by employers not knowing (and therefore breaching) employment law
- If you do end up in legal trouble but you understand the law then working with lawyers to resolve it can be a lot quicker and easier – thereby saving you a lot of money on unnecessary legal fees
Legal issues happen. But handled correctly they don’t need to turn into a stressful and expensive nightmare.
People
People problems are one of the largest issues that business owners have to deal with. Whether it is time-consuming recruitment, dealing with difficult employees or possibly during a downturn having to make redundancies.
One of the most difficult issues with handling people problems in business is employment law. As a human being you want to do one thing but employment law says you can’t do that and you therefore have to go through all kinds of procedures to get where you originally wanted to go.
I am not an HR advisor but over the past 30+ years I have had my fair share of people problems in business. There are ways of dealing with things that will make your life easier – and will also save you a lot of time and money by avoiding costly employment claims.
Leadership
One of the biggest issues in entrepreneurship is that we need to be multiple different personalities to achieve success. What you need to be on day 1 is completely different to what you need to be in year 2 which again is completely different from what you need to be in year 10. And there are very few people out there who can teach you this.
- On day 1 you need to be a visionary and risk taker working with very little resources. You need to go out on your own and make it all happen from nothing.
- By year 2 you have an established product or service and a bunch of employees. You need to be an inspirational leader with a clear strategy and the ability to bring people with you on your journey
- By year 10 you are an industry leader. You need to deal with the intensity of competition trying to undercut you, build a strategy that often involves pivoting away from your original direction, and you might even need to become a savvy investor achieving growth by acquiring other companies.
Not surprisingly most business owners don’t manage to make these hugely difficult transitions. But there are ways around this, the first of which is recognising that you shouldn’t try to be something you are not.
Strategy
When you first start out your ‘strategy’ is to launch your idea and to somehow not run out of money. But as you become more established a range of challenges hits you which require you to make important strategic decisions.
- You might discover that you can’t scale as quickly as you need to and you therefore need to change your pricing or perhaps your whole business model.
- You might find that you can’t recruit talented staff locally at the right price and you therefore need to move to an offshore/outsourced model.
- Once you achieve some success you will be confronted with competition who might do things cheaper and/or better than you. Your strategic response to this challenge will literally dictate whether you survive or not.
- And once you have achieved a decent scale you will likely discover that organic growth in a mature market isn’t going to be possible. You will need to start acquiring competitors but you have to decide which ones and at what price
The difficulty with strategy is that the decisions you make are life-defining for the business. If you get it right you will continue to thrive – but if you get it wrong you could sink the whole ship. And you are most likely making all these strategic decision for the very first time. Having somebody who is experienced, impartial and objective can be hugely invaluable when you are making these critical decisions.
Operations
Operations are the lifeblood of any organisation whether you are a manufacturer or service provider, B2B or B2C. When things go wrong with operations then your product or service can become severely disrupted which can threaten the entire existence of your company. Operational issues can include:
- A dispute with one of your main suppliers which means your product or service can no longer be delivered to your customer.
- Your suppliers increase their prices to the point where it is no longer profitable for you to supply your customers.
- A critical event – such as a fire at your warehouse or a breach at your data centre – causes massive disruption to your entire business.
- A key member of staff – such as your managing director – leaves without notice which destabilises the whole company.
In these situations it is vital to act quickly, decisively and with a calm head – and an experienced outsider who can be objective suggest a range of solutions can be invaluable in such situations.
How can I help?
Do any of the above issues sound familiar? If you are experiencing any of these troubles in your business then email me [email protected] or use the contact form on this site. Our initial chat will be informal, confidential and free from any obligation.