The most useful conversation I have with prospective consulting clients is the conversation where I tell them they do not need to engage us. It happens more often than the rest of the consulting industry pretends, and the willingness to …
Hospitality Business Blueprint: How to Start, Run and Grow a Hospitality Business in the UK
Of all the sectors I work with, hospitality attracts the most passionate founders and produces the most avoidable failures. In 25 years of consulting, I have supported restaurants, hotels, bars, event venues, catering companies, and accommodation businesses at every stage—from …
Service Business Blueprint: How to Price, Scale, and Systemise Your Service Business
I have a conversation every few months that follows the same arc. A service business founder — solicitor, consultant, digital agency owner, physiotherapist, accountant, whatever the discipline — comes in with what looks like a growth problem. Revenue has plateaued. …
How to Build Business Systems and SOPs
The most reliable sign that a business is about to hit a ceiling is when the founder cannot take a two-week holiday without the operation becoming unreliable. I have seen this pattern hundreds of times across 25 years of consulting. …
How to Conduct a Gap Analysis for Your Business
Every business assessment I conduct starts with the same fundamental question, even when the founder does not frame it that way: what is the distance between where this business currently is and where it needs to be, and what specifically …
Retail Business Blueprint: Location, Profitability, and the Omnichannel Shift
The narrative around UK retail has been catastrophist for 15 years, and it has done significant damage to the decision-making of genuinely viable retail businesses. The high street is dying. Physical retail is finished. Amazon has won. Online will take …
Ansoff Matrix: A Practical Guide for Business Growth
A founder once told me that her business was ready to grow and that she had decided to launch a new product line while simultaneously expanding into two new regional markets. When I asked how she had arrived at that …
Porter’s Five Forces: A Practical Guide for Businesses
I have sat in a lot of investor meetings over the years, and there is a pattern I have noticed in the ones that go badly. The founder presents their market opportunity, product, team, and financial projections with evident confidence. …
Product-Market Fit: How to Find It and Measure It
There is a phrase founders use that quietly worries me every time I hear it: “We just need to find our product-market fit.” The worry is not with the goal. Product-market fit is genuinely the most important milestone a startup …
The Business Expansion Blueprint: How to Grow Your Business Without Breaking It
A retail client came to me three years ago with a problem I see more often than I should. They had grown a genuinely successful homeware business from a single shop in Leeds to four locations across Yorkshire. Revenue had …