2021 Reflection and 2022 Planning

The growth we have seen throughout the portfolio has been significant with all companies posting impressive sales revenue and profits growth, creating new full and part-time roles and forming powerful new alliances.

We have made additional and or new Investments in to;
1. Connectus Business Solutions
2. Spartan Survival
3. Urban Tech Group

Our work around providing Non-Executive Director, mentoring and support has also continue to grow from exciting engagements with;
1. Salesbond
2. Made of Möre
3. QBUNK
4. Spartan Survival
5. Urban Tech Group

We have mentored 27 companies via various programmes at Aston University and we have now been appointed to support a further 4 cohorts over the course of the programme which sees 30,000 senior leaders taking part in a practical management training programme accredited by the Small Business Charter.

Our progress and learnings from 2021 now turns to our planning for 2022, as too I expect does many other entrepreneurs, investors, start-up, scale-up and distressed business. Our approach to and advice around planning has been built upon decades of experience and an approach we know works.

The top 3 areas of advice we instil into our portfolio and clients are;

Top-down bottom-up planning is the key to growth and company success, as everyone has an opportunity to input into the plan, there are checks and balances on what is realistic and believable, above all stakeholders having had an opportunity to input to the plan will more than likely embrace and contribute to the plan.

Focus is vital to success! Regardless of your vertical sector, geographical sector or the problem you solve, it will ultimately drive you towards being specialists. Specialist companies generally enjoy greater margins and exit valuations so why not maximise your return on investment and potential exit valuation.

Prioritisation. Logical and sequential thinking is crucial in any company. If you don’t prospect and market yourself in the right way, then you don’t get leads and capture customers. If you don’t have the back-end functions and operations, then you cannot deliver the project and support the customer. If you don’t deliver the project and support the customer, then you don’t collect the cash. Appreciate and understand the complexity of your value chain, who does what and when. If these things don’t come together seamlessly, profits are hindered. Prioritise your efforts on fixing issues before they occur and make things more efficient by thinking through the logical and sequential process of enquiry to cash with the least resistance.

Planning and resourcing should be at the heart of everything you do, regardless if it is resource and capacity planning in operations, cashflow management, sales and marketing strategy, fundraising or governance and controls, you need a plan. If you fail to plan you plan to fail.

 

Other news