The GC Practice · Craven · North Yorkshire
A practice, not a consultancy.
For twenty years we have advised owner-managed businesses within two hours of Skipton. The practice takes twenty client places a month. Clients stay six years on average. A good number leave because they have sold the business, profitably, on terms they set themselves.
Capacity
3 of 20 places open, as at 1 September 2026
Twenty places. Not twenty-one.
The practice runs on a diary, not on headcount. Twenty sessions a month is what one adviser can hold properly in his head: the numbers, the market, the people, and the awkward thing nobody has mentioned yet.
When the places are taken, they are taken. There is no waiting list and no junior to hand you to. Places come free when a client sells, retires or has finished the job they came to do — which is why we hold only four events a year, and invite from those.
Why you have not heard of us
That is deliberate.
We do not advertise and we do not post daily. A handful of clients have agreed to put their names to what they think, and you will find them on the clients page. What we do not publish is the work itself: the numbers, the arguments and what a business looked like before it was fixed.
Introductions come from three places: existing clients, their accountants and solicitors, and a small number of invited events. That is the whole of it.
What the work is for
Most owners arrive with one of four problems.
The business has stopped growing
Turnover has been flat for three years and nobody inside can say why. It is usually not the sales team.
It works, but only if you are there
Profitable, well regarded, and entirely dependent on the owner. That is a business that cannot be sold and cannot be left.
You want out within five years
There is a great deal that has to be true before a sale, and almost all of it takes longer than owners expect. Started early, it is worth a materially better price.
Something is wrong and you cannot say it out loud
A partner, a family member, a number that does not add up. Owners have nobody to ask. That is a large part of what this practice is.
Scepticism
If you are sceptical, good.
You have almost certainly been sold to by someone in this line of work before. Here are the questions owners actually ask, answered plainly.
I have had consultants before. They left a report and an invoice.
Most of them arrive with a framework and leave with a deck. We do not have a framework. The first weeks are spent understanding the business well enough to be useful, and after that we work on whatever is genuinely holding it back — which is rarely the thing on the agenda.
Who would I actually be dealing with?
Graham, throughout. Karen has run the practice for twenty years and you will speak to her often, but nobody is put in front of you instead of him and you will not be handed to an associate once the work starts. That is the reason for the twenty places: it is the number one person can hold properly.
What does it cost?
A monthly fee, agreed in writing before anything starts, with no percentage of your business and no success fee on a sale. You are told what it is at the outset and it does not move without your agreement.
What happens to what I tell you?
It stays in the room. We work under your confidentiality agreement, not ours, and we will not use your name, your trade or your numbers in front of anyone else — including on this website.
Why an event rather than a meeting?
Because it costs you a morning instead of a commitment. You can watch how the work is done, in a room with other owners of similar businesses, and decide afterwards whether you want a conversation. Nobody is asked for anything on the day.
You are not attached to a larger firm. Is that a weakness?
It is the point. There is no group to cross-sell you to, no partner target to hit and no service line looking for work. When the right answer is that you need a corporate finance house or a specialist, you are told so and introduced.
You are not far off retirement. What happens to me then?
A fair question, and one you should ask anyone selling you a relationship measured in years. Jack Corrigan joined in 2024 — a solicitor, with a degree in economics and two further degrees in law — to learn how this practice works from the inside. He does not advise clients and none has been passed to him. He will take the practice on when he has earned it and not before. It is the second of the four problems listed above, and I would be a poor adviser if I had not noticed it in my own practice.
Events
Four mornings a year, by invitation.
Numbers are capped so that the room stays useful. Owners come from Airedale and Wharfedale, Leeds, Bradford, Harrogate and York, Manchester and the North West, Sheffield, Teesside and County Durham — broadly, two hours' driving. If you have a ticket, confirm your place. If you have not, you can ask to be considered for the next one.