The work
How the work runs
There is no programme and no set of modules. The work takes the shape of your business rather than the other way round. But there is an order to it, arrived at over twenty years, and holding to that order is what gets you what you came for.
In sequence
The first conversation
Ninety minutes, no charge, no note-taker. You describe the business and what you want out of it. If this is not the right practice for you, you are told at that meeting rather than three months later.
Reading the business properly
Accounts, management information, the sales ledger, the order book and the people. The purpose is not a report. It is to be able to argue with you sensibly about your own business by week six.
The awkward month
The point at which the real constraint becomes clear and it turns out not to be the one you hired us for. Almost every engagement has one. It is the most valuable month of the year.
The sessions
A working session with Graham, booked in the diary a year ahead. Decisions get made, and they get written down.
Preparing to leave
For those heading for a sale: cleaning the accounts, removing the dependency on you, evidencing the earnings and choosing advisers. Two to three years is comfortable. Six months is a discount.
Clients stay six years on average. Nobody is tied in. The engagement ends when the job is done, and several have ended with a completed sale.
What happens, and when
Stay sceptical. We have been doing this twenty years and we know how it goes.
Week four
You will see your numbers differently, and you will approach the business differently. Not because anyone has motivated you, but because you will have been shown what the figures were actually saying.
Month three
You will like your business again. Owners rarely say this out loud beforehand, and almost all of them say it afterwards.
Month four onwards
The sessions settle into the diary a year ahead, and the work moves from fixing what is wrong to deciding what the business is for.