For Business Owners

Do you work in your business or on it? This a simple question, but perhaps one that is difficult to answer.

The answer invariably is; it depends.

A paradox exists when it comes to business owners, the thrill and excitement of being in charge of your destiny against the precariousness and anxiety of being in charge of your destiny. From one business owner to another, we want security, but freedom, predictability but room for excitement. Systems, processes and order but free to be spontaneous. We want others to care as much as we do, but invariably, they won't.

The problem is if you aren't orderly and systematic in your approach, chances are, neither will your results, a random use of energy, focus and application will deliver a random set of results. As a business owner, you are in the results business; if you are not getting results, it won't be long before you've not got a business.

Without systems, processes and accountability in place, nothing can grow. Scale doesn't have to be the answer, but predictability should. Leaving things to chance or luck will defeat you, eventually. As Michael Gerber would say, if your business requires your presence, you don't have a business; you have a job, and you can't do everything; you need to leverage your time to think whilst utilising the time of others to deliver what you need. I am an extension of that.

My job is to introduce; the role, to find what you're after—the commodity is capital, introductions, finance, advice—the product, peace of mind, predictability and trust. You will know more about your business than I ever will, but that doesn't mean I can't help.

Over the years, I have developed relationships slowly and built trust even slower. Some have become partners, friends, associates, and co-investors; in short, they have become my private network. Through this, I have helped introduce Capital Investment, completed Managed Buy-Outs, arranged finance and advised. Above all, I aimed to be an extension of the businesses I work with whilst not being on the payroll.

Capital is not in short supply; what is, are good businesses; from seeing many up close, a pattern emerges, the ability to organise the efforts of others through systems and processes so you can free up your time to focus on what you do best. To plan, plot, strategise, imagine and paint a picture that others can buy into.

Sometimes when you're working in your business, you can't see past the never-ending litany of tasks, time sinks and distractions. My job is to help you see past that, to extricate you from your business and provide some predictability to your day, weeks and months. I'm not your average introducer; I'm a fixer.

My job is to help you find the perfect partner for the next stage of your business growth, sourcing capital investment, finance and beyond, focusing primarily on businesses with revenues between £1-£10 million in technology, software, content and services. This invariably comes from my network, which I extend to you, should we decide to work together.

One of my biggest mistakes over the years has been believing that I can do "it" all on my own. I can't; no one can; it leads to burnout, which I've suffered twice. Another mistake is thinking a "result" would make me happy, that I had to forgo my enjoyment of the process until something happened, a validation of sorts, sure those results were great (turning a City broking desk around, transforming a tiered public house, into a thriving Community Pub, raising $150m into a Commodity Hedge Fund, helping an overburdened CEO get back his business) but they were fleeting, what was enduring was the relationships I made along the way in each of those domains; that's special.

As Naval Ravikant says, play long-term games with long-term people; life is invariably short, and to do anything else is a waste. I tend to work with a few people at any time; I enjoy the phrase the man who chases two rabbits ends up with none. When you pay for me, you pay for my attention. I'm not interested in optionality but in delivering a result to you.

When you work with me, what you don't see is the research, the time on my own, the reading, the distilling, the documenting, the meetings, the wasted ones, the phone calls, the follow-ups, the cancellations, the hustle, the respectful crafting of emails, the re-writing of those emails, the edits, the whittling, the attempts at brevity, the coffees, the pitch decks, drafts one, two, three, four, I could go on, one-pagers much the same, the early evening drinks, the lunches, the conferences, the rejection, the no's, the continuous chipping away, the weekends at my desk, the benchmarking, the referencing, the financial analysis, the early mornings and the late nights, in short, the work. What you do see is the result, and I do it for you.

If you want to explore how I can help you deliver the next stage of your growth, let's talk, and from there, we can see if there is scope for collaboration.