Business Consultancy

Business consultancy for growth strategy – especially for high growth businesses. This helps you to make a plan and scale up from strong foundations. Enabling you to go through change and grow more successfully.

Business consultancy, Mindsetup summary

From micro businesses to large organisations with significant infrastructure and headcount, business consultancy can be beneficial through growth and change. Business consultancy for your growth strategy helps you to get clarity, make a plan and scale up.

As an owner-managed SME you might need a business plan, goal setting, accountability and coaching to guide you. And as a larger organisation you might look at defining your values, vision, mission and culture. Then it’s the systems implementation, process improvements and operational excellence to create a more effective business.

Consultancy is tailored for each business – one size definitely doesn’t fit all.

I love helping businesses with their strategy, planning and defining their culture right from the start. Then we move onto to productivity, business improvement and how to scale up. My approach is based on identifying how businesses can run more efficiently. Then with coaching and training, helping employees to support this strategy and thrive in the workplace.

Business Consultancy for Strategy & Planning

If we start at the beginning you might be scaling up rapidly, have received investment, merged or have simply grown organically. Typically you may have done this without thinking too much about strategy. This isn’t uncommon, but to get the foundations in place you might need to focus on:

  • Defining business direction and strategy
  • Goal setting and accountability
  • Defining what staffing structure is needed for future scalability and growth
  • Advice on management structure and roles
  • Engaging employees to contribute effectively to your business strategy
  • Aligning employee core values with behaviours and activities
  • Defining and embedding your culture

I can certainly help you with this as a one-off project. However, if you’re looking for more regular consultancy, mentoring and operational support; monthly packages may be a good fit. These can cover leadership skills, team development and operational challenges addressed on an ongoing basis. I’m able to give you consistency in your support and an objective view of your business.

Ongoing Efficiency & Improvements

‘Business as usual’ is rarely usual. Ongoing efficiency and improvements are crucial in keeping a successful business growing and developing.

I’ve spent many years working on process improvements, sales efficiency projects and programme management. This is why I often geek out in this space! Typical projects include:

  • Scoping and reporting on process improvements
  • Define what operational excellence looks like
  • Overview of systems with recommendations on improvements
  • Encourage a culture of seeing change as an opportunity
  • Learn new and more effective ways of managing resources

Standalone Projects

You think everything is under control and then suddenly business happens. A new project to bid for, creaking systems now aren’t fit for purpose or you’ve landed a larger than expected project. I work with clients on taking a holistic view of their business needs and making pragmatic recommendations. It might be a case of rolling up my sleeves and getting on with it – ultimately the difference between consulting and coaching.

Often when these issues come up, I’ll work on helping with the immediate need first off. Then we can look at the systems and processes to help in the future. Take a major bid for instance, this can throw your resourcing completely. But having many years’ experience in bids, pitches and pursuits I’ll work to get it over the line. To make sure next time isn’t a mad rush, I can overhaul your business processes to make it easier, more scalable and more efficient.

Et voila.

Small business coaching & consultancy

More information on specifically how I work with small businesses is here. From a one-off business planning workshop to set blocks of coaching over an agreed amount of time, there should be a package to suit you. Business consultancy to help with growth strategy and planning is just as relevant for small businesses as it is for large ones.

If you’re ready to invest in growth, I can spend a day or two per month with you in your business. The benefits to this are that the outcomes of our coaching sessions are delivered faster. As a small business owner, you don’t always have time or employees to do everything – also, I already know your business. We might work on putting in a CRM, writing a PDP or induction and onboarding process or recruiting your first key hires.

The advantage of also working with large businesses, is I can tailor the best bits for smaller businesses.

Business consultancy

What clients say

“We engaged Emma to facilitate a company strategy day. Emma’s role was to help prepare the day so that we could meet objectives, manage the event itself and provide a report afterwards on which we could base our strategy. Emma was amazing throughout, thoroughly organised, professional and a pleasure to work with. Highly recommended!”

Jason Kirk, Managing Director Kirk & Kirk

“After just three sessions with Emma I finally had clarity on the direction that I want to take my business – plus I know how I am going to achieve these new goals too. Emma’s approachable nature meant that I can speak openly about what’s going on in my head and I am sure that this is a reason why we got the results we did so quickly. I spoke to Emma about coaching after hearing lots of sales pitches for exorbitant monthly fees from other coaches. Emma’s fees were easy to understand and fair. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend her.”

Lisa Conway-Hughes, Chartered Financial Advisor Westminster Wealth Management LLP

“I worked with Emma over a number of months to help define the strategic intent and ‘sell’ for Joule Infrastructure. Her involvement in this process was invaluable and anyone looking to make sense of the current or next step for their business would be well served speaking with Mindsetup.”

Vimal Bhana, Owner of Joule Infrastructure

“Emma has helped me more that she’ll ever know over the last 18 months. A true professional; calm, intelligent and funny, she has helped me with so much with her sound business advice.”

Lisa Seymour, MD & Founder of Made by Spoken (now Fox & Bear)

“By working with Emma, I found the support of a reliable consultant to improve my business plan. When talking to Emma, I always felt at ease and willing to disclose ideas, concerns and goals I would only have discussed with someone I could trust. She takes confidentiality seriously, shows an interest in understanding your priorities and helps you with the definition of a plan that works.”

Jaquelina Guardamagna. CL, FCIL, IAPTI, Owner of Translator in London

“We engaged Emma to help us write a bid for digital inclusion work across East Sussex, Kent and Essex. Emma only had four days to assimilate herself with our service, our project ideas, and evolving developments. I was hugely impressed (and grateful) by the way Emma calmly collated information and ideas and turned these into a very credible and presentable bid which we hope will enable us to obtain the fund to deliver our project ideas. Emma also provided ideas to the project and very importantly advice and guidance on the bid content to make it more competitive. I am very pleased to recommend Emma’s services.”

Sam Rhodes, East Sussex County Council

“She is both massively practical and hugely wise. It is her wisdom, knowledge and in-depth experience that has been vital to my thinking, planning and vision for my business. Over the last few months she has galvanised my focus, positivity and energy, which is a super feeling and I can’t thank her enough. Outside business I hugely value her friendship and ongoing support. A huge thank you Emma for everything you do!”

Lucy Hall, owner of Lucy Claire Events

“I love working with Emma. She empowers me to make improvements to my business and makes sensible suggestions. She is a great sounding board for new ideas and has lots of contacts and resources to help me build my business. She is great at keeping me accountable but at the same time understands the time pressures and conflicting demands that owning a business brings. Thank you Emma for all you help me do.”

Hannah James, The Pet Shed

“Working with Emma has been fantastic. I look forward to every session – not only is it immensely enjoyable but has helped me see a future for my business and plan for it by putting in place effective working structures to increase my productivity. The insight given by Emma has been immensely valuable in preparing to scale my business and I look forward to working with her for many more months! If you need to get sh*t done but in a friendly and fun environment – speak to Emma!”

Adam Bastock, abastock eCommerce SEO consultancy

If you’d like to discuss business consultancy for your growth strategy, effectiveness and business culture please do get in touch.

Executive Coaching & Development

Leadership development, personal resilience and career development benefit from an outside perspective to help overcome challenges

Team Development

High performing teams are the foundation of successful organisations; using empathy, humility and vulnerability to create trust and focus

Events & Workshops

Facilitated workshops, events, training days, panel discussions and seminars. Face-to-face and online to enable business growth