GREEN MEANS TWO THINGS

Businesses that are young and still finding their feet. And businesses trying to do something decent: environmental, health and wellness, or just run on good values.

They're nearly always small. That's on purpose. It's easier to be useful when you can get your head round the whole business.

Most of my clients are one or the other. The best ones are both.

WORKING TOGETHER

It starts with a conversation about what you’re after and what would actually help, and then I meet you where you are. It looks different every time.

What’s the same every time is this. When I’m working with you I’m investing in your business, as if it were mine. My promise to you is that I live and breathe it for however long we’re working together, and that’s the difference between me and someone who writes you a report and leaves.

I love doing this, which I didn't expect. Years in banking, then helping a few businesses on the side, and it turned into the whole thing. Mostly because working with people and watching them flourish turned out to be the best part. So it matters that it's the right fit, and that has to go both ways.

And I learn as much as I give. Every business teaches me something that carries into the next one, so in a way everyone I've worked with before is part of what you get. Never thought of myself as the expert in the room. More someone who's seen a lot and is still collecting.

In practice that means no jargon and no burying you in documents. You'll always know what we're doing and why, and I'll always tell you what I actually think.

Businesses run from one problem to the next, one solution to the next, and rarely stop in between. So I’ll make sure we do. When you’re looking at what’s still hard, it’s easy to lose sight of how much you’ve already worked out.

I don't think we celebrate the wins enough. Everyone wants someone beside them when it’s hard. You want them there for the good bits too.

WHAT THAT ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE

It depends entirely on the business. It might be pricing, or margins, or where the costs are going. It might be how you're finding customers, or the systems underneath, or just getting the numbers into a shape you can read. Sometimes it isn’t me at all, and the useful thing I do is put you in touch with someone who’s better at it than I am.

A lot of it starts by just talking it through. There’s something about explaining how your business works to someone outside it that makes you see it differently yourself. You question it, I question it, and things come up that neither of us went looking for.

Where I can, I'll build you something to see it with. A dashboard, a tracker, a pricing model you can pull apart and run scenarios through. It's the information you already have, in a shape you can actually use. The tools have changed enormously in the last couple of years, AI included, so things that used to take weeks now take an afternoon.

A lot of the time that’s all it is, as much or as little as suits you. Some people want an hour a month and a few thoughts to take away. Others want to go right into the mechanics, which takes longer and usually gets further. It’s your call which. Either way, I’m there to make your life easier, not to hand you a longer list of things to do.