From Founder to Future: The Journey of Building for Succession.

I’ve written a lot about how the third time round I’ve build a way more sustainable business than I managed before albeit our revenues are no where near those of my last business yet....... but that’s all to come!

Since I founded 'The G' all business development has sat with me. Is it because I’m a gifted sales person - absolutely not it’s because as a founder you absolutely must be able to sell!?Do I think there are people out there who can sell better than me! Absolutely and I intend to bring one of them in to join us from the start of next month. Watch this space!

We are putting together the dream team around growth and scaling with Rhys Parfitt FBCS leading the charge and Chris Kranz who has joined us recently to look at our Go To Market capability and how we and our clients make better use of data & technology. From early Oct we will have seven 7 Exiteers TM who can support founders through their exit planning and ensure them a journey to maximising the value of their business .

Our core team is being assembled and this will continue to evolve, expand and hone like a well oiled machine! I'm hoping to add additional long term capability around Operations, Content and Growth. As we move into 2025 I fully expect the business to be able to operate without me. Does that mean I will be stepping back - no! It means I will be playing to my strengths and allows me to start concentrating more on working 'On not In' the business.

As a jack of all skills I can cover lots of roles and functions but my real skill (and what I love most is thinking through how we take a client from 'A' to 'Z' and we fix some of trickier strategic challenges (not to mention presenting and appearing on a stage or in front of a camera at any opportunity!)

Some recent examples of helping clients think differently about their businesses include:

1. Getting creative on a raising money for a very early stage business from a philanthropist perspective (into the ￡m's raised)
2. Flipping business models to respond to market demands pivoting from SAAS to SWAS and going after outcomes based work
3. Preparing a legacy business to transform its strategy and better understand its Go To Market strategy and establishing deeper commercial roots
4. Landing a client into the US, with an outcome based service and writing new business within a matter of months in excess of ￡750k with ￡2m in the pipeline
5. Writing @250k of net new business to the bottom line for a consultancy who was giving this away as pre sales and mitigate a number of risks that preventign them being a truly independent consultancy

This time around for me at The Grafter it’s all about building a high performing team and less of the dysfunctional family vibe.? The business can and will perform without me. Succession is underpinning everything we are and has been right from the outset ??

I would urge founders to plan for the future. Think about where you want the business to be, who can take over from you, how reliant the 'day to day' is on you as an individual. After all surely you built your business as a business not as a new job for yourself? And if you didn’t maybe be it’s time for a rethink!