Business Growth Strategies
Profit · Cash · Business Value
Strategic Working Session
Put the business on the table. See how Profit, Cash and Business Value connect, and where the greatest opportunities may be sitting.
A strategic working session of up to four hours for owners of established businesses.
An established business can have capable people, good advisers and healthy headline numbers and still contain profit being lost, cash unnecessarily tied up, constraints that are difficult to see and opportunities that are not being fully recognised.
The Strategic Working Session creates the space to step outside the day-to-day,look across the whole commercial picture, see what has changed and get underneath what is really happening.
You see where the opportunities sit across Profit, Cash and Business Value, and how they affect one another. Better margins and released cash can increase what the business is worth. So can things that may never show up in a single year’s profit or cash: a business that is less dependent on you, better managed, less concentrated, more predictable and easier to transfer. Many decisions move all three at once.
This is a working session, not a presentation. You do the work, with your own numbers, and you keep what you build.
By the end, you will have mapped the opportunity landscape, put indicative economics around the opportunities that matter most, understood how they connect and what they could mean for the business, and chosen the one priority to move on first.
Look across the whole business.
Prioritise narrowly.
Priority means one.
A short conversation about your business, where you want to take it and whether a Strategic Working Session would be useful.
The issue you can see is not always the issue you need to solve.
Margin pressure may begin with pricing, customer mix, labour, rework or complexity.
Cash pressure may begin well before an invoice becomes overdue.
Owner dependency can remain even after capable managers have been appointed.
Growth can increase revenue while weakening cash, capacity or management.
And something valuable can remain hidden because the relevant pieces sit in different parts of the business.
That is why the Session does not begin by assuming the obvious issue is necessarily the most important one.
IIt begins with four questions: What has changed? What is really happening? What are we not seeing? What deserves attention now?
Hidden drag. Unrealised upside.
This is not simply an exercise in finding what is wrong.
A good established business can contain hidden drag and unrealised upside at the same time.
What may be holding the business back
Margin leakage that has become normal.
Poor customer, product, service or job economics hidden inside the averages.
Cash trapped in inventory, WIP, customer terms or the way transactions are structured.
Rework, exceptions and complexity absorbing capacity.
A constraint that has moved as the business has grown.
Management or capability gaps.
Owner and key-person dependency.
Concentration, risk or weaknesses in the business model.
A market, customer base or cost structure that has shifted while the business model has stayed the same.
What may be left unrealised
Hidden profit already sitting inside existing customers, pricing or operations.
Customer segments, products or services with substantially stronger economics than the overall result suggests.
Pricing power that has not been used.
Underused assets, capability, capacity, intellectual property or relationships.
Cross-sell, channel or market opportunities.
A stronger offer or business model.
Growth opportunities that fit the business unusually well.
Business Value that could be created from what the company already has.
The purpose is not to assume there must be a problem.
It is to understand where the greatest commercial leverage actually sits.
Profit. Cash. Business Value.
Three connected lenses on the same business.
Profit
Where is the business genuinely making its money?
Where is margin being created, lost or left unrealised?
Which customers, products, services, jobs or activities produce the strongest economics?
Cash
Where does the business first commit cash and how long before that cash comes back?
Where is cash being unnecessarily slowed or absorbed?
Could the cash cycle be shortened, friction removed or the commercial structure of the transaction improved?
Business Value
What is making the business stronger and what is suppressing its underlying value?
How dependent is it on the owner or key people?
How capable is management?
How predictable, resilient and transferable is the business?
These are not three separate projects.
They are different views of the economics, strength and future value of one business.
What changes Business Value.
Profit, Cash and Business Value are connected. But Business Value is not simply the result of the other two.
Profit matters. A recurring improvement in profit strengthens the economics of the business year after year.
Cash matters. Released cash strengthens the business, creates capacity to invest and reduces risk.
But some of the biggest influences on the strength and underlying value of a business sit outside this year's profit and cash altogether:
owner and key-person dependency;
depth and capability of management;
customer and supplier concentration;
predictable and recurring revenue;
quality of earnings and the information behind them;
strategic position and defensibility;
and how transferable the business is.
These things affect how resilient the business is, how dependent it is on particular people or relationships, how confidently it can grow and how attractive it is to continue owning.
Many of them affect Profit and Cash as well.
That is why we look at all three together. One decision can move all three, sometimes in different directions.
A handful of well-chosen moves can materially change the economics, strength and value of the business.
In the session, you work this through in your own business, with your own numbers.
The economics are indicative rather than a valuation, but clear enough to help make better commercial decisions.
One commercial issue can appear as five different problems.
Imagine a business experiencing falling margin, tighter cash, higher inventory, more operational exceptions and an owner being drawn into more customer issues.
Five problems?
Perhaps.
Or perhaps one customer segment has grown rapidly and those customers carry weaker margins, require dedicated stock, receive longer terms, need greater customisation and create more management escalation.
Sales sees growth.
Finance sees cash pressure.
Operations sees complexity.
The owner sees escalation.
Different consequences. The same underlying commercial issue.
That is why I do not choose the priority too early.
We first look broadly enough to understand how the business actually fits together.
Then we narrow.
We follow the evidence, not a predetermined framework.
Depending on what is happening in your business, the conversation may move into pricing and margin, customer or product economics, sales and customer selection, working capital, inventory and WIP, operations and capacity, people and management, owner dependency, business model, growth, risk or Business Value.
The purpose is not to work systematically through a checklist.
We go where the evidence takes us.
We start with where the business is now, what has changed around it, where you want to take it, what the strongest available information tells us and which assumptions need testing.
This is a working session, not a presentation. You bring the knowledge of the business and the information already available; I bring the external perspective, strategic challenge and commercial judgement. We work through it together.
Then we join the pieces together.
We look for patterns and contradictions.
We distinguish isolated events from recurring ones.
We separate symptoms from issues closer to the cause.
We look at what is suppressing performance.
And we look just as hard for something valuable that may be sitting inside the business unnoticed or underused.
As the picture becomes clearer, we reduce the complexity:
The whole business
→ Current Picture
→ Strategic Opportunity Map
→ Opportunity Economics & Impact
→ What it could mean for Profit, Cash and Business Value
→ ONE highest-value priority, and a 90-Day Priority Plan to start it
That is the discipline.
See the opportunity landscape before choosing the priority.
By this point, we are not simply holding a list of things that could be improved.
We bring the meaningful opportunities together in a Strategic Opportunity Map.
That allows us to see where the potential value may sit across Profit, Cash and Business Value and, where the available information supports it, put indicative economics around the meaningful opportunities.
Not every opportunity can or should be reduced to a dollar figure.
A recurring profit improvement is different from a one-off cash release.
A recurring cash improvement is different again.
And stronger management, lower owner dependency, greater predictability or a more resilient business may create substantial Business Value without producing an immediate number.
We also look at how the opportunities interact.
Which overlap?
Which depend on something else happening first?
Which could unlock or strengthen another?
Which appear large but remain uncertain?
The purpose is not to manufacture a grand total.
It is to make the opportunity landscape visible enough to make a better strategic decision about what goes first.
The opportunity landscape becomes a commercial decision.
Insight alone does not create commercial value.
During the session, you work through four practical worksheets.
Current Picture
We establish the strongest available facts, the commercial context, what we know, what we are assuming and where greater clarity may be needed.
Strategic Opportunity Map
We bring the meaningful opportunities across Profit, Cash and Business Value into one view so the broader opportunity landscape becomes visible.
This may include things suppressing performance, things already working unusually well, underused assets or capabilities, stronger customer, product or service economics, opportunities created by the way the business or its market is changing, or issues that appear separate but may actually be connected.
Opportunity Economics & Impact
We examine the opportunities that matter most in greater depth: the assumptions behind them, the confidence we should place in those assumptions, timing, dependencies, overlap and whether pursuing one may strengthen or constrain another.
Where the available information supports it, we put indicative economics around them.
Then we step back and look at what the opportunities could mean together: the business today beside the business it could become, in Profit, in Cash, and in the strength and value of the business.
90-Day Priority Plan
Finally, we narrow. Of everything now visible, we determine the ONE highest-value priority to address first and turn it into a simple 90-Day Priority Plan your business runs.
You complete the four worksheets yourself during the session, and they are yours to keep.
They are working tools, not a report prepared afterwards.
Your management team continues to run the business.
Your people own the actions.
Your existing advisers remain involved where appropriate.
I do not become the operating manager.
The objective is not twenty recommendations or another report sitting on a shelf.
It is:
A clearer commercial picture. A stronger understanding of what the business could become. One focused next move.
Preparation is deliberately light.
You do not need to work out the answers before we meet.
Please have ready access to the existing financial, commercial or operating information that may be useful during the session.
Depending on where the work takes us, this might include financial reports, customer or product information, sales information, operational reports, working-capital information or other existing material relevant to the issues and opportunities we uncover.
There is no need to prepare new dashboards, models or reports purely for the session.
If something becomes useful during the session, you can simply screen-share it.
Perfect data is not required.
We use the strongest information reasonably available.
Where information is incomplete, that becomes part of the conversation rather than something that has to be solved before we begin.
A focused piece of strategic work with the owner.
The Strategic Working Session is strategic commercial work directly with the owner.
It looks across the business rather than operating from one specialist discipline.
It is not business coaching.
It is not a fractional CFO or executive engagement.
It is not an accounting review or valuation.
And it does not replace your accountant, lawyer or other specialist advisers.
Where specialist professional advice is required, the appropriate specialist should remain involved.
Practical Details
Format: Up to four hours via Zoom, normally in one focused half-day session. Where it produces better work, the time may be split by mutual agreement.
The session is conducted directly with the business owner.
Other key people may be involved where there is a clear reason for them to contribute to part of the work.
Fee: $10,000 + GST, paid in full before the session is booked.
Preparation: Deliberately light. There is no questionnaire and nothing new to prepare; have ready access to relevant existing business information where it may help the discussion. All the work is done in the session, and you keep the worksheets you complete.
Starting point: A short conversation about your business, where you want to take it and whether a Strategic Working Session would be useful.
Who the Strategic Working Session is for
The Strategic Working Session is designed for established, privately owned, owner-led businesses with enough scale, economic substance and commercial complexity that important things can become difficult to see from inside the business.
It is particularly relevant where the owner believes the business is fundamentally sound but capable of more perhaps stronger Profit, better Cash, higher-quality growth, greater management capacity, less owner dependency, better use of existing customers, assets or capability, or a stronger and more valuable business overall.
It also fits where something has shifted in the market, customers, costs or people and parts of the business need rethinking, where several legitimate priorities are competing for attention, the headline numbers do not appear to tell the whole story, or the owner simply believes something important is being missed.
The strongest fit is with commercially minded owners who are candid about what is happening, prepared to question long-held assumptions and willing to act when the evidence points towards a better course.
You do not need to be thinking about selling the business.
A stronger, more profitable, cash-generative, resilient and less owner-dependent business creates choices.
The session is generally not suited to startups, micro businesses, businesses in serious financial difficulty, owners looking for weekly coaching or businesses seeking a fractional executive to run part of the company.
You do not need to know the answer before we speak.
The obvious issue may not be the most important one.
And there may be something valuable inside the business that has not yet been fully recognised.
We can have a short conversation about the business, where you want to take it and whether a Strategic Working Session would be useful.
If I do not believe it would be, I will tell you.
The work is strategic and commercial in nature.
Business Growth Strategies does not provide financial product advice, accounting advice, tax advice or legal advice. Where specialist professional advice is required, appropriately qualified advisers should be involved.