Recovering time, enabling growth, increasing profitability and successful exit planning

Louise describes the transition from overwhelming time commitment to the business to a situation where she could confidently take three weeks uninterrupted holiday.

She shares her experience of coaching being a catalyst to double the size and profitability of the business. She goes on to explain the impact on her, her family, her team, and the business of a very successful sale.

Video Transcript

I think I would have muddled on, getting increasingly frazzled around the edges. I think, you know, the children would have suffered because I’ve had less time and focus for them, and the practice certainly wouldn’t have developed in the way that it did because I wouldn’t have had the time or the energy to grow it.

I wanted to learn; I wanted to understand more about the business community and help in making decisions. I just wanted support from somebody that I knew had our best interests at heart. But fairly quickly, the realization landed that actually, if we wanted to grow the business, I would have to extract myself from the consulting room. It didn’t take too long before we started to see the benefits of that.

Then, I converted eventually to the point where I had to be dragged back into the consulting room because I was busy and happy doing the management side within the business. There were lots of people with various skills that could be developed, and allowing them to think outside the box and to bring their own ideas and grow their own roles meant that we got the best out of everybody.

Relatively quickly, we were starting to see an increase in turnover and just becoming more savvy about buying and stock control. Looking at our costs meant that we were getting a double-pronged benefit, really. So, over the time we were working with Action Coach, it technically doubled, and we went from a turnover of about 800,000 a year to about 1.6 million plus. Profitability obviously drastically increased, in the biggest scaling than necessarily the turnover, and probably went up by about six to eight times what we were seeing at the beginning.

The biggest financial result, without doubt, was achieving a sale. That allowed the business to be operative for the future but gave me and my family a massive investment that we can live happily from for the future. When it actually came to selling the practice, we realized that we’d had a 14-fold increase from what we’d had at the outset, which was above and beyond anything that we’d ever dreamed possible.

In many ways, a massive relief that something that I’d been so passionate about and had worked so hard is now stable for the future and has got all the world to continue to grow in. It’s stable for the clients; it’s stable for the team. And it just means that everything that I’ve strived for will continue. I’m thoroughly enjoying still being involved in the business and have been able to step back a little bit and spend more time with my family but still do the job I love.

It was just something that encompassed the business in so many ways. Yes, it helped us grow the numbers, which are obviously incredibly important, but it helped us grow the team. Matthew became somebody that was familiar to everybody within the team, and he helped us across the board just to help everybody realize their potential.