"You built a successful business. Now it needs a plan, a board and someone who'll tell you the truth."
Many owner-managed businesses reach a point where what got them here stops working. I’m Mike Collett, and I work with owners of established businesses, typically £1M to £100M, in manufacturing, engineering and specialist services. The work is usually a growth strategy, a commercial or operational restructure, governance, quality or succession. Often it leads to a longer role as Chair or board adviser.
I have done this myself. I joined WILA, a UK and German lighting group, as UK Managing Director in 1993, added export and then the US business, and from 2002 ran the whole group from its German headquarters. In 2004 I led the management buyout, took turnover from £9M to £18M, and sold to private equity in 2016. Since 2018 I have worked with more than 110 owner-managed businesses through EXALTA.
How I work
It usually starts with a defined piece of work: a growth strategy, a commercial restructure, a governance review. Where it goes well, it becomes a board-level role, as Chair or Board Advisor. That is not a report and a handshake. I sit alongside you, challenge your thinking, help you build the governance and strategy your business needs, and stay until the work is done. Projects usually run for a few months. Board roles run for two to four years. Some people now call this fractional. In practice it means a day or two a month, at board level, for as long as it is useful and no longer. The measure of success is not the quality of the advice. It is whether the business is in a materially better position when we are done.
Who I work with
Owner-managed manufacturers and engineering firms
Owners who need growth moving again, the business restructured, a stronger management team, or a plan for stepping back. Where it helps, I stay on as Chair.
Private equity backed businesses
Investors and management teams who need hands on support: the 100 day plan, sales growth, integrating an acquisition, or a Chair who has run a PE backed manufacturing group.
Preparing for sale or investment
Owners two to three years out from a sale or investment who need the board, the numbers and the management team to stand up to due diligence.
Based on the Northamptonshire, Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire border, an hour from London, working across the UK and Europe.
The book
What You Already Know. Why owner-managed businesses stall, and what moves them again.
Most owners already know what is wrong with their business. What they do not have is a way to turn that knowledge into a decision. Twenty-three short chapters, from forty years of running businesses rather than advising on them. Paperback and Kindle.
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