How To Double Your Profits In Under A Year - With Stuart Webb

Tom Bailey, founder of Succeed Through Speaking, interviews Stuart Webb.

Stuart Webb is an expert business growth mentor Business Success Mentor, non-executive director and consultant who helps growth-hungry Business Owners and innovators attract more clients and explode their growth. He is a podcast host and author of the book "Five Simple Steps To Growing Your Business" in which he sets out a simple five step process to double turnover in under a year. Stuart works mainly with business owners who are scaling their business from six to seven and eight figures.

Why you've got to check out Stuart's episode:

- Learn how Stuart helps business owners who have grown a successful business from startup to half a million in turnover and are now looking to accelerate it into millions.

- Why it is so important to refine your vision as a business owner and work with your management team to translate that vision into a plan. And how important it is to align your marketing, delivery, finances and governance to make this a reality.

- The critical issue in your business if you have just one of these areas exposed.

- Understand that while there is a lot to do, you can start small and put in some clear documentation in place to ensure the business can grow successful. You need to be clear on the one process and the one policy for each of these key business areas.

- Get access to Stuart's

Resources / Links

https://www.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/fivestepsbook

https://www.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/onepage

Transcript

Tom Bailey: Hello and welcome to Succeed Through Speaking the place for experts and entrepreneurs who want high value ideas to boost business results.

Hello, I'm Tom Bailey. And in today's episode, I began to know Stuart Webb, who is an expert business growth mentor, and also business success mentor. He's also a non-exec director as well as an author and a podcast host. So, Stuart, hello, and a very warm welcome to today's episode.

Stuart Webb: Hi Tom, I'm very, a lot of thanks for having me on the show. Thank you for that introduction. It's sounded very flattering from this end. I don't know about what anybody else is thinking.

Tom Bailey:  Okay, excellent. There's more to come yet. So just out of interest, whereabouts in the world are you right now?

Stuart Webb: Just north of, sort of the Birmingham area in the Midlands of the UK, between a place called Derby and  Burton-on-Trent in a little village, very close to where Jeremy Clarkson, if you've heard of him, went to school.

Tom Bailey: Yes. I know him very well. And thanks for that. So just to share a little bit more about you before we do get started. So, as well as everything else I've already mentioned, Stuart is also a consultant that helps growth, hungry business owners and innovators to attract more clients and explode their growth. And his book is called the five simple steps to growing your business. The title of today's episode is How To Double Your Profits In Under A Year. And Stuart is going to show us how to do that in just seven minutes. So,e question one today is who are your ideal clients?

Stuart Webb: So my ideal clients are business owners. Who've pretty much grown a successful business from sort of, you know, being a startup. And I've probably read somewhere around the sort of four to 500,000 pound turnover. And they're now really looking to accelerate that into the sort of millions. And I worked with them to sort of put in place the strategy that helps them to do.

Tom Bailey: Fantastic. And when they're trying to build that strategy, what's typically the biggest challenge that they face.

Stuart Webb: Let's take any business to the next level. They really need to both refine their view, the vision and the way in which they're acting upon that vision. As an entrepreneur, they probably need to translate that to a management team in order to sort of get them to act behind that vision. Some of that management team may not even have been recruited if they're going through that very rapid growth. They need to transform their marketing to actually ensure they're targeting the right customers for that growth. They need to be able to deliver and satisfy customers, and that can be a key issue and they need to be able to also collect the cash from doing that. And finally, at the end of just a shortlist of things like that to do, they've got to ensure complete governance of all of that operation. So, they don't fall foul of any regulatory authorities or the, the tax authority.

Tom Bailey: Absolutely. And that, that may feel overwhelming for some people listening.

Stuart Webb: And I think it is an overwhelming list.

Tom Bailey: That's too long. Yeah. And I guess if they were unable to achieve all of this, what impact does that typically have on their business?

Stuart Webb: Yeah, absolutely. Too many of them have got no experience in many of those areas. And, and that's where one of, one of those may fall down and the growth may not happen or, or leave them with cashflow issues. Most businesses don't run out of ideas, they run out of cash and that's the cause of failure. So, just having one of those areas, which is exposed and therefore not quite not quite working, could lead to a deficit in that cash and they could fall failed as a business. And that's something that no person that's trying to grow their business to sort of a million plus really wants to see happen.

Tom Bailey: Absolutely not. So, what is one piece of valuable advice that you might give to somebody to really help them on this?

Stuart Webb: Do you know, there's a lot to do. And I just sort of frightened everybody. I think we're sort of saying all those things you need to do, but actually it's really not that difficult. You need to just be very clear and prioritize and make sure that you understand the key things. And I often suggest that the first step to doing this. Because it has such a great impact on the way in which you can grow your business and exit you can get something like seven times the order book for your business. If you've got some very simple documentation. So, I suggest you start with looking at those areas that I just talked about.

What's your vision the management team, your key sales process, your key sales and marketing, your delivery and administration and your governance. And you just make a note of two things. What is the key process in each of those areas and what is the key policy you have in place in each of those areas? And just a simple set of documentation around that will enable you to one get control of that and to be able to get greater value for your business. And I do, we'll just digress it this way. I had a customer who did that at the beginning of the pandemic and realized that they had a website, but no way of collecting cash from the website when they did that. And that became a key driver for them to ensure that key cash was collected from the website. And therefore, they stayed in business during the last pandemic shutdown that we had.

Tom Bailey: Fantastic, so important. And what is also one valuable resource that you might share with people to help them solve this problem?

Stuart Webb: So obviously you've mentioned my book, so I'd encourage anybody to go and get a copy of my book and you get that from the completely croach.co.uk forward slash five steps book, but I've also got a one page download and you can get that as well. So, the complete approach.co.uk forward slash one page, and you can get those two downloads free from my website, and that will enable you to see some of the advice I've giving you here about beginning to that journey to get your business in shape.

Tom Bailey: Brilliant. Thank you so much. And what we'll do is I'll post both of those links into the show notes so people can click them and just dive right in.

Stuart Webb:  Thank you very much.

Tom Bailey: No problem. So quick question about yourself. What is one of the, or what would you say is one of the greatest either mistakes or failures you've made either in life or business?

Stuart Webb: There are so many of these. I could talk for hours, but I'll try and keep it to a short one. When I started my life under the medical research scientist, before I became a business growth coach and I was working in a hospital in a university environment and I came across a guy called Tim Berners Lee, who was developing this thing, which I thought we could use to teach medical students. By drawing information from all across the world. And I thought this was a great solution to a lot of problems. I had this thing, it depends on beginning to develop. It was called the worldwide web. It was very new. I took it to the head of the computing center at the university and said, this is a brilliant idea.

We should dive into it. And he said, it's a waste of your time. Get on with something more useful if yeah. Yeah, I listened to him and I missed the opportunity of developing. Although I did put up a worldwide web server and started using it, I was diverted onto other things. And I learned that just because somebody has reached a position of authority. And just because they seem to have experience doesn't mean that they haven't actually learned not to think new and exciting thoughts. You can so often be allowed to be dragged into what other people think because you think they have experience. Sometimes you've just got to look around and go do, you know, they may just be too old and too constrained by their thoughts in order to go to a new direction. So sometimes break them out.

Tom Bailey: Absolutely. What a valuable lesson to learn. And the last question for me today is what is the one question that I should have asked you that will also give some great value to our audience?

Stuart Webb:  I'd say to you, Tom, you haven't asked me why you and the answer I'd give you is when you choosing a business mentor, you really need somebody who gets you. Your business has made the mistakes that you're likely to make and live to tell the tale, you know, flashy suit an expressive website doesn't necessarily do it. You need to make sure you've got somebody who's. You're in your tribe. And, you know, we all need to be much more choosy about the people we're working with because life's too short to be working with people who frankly don't build us and go help us to grow.

Tom Bailey: Absolutely. Thank you so much for your time against. I really appreciate you being here.

Stuart Webb: Tom. It's been a pleasure.