More money

More time
Less stress
The business owners’ guide to creating
a profitable, sustainable business that
rewards you richly in time and money

John Rosling

VISIT US AT www.shirlawscoaching.com
 “Your motivation is never money, money is
only an end result. Your motivation is more
likely freedom.”

Acknowledgments

www.shirlawscoaching.com
www.shirlawsonline.com

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In this book

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 “There is more to life than increasing
its speed.”

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 STEPPING UP TO
A LEADERSHIP
ROLE
“There is no map. No map to be a leader.”

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CHAPTER 1:

UNDERSTANDING CONTEXT

“The main thing is keeping the main thing

the main thing.”

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 Learn the trick of the greatest entrepreneurs; manage in context
and leave the content to your team.

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CHAPTER 2:

UNDERSTANDING THE POWER OF “WHY”

“Knowing the why can inform your actions

as a brand, your brand voice, its character,
and everything else that helps build it
into something people want to have a
relationship with.”

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 CASE STUDY: APS

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Find the fundamental “why” in your business - and create a
strong sense of belief around it.

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 CHAPTER 3:

UNDERSTANDING YOUR ROLE AS LEADER

“While Management is operationally

focused, setting priorities, allocating
resources, and directing the execution,
Leadership is more forward thinking,
more about enabling the organization,
empowering individuals, developing the
right people, thinking strategically about
opportunities, and driving alignment.”

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 CASE STUDY: YRM

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Set the context; manage the energy; coach don’t play

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 CHAPTER 4:

LEADERSHIP IN ACTION – CREATING THE WHY

“How do you get people to come together

around a goal and objective and be great?
It’s establishing a sense of common
purpose. Greatness doesn’t come from
a tactical sense of execution. Greatness
comes having a vision that goes beyond
yourself and even beyond the organisation”

“When people believe in what you believe

in, they work with their blood, sweat and
tears. When they don’t believe in what you
believe in, they work for your money.”

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 CASE STUDY: UnLtd

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A strong culture will drive your success by recruiting the
best people and most loyal customers. Culture comes from a
discussed and agreed intent based on shared values.
Leadership is about creating the dream – the vision thing is
your job.
All successful Leadership Teams get away on a Strategic Retreat
every 6 months.
Get outside help.

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 UNDERSTANDING
YOUR BUSINESS

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CHAPTER 5:

UNDERSTAND YOUR BUSINESS CYCLE

“We reach quite inexperienced the

different stages of life in spite of the
number of our years.”

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 Know where you are in your business lifecycle and plan ahead.
Know where your key Directors or Partners are and understand how
this impacts on your relationships and decision making.
Build in now the skills and capabilities your business will need to
grow in the future.

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CASE STUDY:

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 CHAPTER 6:
UNDERSTANDING RISK IN A STRATEGIC CONTEXT

“Take calculated risks. That is quite different

from being rash.”

“There are risks and costs to a program

of action. But they are far less than
the long-range risks and costs of
comfortable inaction.”

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 Benchmark the Risk Profile of your key team and openly discuss the
implications of these.
As part of your Strategic Retreat agree a Risk Profile for your
business
Have the Board mandate the Business Risk Profile and Risk
Management processes to ensure that all future decisions are made
by looking at cost, return and business risk.

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CHAPTER 7:
BECOMING A GREAT COMMUNICATOR

“If there is any great secret of success in

life, it lies in the ability to put yourself in the
other person’s place and to see things from
his point of view.”

“Give me the gift of a listening heart.”

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 CASE STUDY: UK entertainment company

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Listen to the questions being asked, take a moment before you
respond
Ask yourself what state/style the person speaking to you is in
If the person asks you a “how” question they are in Think, a “what”
question they are in Feel, a ”why” question they are in Know.
Get yourself and your team profiled. It costs less than £25 and is
both fascinating and incredibly valuable information (www.navitasip.
com)

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 CREATING
REVENUE TODAY

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CHAPTER 8:

PRODUCT – THE FOUNDATION OF YOUR BUSINESS

“Make your product easier to buy than

your competition, or you will find your
customers buying from them, not you.”

“The essence of a successful business

is really quite simple. It is your ability to
offer a product or service that people will
pay for at a price sufficiently above your
costs, ideally three or four or five times
your cost, thereby giving you a profit that
enables you to buy and to offer more
products and service.”

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 CASE STUDY: La Playa Insurance

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The more products and distribution channels you can build, the
more profitable and valuable in equity terms your business will be.
It’s a strategic choice whether to focus on building products to sell
into a single distribution channel or to develop multiple distribution
channels for a single product.
By getting really clear about what customers are paying you for you
may be able to unbundle your product and charge very profitably
for the bits you currently give away. Or take an opposite approach
and bundle a set of products together to create a competitive
advantage to capture share and increase the volume of sales.
Look carefully at what your competitors are doing – and consider
adopting the opposite approach to create competitive differentiation.
Innovate your product packaging; it is hard work to create
completely new products but relatively easy to repackage your
existing offer.

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 CHAPTER 9:
YOUR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY - THE ROCKET-FUEL IN YOUR
BUSINESS

“Our value is basically our IP and its

deployment.”

“The traditional business designs a product

and sells it to create a major product
stream. But the more advanced business
model is built on intellectual property (IP)
to generate much higher value than the
traditional “product only” business.”

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Know your “IP”; it is the fundamental rocket-juice of your business,
what makes your business unique and is the source of profitable
growth through product innovation.
When you’ve articulated your IP, take yourself out of your own
business and ask yourself what a business with this unique set of
attributes might theoretically do (what products would it sell). It’s a
good idea to get external help with this as you are probably too close
to your business.
Understanding and leveraging your IP will create a fundamental
building block to accelerated equity value of your business.

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 CHAPTER 10:

POSITIONING – YOUR KEY FOCUS

“In almost any industry, the big winners

are companies that consumers instantly
associate with a single highly-focused
concept - like Heinz and ‘ketchup’, Volvo
and ‘safety’ and Federal Express and
‘overnight’. ”

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CASE STUDY: Craster Woodworking

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 For mid-sized business positioning is about getting customers and
employees focused on what the business is all about – what it is
famous for. Being able to answer this succinctly enables you to fast
track sales opportunities, distribution channels, potential acquisitions,
mergers and joint venture opportunities.
Understand your primary position - If you cannot get the distinction
between Distribution and Product then get some assistance from
outside.
Know whether you are focussed on market, service, product or
price. Come up with words that define your market, your service,
your product, your price. Get it down to one word per area and then
one single word that positions the whole of the business.
Cherchez le creneau….

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CHAPTER 11:

THE SALESFORCE THAT NEVER ASKS TO BE PAID

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Set down the criteria for potentially profitable clients i.e. what type of
business is going to grow your company profitably?
Explore which companies might offer mutually beneficial
relationships. Check that both of you have similar ‘energy’ levels.
Rigorously explore fears and benefits and ultimately formalise
guidelines on working together and monitoring progress.
Review the relationship in terms of profitability. If it isn’t providing
business for both parties it’s not worth wasting resources on it.
The more distribution channels you can build, the more profitable
and valuable in equity terms your business will be.

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 CHAPTER 12:

DRIVING ENERGY INTO CUSTOMER, DISTRIBUTION (AND

STAFF) RELATIONSHIPS

“Here is a simple but powerful rule - always

give people more than they expect to get.”

“There’s a place in the world for any

business that takes care of its customers-
after the sale.”

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 Develop a customer service strategy that is focused on putting client
relationships in the up position
Aim for four satisfactory ‘touches’ with each customer.
Ensure that your customer really understands when you are giving
him an “extra”. Beware! Once an extra becomes an expectation, it is
perceived as part of your standard service.
Have an extra strategy for your staff as part of your culture.

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CHAPTER 13:

CREATING REVENUE – A FINAL THOUGHT

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GETTING YOUR
BUSINESS TO
WORK FOR YOU
And give you back your time...

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 CHAPTER 14:

THE FULLY FUNCTIONAL BUSINESS

“So much of what we call management

consists in making it difficult for people to
work.”

“Being busy does not always mean real

work. The object of all work is production
or accomplishment and to either of these
ends there must be forethought, system,
planning, intelligence, and honest purpose.
Seeming to do is not doing.”

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 CASE STUDY: Elle Events

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If you’re serious about growing your business structuring and
resourcing must be a strategic function and not one that is dictated
from the bottom up.
Systematically colour-code your typical week in red, blue, and black.
Create an organisational structure and workflow in red, blue
and black.
If you want real productivity you can’t give people responsibility –
they have to take it.

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 CHAPTER 15:

CAPACITY PLANNING - THE SECRET TO CONTROLLED

PROFITABLE GROWTH

“A very good question to ask as you

develop your business goal setting strategy
...do you have the capacity and capability to
realise the future?”

“It is usually easy to gauge which

businesses have a capacity issue. They
are the ones that feel busy, but are not
profitable. Ones where staff seem to be
working flat out and yet there’s no time
to take on more work or plan where the
business is going.”

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Know the capacity of your business and current running rate – these
enable you to plan and develop a profitable growth strategy for your
business.
Understand where the bottlenecks that choke the profitability of
your business are – and release them.
Understand the difference between Platform Strategies and Growth
Strategies and use these to maximise profitability today and plan
your growth tomorrow.
Develop a Capacity Plan and use this as a daily management tool.

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 BUILDING
EQUITY VALUE
AND EXITING
YOUR BUSINESS

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“When it comes to unlocking the market
value of a privately held company, it is
not limited to the bottom line. Profitability
is hugely important, but the factors of
customer diversity, management depth,
proprietary systems or products and
technology, channels to market and
contractually recurring revenue and
brand and position can result in truly
significant premiums over traditional
valuation approaches.”

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 CHAPTER 16:

WHAT REALLY DRIVES EQUITY VALUE

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CASE STUDY: Travel and Conference company

Start planning for your exit from the business 5 years before you
want to make the change. Understand your own priorities; is it
income, equity or control?
If you have developed the business strategically, the valuation
multiple you can achieve increases significantly.
Build a strategy for increasing the valuation of your business and
your own exit strategy simultaneously.
Develop and build a Company Log Book.

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 CHAPTER 17:

LEAVING YOUR BUSINESS IN GOOD HANDS

“Many business owners say to me “I’m

going to exit in five years” and yet when we
ask them a year later, they say the same
thing. It’s a permanently moving target – an
aspiration not a strategy.”

“The great leader speaks little. He never

speaks carelessly. He works without self-
interest. And he leaves no trace. When
all is finished, the people say, ‘We did it
ourselves’.”

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Take some time to understand what you want to get out of the
business, and when.
There are four elements to a succession plan: Building Value, Timing,
Establishing Independence in your business and Understanding
your Priorities.
Use a ranking of income, equity and control to understand the
relative priorities of a potential succession candidate or acquirer.

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 MANAGING
YOUR OWN
ENERGY
“Awareness is the greatest agent for change.”

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”

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CHAPTER 18:

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 Awareness is the greatest agent for change.
Be the change you want to see inside your business.
Find someone to support and nurture your development.

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ABOUT
SHIRLAWS
“The best business advice I ever received?
Get a business coach.”

“Where I think a business coach adds value is

providing a space for business owners to step
away from the business for a period of time,
and focus on high-level issues. In addition to
providing the space to do this, a coach also
makes sure it happens despite whatever crisis
happens to have arisen that day.”

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“We became a coaching client in
November. Our revenues are up 31%
in January, 24% in February. I wish we’d
become a client three years ago. What a
business we’d now have!”

“The most transformational part of working

with Shirlaws is the hands-on skill transfer into
our business that generates additional profit.”

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 ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
John Rosling

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APPENDIX
The recession and what to do about it

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 THE FIVE MISTAKES OF A RECESSION

“The opportunity is now - at the bottom of

the cycle.”

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THE FIVE GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES OF A RECESSION

“Recessionary times present huge

opportunities for businesses to thrive.
While many businesses are hurting
through a downturn, it presents those that
are structured well with massive growth
opportunities.”

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 SUMMARY: THE FIVE WAYS TO PREPARE FOR THE RECOVERY

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Thank you

We’d love to listen to you.

How to get in touch:
Shirlaws (UK) Ltd,
New Broad Street House,
35 New Broad Street, London, EC2M 1NH

infouk@shirlawscoaching.com

VISIT US AT www.shirlawscoaching.com

ISBN: 978-0-9566930-2-0