BUSINESS GROWTH

MASTERY
How To Implement a
BLUEPRINT
For Your
BUSINESS SUCCESS

Business Growth Mastery

Mornington House, 142 Chorley New Road, Bolton, BL1 4NX
Tel - 0208 144 0254 Web - www.businessgrowthmastery.com
2 BUSINESS GROWTH MASTERY WWW.BUSINESSGROWTHMASTERY.COM

HOW THIS REPORT

IS ORGANISED

We begin with an overview of the Business

Growth Mastery Blueprint for Business Suc-
cess. As we’ll discuss further, the Blueprint
is based upon the real life experiences of
many successful entrepreneurs and busi-
ness people just like you.

The aim of this report is to provide you

with an insight into the tools, techniques
and approach taken by successful business
owners who have been able to create sig-
nificant growth in their business.

The Second part of the report covers the 8

core areas involved in implementing a
Blueprint for your Business Success.

Let’s begin.

Thank you for

requesting this
special report. We
hope you will find it
both interesting and
beneficial in driving
growth in your
business.
WWW.BUSINESSGROWTHMASTERY.COM SECTION ONE 3

SECTION ONE : Background & Overview

For many business owners, the
largest obstacle preventing them
from realising significant business
growth is Knowing What To Do and
maintaining the Motivation neces-
sary to achieve tangible results.
It’s not easy and these are the ob-
stacles that all successful entrepre-
neurs have overcome. Their ability
to take action defines their success.
Over the last ten years, we have
focused our attention on under-
standing what makes businesses
successful, irrespective of their size,
market sector or positioning.
What we have found is that there
are eight core areas that all success-
ful business owners get right. These
form the basis of the BGM
Blueprint for Business Success.

“Over the last 8 years, we

have been in a constant
fight to survive.

We would get some success

and then wham, something
happened to bring us
crashing back down.
We had tried many things,
took advice from our bank-
ers, accountants and local
‘business advisers’ but
nothing worked as well as
the BGM Blueprint for Busi-
ness Success.
It has definitely become my
Blueprint”
Nat Cooper - Partner,
PR/ Event Management
Firm
The Business Growth Mastery (BGM) Blueprint for Business Success has
been developed in conjunction with many successful entrepreneurs and
business owners. Collectively, they have over 150 years business experi-
ence and have started, bought, built up and sold many business in all
sectors.
What we found when we analysed what they actually did to build up their
businesses, and in one case, this resulted in taking a £10m business to
over £750m within 6 years, was that they all followed a very straightfor-
ward, practical and highly effective methodology.
This methodology wasn’t something that they had been taught, nor was
it something that they had read. It was something that they had devel-
oped themselves after trying different approaches and observing the re-
sults. When things worked out right, they would repeat and improve.
When the results were not what they wanted, they would try something
else. Ultimately, they developed a methodology that worked for them.
However, we found that there were common themes within these meth-
odologies and these became the basis of the BGM Blueprint for Business
Success.
4 SECTION ONE
THE BGM BLUEPRINT
FOR BUSINESS SUCCESS
On a simplistic level, building a
growth business is not difficult, in
fact it is pretty straight-forward.
The Blueprint for Business Success
focuses on:
1. Understanding what you want,
why you want it and setting you
and your business up for success.
2. Identifying the critical elements of
your business and implementing
some straight-forward evaluation
processes
3. Getting the most from your as-
sets and motivating your team
4. Moving along a sequence of steps
to the point where you can realise
your personal and business objec-
tives
Although the goal of the Blueprint is
to help you achieve your own defini-
tion of success, one thing that you
will get out of this process is a far
greater understanding of what is im-
portant to you and a much clearer
view of the results of your inputs.
The BGM Blueprint for Business Suc-
cess has been adopted by both large
and small organisations specialising
in such fields as;
• Accounting
• Business Services
• Communications and Media
• Construction
• Energy
• Engineering
• Financial Services
• Food Preparation
• Hospitality
• Information Technology
• Law
• Manufacturing
• Recruitment
• Retail
• Sports
• Training and Support
• and many others
WWW.BUSINESSGROWTHMASTERY.COM
THE MOST EFFECTIVE
METHOD OF CREATING
BUSINESS GROWTH
It is true of virtually anything - the
way to get successful at something
is to identify someone who is suc-
cessful and copy what they do!
However, this is sometimes easier
said than done.
Do you know anybody who is suc-
cessful in your field?
Do you know anybody who has cre-
ated significant business growth?
In many instances, the answer to
these questions will be two fold.
Either, ‘no’ you don’t know anyone
personally who you can call upon to
‘mentor’ you through similar growth
within your business, or ‘yes’ I pos-
sibly do know someone but they’re
far to busy to be able to help me.
Either way, you don’t have access
to the experiences that will help
you to find the shortcuts to suc-
cess.
Well, we do and we’re here to help
you. Treat Business Growth Mastery
as your personal mentor. Use the
information provided in this report,
on the website and through our
many other support services to im-
plement major change within your
business. You’ll be amazed at the
impact!
Remember that many business just
survive and only survive because
their owners risk everything per-
sonally and spend the majority of
their lives supporting it.
Is this what you want?
I guess not, given that you are
reading this report.
You have found a source of infor-
mation that will help you become
one of the top 10% of business
owners.
Within this 10% are people who
succeed without being ‘seen’ trying
- I’m sure that you have seen them
- they’re the people that seem to
have it all but never seem to be
busy or stressed. Have you ever
wondered how they achieve this?
I have and went out to find out.
This report is the first stage of
building your knowledge of how
these people achieve this state.
If you are interested about learning
more about implementing The
Blueprint for Business Success into
your organisation, your find our
Business Growth Mastery Pro-
gramme enormously valuable.
You will find out more about the
Programme at
http://www.businessgrowthMaste
ry.com/business_growth_maste
ry_programme.html
WWW.BUSINESSGROWTHMASTERY.COM
SECTION TWO : The Blueprint for Business Success
There are eight steps to our
Blueprint for Business Success. If
you focus on these, it is relatively
straightforward to build a business
that will grow and prosper in all mar-
ket conditions.
STEP ONE - Aligning your
personal and business
objectives
What are the consequences to you of
blurring business and personal
goals?
There are two ways of looking at this
question.
Firstly, if the business is a roaring
success, how can you ensure that
you achieve your personal goals?
The alternative is if the business
fails, how can you ensure that you
limit your personal exposure?
Where are you now?
Is your business delivering the life-
style that you desire?
Will it continue to do so as the busi-
ness grows?
Can you cope with the future growth
or will you end up being sucked back
into the business and allow it to sub-
sume your personal life.
Now is the time to consider the im-
pact of future growth and review
what you desire for your life.
Ask yourself these 10 questions...
1. what do you want your life to be
like in 1,3,5 years time?
2. what are you prepared to commit
to, to ensure that you achieve
this life?
3. what will the business need to
deliver for you to achieve this?
4. what will be the impact on your
personal life in driving the busi-
ness towards this level?
5. are you prepared to accept this
impact?
6. are your family prepared to sup-
port you?
7. what do you anticipate to be your
biggest challenges?
8. are you confident that these chal-
lenges can be overcome?
9. why are you prepared to do this
and go through this process?
10.how can you ensure that you en-
joy the process?
The answers that you find to these
questions will help you to start to
align your personal and business ob-
jectives.
Aligning your objectives at this stage
will save you a lot of time and heart-
ache as you move forward. Knowing
what you want and why you want it
is critical. This provides the signposts
to move towards in all your future
activity.
SECTION TWO 5
For many, these ten questions will
be the springboard for many
changes in their life.
They realise that the activities that
they have been undertaking will not
deliver the lifestyle that they desire.
STEP TWO - Business
Planning
Now that you have the clarity of
what you want your life to look like -
both personally and professionally,
the question is what do you need
to do in order to achieve your objec-
tives?
No one really can argue for the need
to have a plan. However, in reality
many people don't have one - do
you?
If you do, is it the right one?
The consequences of inadequate
business planning are many. The
most important being if you do not
have a plan of how you will move
towards your objectives, how do you
think that you will ever get there -
your objectives will be simple pipe-
dreams?
The key elements of a good business
plan include setting objectives for
the business, identifying what
needs to be done to achieve these
objectives and measuring progress
regularly - more about that in Step
Three!
So, answer these 10 questions...
1. what valuation do you need the
business to have to achieve your
objectives?
2. what level of profitability will you
require to achieve this valuation?
3. what degree of turnover will you
6 SECTION TWO WWW.BUSINESSGROWTHMASTERY.COM

require to achieve this level of
profitability?
4. how can you grow your sales to
this level?
5. how can you manage your costs?
6. how will you manage the growth?
7. what do you foresee as the major
challenges in achieving this
growth?
8. how confident are you that you
can overcome these challenges?
9. how can you shortcut the process
to achieve this growth?
10.what are the key milestones
along the way?
Some of these questions will be diffi-
cult for you to answer. Some
will require some thinking about.
Some will raise more questions.
With some you will have to hazard a
guess.
Remember there are no right or
wrong answers. It is your best guess
that matters because this will pro-
vide you with more impetus to
move towards your objectives.
Take a look at your business. What
information do you create on a
daily basis? What data do you have
available to you that with some
analysis can help you to measure
your progress?
Look at it another way... what infor-
mation would you like to have
available so that you can see how
well you are progressing with
your plan?
Your immediate response to these
questions, and you would certainly
not be alone in this thinking is that
you have no real information
available and you don't know what
information is required.
If you are thinking like this, it is
good that you are going through this
programme!
The consequences of not having reli-
able management information are
clear - the business will not perform
to its potential!
On the basis that you can't manage
what you can't measure, you will
continue to under-perform if you do
not have a clear set of key perform-
ance indicators (KPIs ) that you can
measure on an ongoing basis.
activity levels required to deliver
your increased sales become your
KPIs - measure and manage these
activities and the sales should result.
So, here is your homework...
For each of your critical areas, be
that sales, cost, margin etc, iden-
tify...
1. the type and source of informa-
tion required to measure per-
formance - remember to look at
the information sources available
to you - sales records/ accounting
records/ purchase records/ or-
ders/ returns/ stock analysis etc
2. the activity levels required to
achieve your milestones - these
become your KPIs
This activity alone will significantly
change your focus within the
business and allow you to work 'on'
the business as well as working
'in' the business.
Manage the results of this analysis
on a regular basis and you will
transform your business perform-
ance.
Why is this the case?

STEP THREE - Getting
the right MI
In Step Two, we looked at what
needed to be done for you to achieve
your 'aligned' business and personal
objectives - you developed a
plan of action hopefully.
In Step Three, we are going to look
at how you can ensure that you are
progressing with your plan on a day
by day, week by week and month by
month basis.
We will also look to identify key in-
formation that will allow you to make
more informed decisions.
The lack of reliable and timely man-
agement information creates many
problems for many SMEs.
This needn't be the case.
So what should your KPIs be? Well, simply because you are man-
What MI (Management Information)
aging the inputs rather than just
the outputs. Alternatively, you now
do you need? know what needs to be done each
and every day to get you to your
Go back to Step Two and look at the objectives - make sure that they
answers that you came up with are done and you will get there.
- these are the key areas that you
need effective MI to cover. Your
KPIs should focus upon the activities
required to achieve each of the key
milestones.
So for instance;
If your objective is to grow your
sales from £5m to £7.5m in 12
months, how many additional sales
are required over the 12 month
period? How many additional sales
are required on a monthly basis.
If you have a success ratio of 2 sales
presentations to 1 sale, how many
additional sales presentations do you
need to undertake each month?
Once you start to look at this, the
WWW.BUSINESSGROWTHMASTERY.COM
STEP FOUR - Getting
Your Management Team
Right
In Step Four, we will focus upon
your management team.
My management team, I hear
some of you say.... What man-
agement team!
In most small businesses, the
owner manager wears many hats
but even the most experienced
person cannot be a master of all
areas of business.
As your business grows, your
time will become more precious
and your challenge will be hand-
over responsibility for critical
parts of your business to your
management team.
You may have already started to
do this. It isn't easy, is it?
However, I trust that you agree
with me, that a strong business
needs to have all functional areas
working well.
Undoubtedly you need to have
the right vision, the right organ-
isational structure, you need to
create the right culture (more
about that in Step Five), you
need good products, delivered
well, you need effective market-
ing and sales resources, you
need the right systems and
processes working efficiently.
Are you capable of getting all of
these areas right?
If you think that you are, think
again!
You may be able to manage now,
but what happens when you dou-
ble in size?
So, what will your management
team requirements be as you
proceed towards your vision?
Think about the following 4 ques-
tions..
1. What is your management
structure now?
2. What will it need to be in 6
months/ 1 year/ 3 years?
3. What type of person(s) is re-
quired to blend with your ex-
isting structure?
4. How will you work together
towards a common vision?
Take some time to really con-
sider what you need. Where are
your weaknesses? Can you iden-
tify people who will bring
strengths in these areas of weak-
ness?
STEP FIVE - Your Team,
Your Greatest Asset
In Step Five, we're looking at your
greatest asset - your team.
By the way, they are also your
greatest liability!
So it is doubly important that you
get this right.
The team within your business are
your business!
They are the people that your cus-
tomers see/ hear from. They are the
people that you suppliers deal with.
They are the people that we all
spend a large amount of our day
with.
SECTION TWO 7
Without them, you don't have a busi-
ness; you have an idea of a
business. You can have the best
premises, the best products, the
most efficient processes, the cheap-
est prices. However, without
your team, all of this is meaningless.
When considering this crucial area, it
is worth thinking about this...
Just because people work for the
same business, doesn't mean that
they work as a team.
The consequences of getting this
wrong are dire. On the one hand,
your business will not perform and
could fail as a direct result of getting
this area wrong. On the other, you
could face major losses from either
fraud, absenteeism, or from a claim
made to an employment tribunal.
So how are your team now? Ask
yourself these four questions...
1. Do your team respect each other?
2. Do you communicate openly with
them?
3. Do they pull together when times
are tough or do they start to
bicker?
4. Are they performing to their po-
tential?
1 Creating a winning environment
will help drive your business per-
formance. It will also help you to
attract the best recruits.
2
3 So what does a winning environ-
ment look like? Successful teams
share common traits...
1. they have a clarity of vision and
this is shared across the team
2. they know what is expected of
them and what they can expect in
return
3. there is an openness to discuss
ideas but equally a determination
to achieve once a decision has
been made
4. there is structure around per-
formance management, apprais-
als and training/development.
5. successes are acknowledged and
celebrated
8 SECTION TWO
6. there are regular briefings
and communication of pro-
gress
7. they feel valued and a core
element to the business
How does your business com-
pare in these seven areas?
Focus on these areas within your
business and your performance
will sky-rocket!
DAY SIX - Driving
Profitability
It doesn't matter to me when
you undertake this work - the
important thing is that you un-
dertake the activities.
It amazes me when I hear that
in over 90% of cases, people
who buy books/ go to seminars/
undertake development pro-
grammes etc never apply the
knowledge. In fact many books
go completely unread!
Where's the sense in that?
You're not like that are you?
You are determined to achieve
your objectives, aren't you?
In Step Six, we are talking about
what all business should be
about - profitability.
One of the benefits of a privately
owned business is the flexibility
that the owner managers have
in relation to profitability.
You can choose to withdraw the
profits to fund your lifestyle. You
can reinvest these profits for
even greater rewards
WWW.BUSINESSGROWTHMASTERY.COM
in the future. You can choose to
share the profits with your manage- STEP SEVEN - Managing
ment team or the team as a whole. the Cash
Even for those individuals where
profit maximisation is not their
I keep saying that each Step is criti-
number one objective, they realise
cal - that it is the most important
that to sustain a business in
part of all business success.
the long term, profits are a pre-
requisite.
However, if you only take one area
seriously, it has to be this Step -
Having said all of this, for many
Cash!
business owners, profitability is
a pipe-dream.
Cashflow is the life blood of all busi-
nesses and without it a business
Not to say that they are making
simply grinds to a halt.
losses, rather they do not get an ac-
ceptable return for their time worked
Although it is so vital, many busi-
or capital invested in the business.
nesses don't really have a plan for
effective cash management - they
In many instances, if a commercial
are either too busy focusing on other
wage and risk adjusted return on
areas of the business or worse still
capital invested were computed,
remain ignorant to its importance.
many SMEs would not be profitable!
A lack of cash creates several unde-
Which camp do you fall into?
sirable consequences - it will stump
So, whether you are in the camp
growth, it may affect a company's
reputation, if they are constantly
that is making significant profits
being chased over unpaid bills and in
or you are presently not making a
extreme situations, it can lead to
sufficient return, we are always
insolvency of the business.
interested in maximising profits,
aren't we? The big question is how!
However there are many simple
ways to ensure that you have suffi-
Consider these 5 questions and see
cient cash to manage the business
how you can apply them to your
today whilst creating reserves to
business.
fund the future growth of your busi-
ness.
1. what can you do to increase your
number of customers? One of the first things that you will
need to do is to develop a structured
2. what can you do to increase the
volume of sales? cashflow management process, one
which is aligned to your growth
3. how can you reduce your costs? plans.
4. what can you do to improve mar-
This sounds complex but is simply a
gins?
way to review on a daily/ weekly/
monthly basis the cash coming into
5. how can you increase the fre-
the business, the cash going out and
quency of sales?
the resultant balance.
Answer these questions and apply
your answers and your profits will
increase - they have to because you
are tweaking the key elements
that make up your profitability.
WWW.BUSINESSGROWTHMASTERY.COM SECTION TWO 9

If you have more going out than
in, it is obvious that you eventu-
ally run out of cash.
In these situations you need to
consider ways to pull more cash
in and reduce the outgoings.
need to recast your goals and struc-
ture your objectives for the next
phase of life.
However, there is plenty of time for
that as you progress towards the day
that you exit.
Remember to fail to plan is the plan
of failure - in the case of succession,
a lack of a cohesive plan can have a
massive impact on the price that you
get. Don't lose out because of a fail-
ure to prepare.

These 6 questions might help
you to consider ways of achiev-
ing this in your business.
1. can you reduce the number
of days credit that you allow
your customers? - reducing
from 30 days to 14 days will
generate significant cashflow
benefits
2. can you increase the number
of days credit that you take
from your suppliers? - if you
have 30 days terms, pay on
day 30.
3. what benefit would you ex-
pect if you were to call your
customers a week before
their invoices were due to
confirm payment will be
made?
4. what options do you have to
raise additional cash?
5. have you thought about rais-
ing cash from the value of
your invoices?
6. how can you maximise your
stock turn?
Our 8 week programme will help
you to understand this in greater
detail.
It will help you to develop rele-
vant KPIs around liquidity to tell
you what is happening before it
happens.
Effectively, it will provide you
with an early warning signal for
cash management.
STEP EIGHT - Realis-
ing Your Return
What is more critical for you now is
to have a clear understanding of how
you plan to exit, because you will
need take decisions as you proceed
that will need to be geared towards a
specific option.
Succession is a complicated process
and many things can go wrong.
You might not be able to sell, it may
take too long to sell, you may not
get the price you need, there may be
tax issues that need resolution, buy-
ers may want warranties that expose
you, they may want you to continue
within the business. All of these is-
sues could derail the best laid plans
for the future.
However, by taking a longer term
view, you can take actions now to
prevent the likelihood of these
events occurring.
“Building my business al-
There are seven key steps to suc- ways seemed an uphill
cessful succession; struggle until I came across
the Business Growth Mas-
1. insure key staff against death or tery Programme.
long-term illness
By applying their Blueprint
2. plan at least three years ahead of
a major change in management
for Business Success, I’m
now able to take massive
3. groom the next generation of steps towards my ultimate
management with mentoring, objective.”
training & job rotation
4. delegate operational responsibility Julian Richardson -
and share your knowledge to re- IFA Practice
duce your personal value to the
business
5. provide incentives to retain key
staff within the business
6. develop an effective tax plan to
maximise your profit
7. keep refining the plan

There are many things to con-
sider, not least what are you
going to do to fill the void cre-
ated by not working in the busi-
ness each and every day. You
From this list, what are the key ac-
tions that you need to take now?
Think about it and develop an action
plan.
10 SECTION TWO
Tony,
Thanks for the helpful
tips and tools provided.
The support that I have
received has resulted in
my business growing by
some 350% over the last
18 months.
Forecasts for the next 12
month are equally im-
pressive.
All this and I’m able to
spend more time with
my family.
I feel less stressed than I
used to, more energised
and in far greater control
of my destiny.
A great programme!
Neil Waterhouse
Retailer
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Remember, “We reap the benefits of
CONCLUDING what we actually do, not what we
plan on doing someday when we’re
THOUGHTS AND not so busy”
NEXT STEPS If you are serious about creating
growth within your business, we sug-
gest that you contact you to discuss
Running a business, whatever the how we can assist you quicklu, easily
size can be a lonely existence. and inexpensively to implement the
Blueprint for Business Growth into
Who can you turn to when you need your business.
to discuss some sensitive issue? Who
can you open up to when you need to Thank you for your interest in our
release the pressure? work and I wish to well for the future.
For many, the answer is their loved Kind Regards
ones and this has an impact on their
relationships.
Tony Lockwood
All of the successful entrepreneurs
that have assisted in the develop-
ment of this programme have very
strong relationships with their nearest
and dearest. They have worked out
how to relax and let the business
flow.
This Free Report is intended to pro-
vide you with an insight into how
they have achieved this.
I trust that you have found the report
informative and insightful in places.
We’d like to continue our relationship
with you further and really work with
you to realise your growth ambitions.
There are a number of ways that we
can achieve this.
I’d strongly recommend that you take
our eight week Business Growth Mas-
tery Programme, where we lead you
through a series of weekly activities
designed to implement the Blueprint
for Business Success into your busi-
ness.
The value of this programme is limit-
less - only you can tell how the prin-
ciples covered will impact on you.
The programme comes with a full, no
quibble money back guarantee so
sign up right now at ;
http://www.businessgrowthmastery.com/business_growth_mastery_programme.html