Facing the finance: Business owners’ stories

Money makes the world go round. A business’ cash flow, margins, profit, investments, (the list goes on), are often the reason they make it or break it. So, it’s essential for a business’ success that the owner has their money management under control.

Finance forms the backbone for a lot of issues our members, owners and leaders of businesses, bring to their advisory boards. Due to the experience around the table, the other business owners can bring a variety of invaluable advice, inspiring others to improve on the finance side of their businesses.

We have our boards and our expert business coaches who can give sound advice on finance, including how to improve your cash flow, but we thought we would take the opportunity to show how business owners are thriving after solving their financial challenges through the TAB (The Alternative Board) community.

How have these business owners solved their financial challenges?

Anna-Marie Eardley streamlined her crippling accountancy costs

Anna-Marie Eardley of Waterloo Quay Properties told us all about what TAB has helped her to achieve:

“The first thing that came out of my initial TAB meetings was to focus on our biggest costs, and what we could do about them. An introduction through TAB to a consultant financial director helped me to streamline our crippling accountancy costs and other company outgoings to improve financial performance. It was a brilliant and particularly crucial decision – especially with the pandemic emerging only a few months later.”

Adam Bell increased his business growth by 400%

In addition to the engagement of the board and the one-to-ones, Adam Bell of Moment has valued TAB’s online support tools in Business Builder’s Blueprint.

He has used this tool to develop an onboarding programme for new staff members to help them understand Moment, its culture and services, its sustainable values of people and planet before profit, and its plans for growth. The programme also ensured a team spirit between its remote workforce.

Adam says the Blueprint helped to put in place the infrastructure to scale quickly, whether it’s up to 50 or 100 team members and beyond. Aspects of Blueprint also helped Adam to inform funding applications as the business seeks to further increase growth by 400% in 2021, now with the support of Commercial Director, Gordon Charlton and a developing management team.

Suzanne Lawson set realistic budgets

Suzanne Lawson of MC Cleaning commented about the sessions with her TAB facilitator and business coach, Peter Harris: "Peter regularly challenges my thinking and from the outset, I have valued his opinion. He gets me look at situations differently which I may not have previously considered before. It’s not even limited to the scheduled one to ones, there have also been occasions where I’ve wanted to use him as a sounding bound or voice of reason and he’s always made time for me."

Using TAB’s Business Builder’s Blueprint, which hosts a range of business tools,  has thrown out important questions regarding exit strategy for Suzanne. "I’ve been using it to help align those goals with Tim, my business partner, which we’re still working on. It’s now at the forefront of my mind and that understanding has been very useful."

They have always had strategic plans and set realistic budgets and targets but the plan has been to grow the business in a controlled and profitable manner, ensuring they have a diverse portfolio of customers.

Ian Hazeldine got to grips with his finances

Ian Hazeldine of Yellow Circle has taken a range of different issues to his board, including the management buy-out. He had never dealt with the business’ finances so getting his head around the figures was a big talking point on the board. Through advice from others, he has changed accountant who has been invaluable and has set up systems Ian can use effectively. In 2021, getting to grips with the finance side of the business was Ian’s TAB champagne moment. He achieved it ahead of his target!