The best small business advisors in London

Why Choose Us

A Different Approach

Because every small business is unique

Holistic

For your small business to reach its full potential, its component parts all need to work in sync. Our team has the breadth of know-how to develop a holistic understanding of your business and provide advice that will make it work seamlessly.

Bespoke

Our approach to strategy is not one-size-fits-all — we know every client is different, so we don't provide cookie-cutter solutions. Instead, we offer carefully considered advice that is tailored to your needs and what you want to achieve.

Flexible

Every client has unique needs and is best placed to decide how much external advice they wish to take. You choose the level of support that works best for you.

Listening

We'll take time to listen to your needs and aspirations — to give you the best advice, we need to see things from your perspective. We won't propose solutions until we've understood your values, your concerns and your goals.

Partnership

We believe your success is our success. We will work in partnership with you to ensure your strategy decisions are successful. We take pride in building long-term relationships and will work side by side with you to achieve your goals.

Meet the team

Saul Rans

Saul has been a business strategist and finance professional for over 30 years. He is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales (ACA). Saul works with small businesses to unlock their full potential by offering clear, practical advice. His view is that tackling strategy can seem difficult and complex but needn't be. He believes that any small business can create great strategy by cutting through the noise to get to the few key issues that lie at the heart of most strategy challenges.

Expert business and marketing strategy advice

Heidy Rehman

Heidy is a long-standing business strategist, marketer, entrepreneur and financial analyst. She is a Fellow of the Association of Certified & Chartered Accountants (FCCA), a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (FCIM) and a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR). Heidy understands the demands business leaders face in their very busy daily lives — how they have to spend so much time working in their business that they have little time to spend working on their business. Her aim is to deliver actionable and practical ways to overcome this and deliver profitable growth.

Our Values

Providing our clients with the most effective advice and guidance relies on the core values that are at the heart of everything we do.

Put the client first

Only accept an engagement if we can really help the client.
Listen to each client's aspirations and needs.
Aim to bring value to every client interaction.

Give only the best advice

Tailor advice to the unique circumstances of each client.
Ask every day: how could our clients do things differently and better?
Give advice that is practical and usable.

Do the right thing

Act with honesty and integrity. Earn the trust of every client through our actions.
Treat every client as a partner — your success is our success.
Only make commitments we're confident we can meet.

Embrace Continuous improvement

Constantly seek new and innovative ways to help our clients.
Be open to new ideas and technologies.
Challenge conventional wisdom when it is in our clients' best interests.

Who We Work With

We work with businesses that range in size — from solo entrepreneurs (including pre-revenue start-ups) to established SMEs with around 50 employees.

And we don’t set a minimum project size. Our assignments range from 60 minute, one-off calls to complete strategy reviews. It all depends on what you want and need. You may be looking for a complete overhaul of your corporate or marketing strategy which would be a significant project. Alternatively, you may want our team to prepare and moderate a half-day strategy offsite for your senior management team. Or you may simply want to brainstorm some ideas now and then.

Typically, the people we deal with at our client accounts are business owners or CEOs, other members of the C-suite executive team (e.g. CFOs, COOs, CMOs etc) or other senior management and department heads.

Our attitude is to be open about the industries we cover because we believe the principles of developing good strategy are universal. However, we do acknowledge that the answers that flow will depend on circumstances that are unique to a sector. For this reason, we are also open to working with not-for-profit (NFP) organisations and charities.

What we ask you to bear in mind is that we work with companies that are looking for advice rather than execution — although we can guide you on how to fill and manage any roles that will help deliver your strategy. Similarly, if you have more specialist needs, we have a network of contacts with broad expertise and we will happily put you in touch with someone who can help.

So if you’re thinking of taking advice but you’re not sure yet if we’re the right fit for you, feel free to get in touch for a no-cost, no obligation chat. We love meeting new entrepreneurs and will always try to bring some value to the table regardless of where it leads.

What is Strategy?

A strategy is the set of plans and policies a company puts in place to reach its goals.

For example, a company might aim to double its turnover in the next five years. It needs a strategy to deliver this.

It could target a new customer segment with a range of higher performance products, launch indirect sales through distributors or start offering key customers volume-based discounts.

These would all be examples of strategies.

It's important not to confuse strategies with goals — a common mistake.

"We aim to double our sales in five years" is not a strategy, it’s a goal. And a goal will not achieve itself.

Setting goals without putting in place a strategy to reach them will lead you nowhere.

Goals are where you want to get to — the destination

Strategy is how you plan to get there — the roadmap

To be successful, strategies need to meet several tests:

Strategy should consistently play to your strengths

Ask yourself — What do you do better than your competitors? What is the unique value you provide to your customers? Why do your customers buy from you?
Your strategy should play to these strengths and extract maximum advantage from them.
Your plans should pull in the same direction across every business function. When your efforts reinforce each other, their impact is multiplied.

Strategy demands focus

Strategy is about choosing priorities.
It requires you to concentrate your finite resources of management capacity, staff effort and finance to achieve your most critical objectives.
Spreading your efforts too widely risks producing average results everywhere — rather than outstanding results in the few things that really matter.

Strategy relies on a correct diagnosis

Good strategy is informed by a correct diagnosis of where the opportunities for improvement lie.
Finding problems is good for your business because solving them improves your performance.
Strategy is a means to overcome bottlenecks and realise the full potential from your business.

Strategy must be practical

It must be able to win the buy-in of management and staff.
It should be aligned with management's risk appetite and time horizon for seeing positive results.
It should involve a workload that management can sustain.
And the objectives that a strategy is designed to achieve should be feasible under expected market conditions.

Get Your Strategy Process Right

Diagnose

Get under the bonnet of your business
Find out what's blocking your way to stronger growth and higher profitability
Identify new opportunities
Understand what can steer your company to success

Plan

Discover how to create and implement a coherent, coordinated strategic plan
Develop better ways of measuring your performance
Establish the right milestones to keep you on track

Act

Master every step of your action plan
Fine tune your ability to capitalise on opportunities and avoid pitfalls
Advance to the next level in your company's journey