The Seven Checks

There is a moment I have watched play out in dozens of businesses, and it is always quieter than it deserves to be. A capable entrepreneur, two or three programmes deep, opens the workbook of the latest one and realises they already know what it is going to say. The tactics will be confident, the promises will be large, and none of it will touch the actual reason the business is stuck.

If that is you, the first thing worth saying is that the problem was not your effort. It was the blueprint.

The business help industry runs, for the most part, on a single economic idea: build the method once, sell it many times. That idea is not evil, but it has consequences. It means the method cannot adapt to you, because adaptation does not scale. It means the questions on the sales call are decoration, because the answer existed before you rang. And it means the seller's incentive is your renewal, not your independence. None of this is announced, so the buyer's only defence is diligence, and almost nobody does any.

Seven checks fix most of it, and they take less time than one discovery call.

First, track record beyond their own business. One success story is a sample of one, and a sample of one proves nothing about transfer. Second, proof you can verify. Careers, deals and appointments can be looked up; revenue screenshots cannot. Third, range. Have they operated in your sector, or near it, at your size? Methods are creatures of context. Fourth, diagnosis before prescription. If the blueprint appears before the questions do, you are the audience, not the patient. Fifth, fit. Does the method adapt to how you operate, or must you adapt to the method? Sixth, skin in the game. Have they carried a payroll, owned a P&L, answered to a board? Seventh, the exit. Ask what leaving looks like. Good mentoring builds your independence, not your subscription.

Run those checks on anyone selling you help. Including me, which is why my answers are on record: three decades in and on other people's businesses through Goldman Sachs, Citi, Credit Suisse and Peel Hunt; deals you can look up, the dotdigital Group acquisition of Comapi, the Wolfson Microelectronics and EEMS IPOs, over $1bn raised; six sectors; every engagement opening with a diagnostic workshop and a written report; no blueprint, on purpose; every chair from CEO to CHRO plus board seats, a loss-making business turned profitable in three months, and my own money invested in startups and scaleups; and an exit built into the product, because the workshop ends with a plan you can act on with or without me.

The deeper point sits underneath the list. Checking is not cynicism. It is the same discipline any of these sellers would demand before spending your money on your business, applied for once on your own behalf. The businesses I work with are past £15k a month, which means the owner's time is the scarcest asset in the building, and a wrong programme costs far more than its price.

Before you buy anything, check your own business first. The Entrepreneur Gap scan takes about ten minutes, maps the eight roles every business needs covered, and shows you what any genuine help should be working on. It is free.

Continue reading: The New Rules of Raising Money →

Or check your business first: Take the free 10-minute Entrepreneur Gap scan →