A North Staffordshire based business coach is on a mission to create 1,000 jobs in the next five-years by helping companies to grow.
Former international sales and marketing director Doug Flynn is using his vast experience both on the corporate world and as a business owner to support business growth.
Doug has joined the international ActionCoach network, returning to North Staffordshire and his home in Tittensor after a life of globe-trotting.
He said: “I have worked all over the world for multinationals and I’m now applying my 30-plus years of experience to help smaller businesses to grow. I offer different programmes from 90 day planning for the smaller businesses, group coaching events and full on executive 1:1 coaching for larger businesses with teams.
“It’s really about transformational coaching, your business will not grow unless you do. Coaching is a process of learning but above all accountability, which business owners don’t have. The result is they shy away from key tasks of planning running KPIs testing and measuring, lead generation… the list goes on. Most business owners spend all their time working in the business not on the business.
“My aim is to help business owners to grow, create more profit and improve the work life balance. Ultimately, we are looking to build a commercial profitable enterprise that can operate without you in it. Going on to create wealth and financial freedom.”
Among current clients is BPA Safety of Stoke. Owners Darren Bedson and Vicky Milward have achieved a significant upturn in business having initially attended a business growth workshop, organised by Doug.
BPA are a successful business, but progress had stalled a little due to loss of experienced staff.
Now, the Leek Road based company has begun to grow again and plans to more than double its team to up to 12 staff.
“We were at a crossroads and had considered continuing running the business with a small core team,” said Vicky, “but Doug’s talk sparked a lightbulb moment as we realised that we didn’t have a long-term strategy and were constantly reacting to the latest sales trends.
BPA now engage in bi-weekly one to one coaching. Strategies are defined along with action plans which are in turn implemented and then monitored for the impact. As a result, we are now seeing over-proportional growth in both sales and profitability.”
Darren said: “We have Key Performance Indicators and incentives and it is the focus of the Directors to work on the business rather than in the business. Doug ensures we are accountable for our actions and for our business plan.
“The first focus was on staff retention and we decided to move forward with new appointments and to refine our recruitment and interview process.
“This has led to the recruitment of one new full-time safety consultant, one part time consultant and we are now advertising for another full-time post. We’ve also implemented new business systems in our office and brought in a new administrator and this has helped free up Vicky to work more strategically.”
Further outcomes include weekly staff meetings and Vicky and Darren attend the Action Coach 90-Day Business Planning Growth Club, where they meet with a range of companies which Doug also coaches.
Vicky commented: “I had always felt an aversion to business coaching and assumed it wasn’t for me, but I’m now a total convert. We have a plan and we feel empowered to push forward with it.
“We started this process with four in the BPA team and are now advertising for our seventh and we have a clear vision to have a team of 10 to 12 in the business providing bespoke advice to our extended range of customers.”
ENDS
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