I grew up in London and worked in a global bank as a senior business analyst and IT project manager. I then worked in recruitment for 10 years while I established my company. I also established my own company selling high-end furniture, which I sold. I have a passion for psychology and I am a NLP practitioner.
I love spending time with my 6 wonderful children (oldest is now 16 and youngest is 4!) and try to keep them busy and mentally stimulated.
Outside of work and family, I spend a large part of my day lecturing and studying in an advanced college of talmudical law, which forms the basis of Jewish practice.
Besides that, I love working out and I love the thrill of building my business! I am very lucky to work with small business owners and see their business grow. I feel that this gives me a drive and massive sense of satisfaction, to do something that I am passionate about and seeing direct results.
While I was working in recruitment, I coached over 2,000 candidates, and worked directly with approx 300 small businesses. Business owners would ask me for advice outside of recruitment and I started to work with them. I then realised how much knowledge I had gained in the banking sector about people management, planning, risk management etc. I realised that people don't know this stuff! So I started Precision Management Consulting.
Precision Management Consulting specialises in helping small businesses get from a place of confusion and chaos, to being efficient within 3 months and without the overwhelm.
The starting point is financial analysis to understand what profit margins they have, their cashflow position and other metrics. This really opens up the business and helps find major efficiencies.
We also take a deep dive into their processes, to understand exactly what can be automated, or delegated to a cheaper member of staff.
Once we have this information, we implement the changes and embed them into the business. This is key and very unique, as most consultancies would write a report and let the business owner make the changes themselves. We understand that small business owners are busy and overwhelmed. We therefore work together with them as a partnership to help incorporate the changes in the business, thereby seeing tangible change and success.
My business idea came from a project that I was asked to do, where I undertook an internal audit of the finance department of a local business. To be honest, I was totally out of my depth! But I persevered and, in this audit, I discovered many areas that needed to change.
I ended up restructuring the entire department and working closely with the management team to define the strategy for the business from a financial perspective.
This made me realise that I could add value in a number of ways, so I started advertising to other businesses.
I was very fortunate to have a large forum of business owners within my local community who knew me and respected my skill set.
I put out a few customised adverts within the local newspaper and had testimonials from previous clients. The rest is history.
I had a wealth of experience in management, IT and processes. But I realised very early on that, to fully understand a business, I would have to spend time understanding their finances. How could I understand someone’s business without looking at the bottom line - ie the money?
This was very challenging for me personally as, at that time, I did not have a strong background in finance.
I overcame this by recruiting people who were specialists in finance. I also upskilled my finance knowledge. We now have 3 experienced management accountants within Precision Management Consulting and we have a reputation for excelling in that area.
An interesting note is that my later entrance into finance has given me an insight into finances that many accountants cant see. I naturally view the financials from a business viewpoint instead of a tax-saving or compliance perspective. This challenge has therefore enabled me to ultimately help my clients in a way that many other consultants would struggle to do.
Another challenge I had was how to define what we could offer. I wanted to be like Deloitte or KPMG for small businesses. This is too vague and I wasn't sure how to communicate what I do without sounding fluffy! This required lots and lots of thought. I spoke to previous clients and my colleagues. Eventually, Robin’s 3 pillar model really got me honed into my specific offer.
My business started with one person - me. We now have 5 members of staff and have won awards year on year for the work we do. We have worked with a large range of businesses including clients within wholesale, retail, construction, education, urban planning and plumbing.
My goal is to expand our client base to reach more businesses around the UK.
When it comes to any service based business, people need to trust you. Its hard to gain trust from people who don't know you. The best marketing that has worked is my referral scheme, where I offer anyone up to £250 for each referral. Some people have made good money from the referrals they sent to us!
I’ll save you some money and recommend that you do not do paid advertising - I have not got any leads from any PPC.
People want you to be down to earth, practical. The real world doesn't care about academic achievements or long reports. An average small business owner wants to see practical results which will help them in their everyday life.
When I first started, I would offer recommendations but consider it too basic to help businesses actually implement these recommendations within the day-to-day. Business owners are overwhelmed. They need this support. It has therefore become a critical part of our service to work with the business owner on a day-to-day basis to see the changes turn into reality.
When you’re starting out fresh, dont spend much money on trying to make the business perfect. Do not hire consultants or coaches. Just get on with the business. Businesses are like trees - they need time to root in the ground, and you cant really control how fast things grow. Just advertise (cheaply) and network, and slowly your business will gain traction.
I dont work with any business which is less than one year old because of this reason. Once your business is established, then you can start to look at systems and processes to scale, but until that point, try to keep investment to a minimum.
In my business model, I dont have any overheads. All my staff work for me on a project by project basis. That means that they have their own jobs or businesses, but they take time out to deliver projects for me, and I pay them for that. This is very common nowadays and the traditional 9-5 working day is disappearing. This model is very flexible and it means that you will never get into serious cashflow problems. If you can do this, it is a good idea.
Internal Goals: Grow the team to bring in more experienced and talented consultants. We are 100% focussed on only hiring consultants who have significant previous experience and are practically minded. This way, we can deliver top quality results for our clients.
External Goals: Expanding our client base to help more small businesses go from chaos to efficient!