An Introduction...

Hi there,

Welcome to my blog on turnarounds in business- given the current climate, quite a relevant topic.

My experience was forged in my mid-20s when at a relatively young age, I became a Finance Director of a group of companies that were turning over £5m and losing £2.5m- quite a feat really. Lucky for the business, it had a property portfolio which provided cash and funding to by the time required to restructure the business. To be quite honest, I was out of my depth but being single at the time (and younger!), I was able to work 7 days a week, often 20 hours a day to do enough of the right things to get the business back on track.

Within 2 years we were able to turn the whole thing around into a £500k profit, the owner has gone onto become a multi-millionaire and I learnt what it took to turn a business around.

That experience has held me in good stead for some 22 years, and was invaluable in the early 90s as I worked with businesses that actually grew during a recession.

The first thing I would say is that I am not an asset stripping son of a gun- I work with the managing director owners of the business so that as far as practically possible, they retain control and ownership of the business.

The second thing is that the current climate is extremely volatile- you only need to read the daily swathe of business failures and scale downs to know there is a serious issue out there but they are survivable if you have a sound business model.

Lastly, although the current economic climate is at least as severe as it was in the early 90s and maybe more so, I get a real kick out of not only helping businesses to survive such times, but to actually grow- and it is not as hard as we sometimes make it- it is purely a question of doing enough of the right things consistently and persistently while others are floundering around.

So with that in mind, I'll be putting out a weekly blog which will provide three things-

1. review of some experiences during the week which may be valuable

2. tips, actions and ideas that can be used to survive these times in business

3. information on what is available to help


If you would like some more information or contact me, please look at http://www.tgba.co.uk/ or contact me at mel@melloades.co.uk to find out more.