High growth entrepreneurs share their personal learning for free to benefit SME’s

In “How To Fly High”,  business owners and leaders share the personal light-bulb moments that shifted their thinking to achieve business growth, including Majestic Wine’s Rowan Gormley, ‘there was a dawning realisation that I had to change’.

How to Fly High by Angela Dellar

The inspiration for the book came from a passion to support business owners and leaders who, often unintentionally, limit business growth by their own actions.

“It’s often hard to share control and decisions with others and we ‘get in our own way’ by holding on to control and decision making out of fear.

I wanted to interview successful high growth entrepreneurs and leaders and ask for their honest answers as to how they managed to ‘get out of their own way’ to benefit others in similar situations.”

As well as Rowan Gormley, other honest lessons shared include:

  • Angus Thirlwell founder of Hotel Chocolat and how he got beyond the guilt of not being a doer and “the hero in the middle of the business”.
  • Louise Beaumont of GLI Finance discusses her “stupidity, bloody-mindedness and resilience” necessary to launch a new product.
  • Keith Paxman of Praxis42 on how he unlocked business growth through his people.
  • Alan Ridealgh of Muntons plc who achieved record profit by not selling to almost half of their customers.
  • Russ Stilwell of RSE Building Services reveals how he grew his business by more than 655% to £6m turnover in under three years.
  • Peter Jarvis of Contechs shares their plans to achieve profit growth whilst staying the same turnover.

Keen that the learning shared has a wide and positive impact, How To Fly High is available in full and without charge to download from www.apricotbusinessgrowth.co.uk. For those preferring a hard copy (perhaps to leave on the boss’s desk!), the book can be purchased from Lulu.com with profits raised supporting three cancer charities.

Special thanks goes to all those involved in the successful production of the book, in particular, those who have shared their time and tough lessons learned for the benefit of many others:

and to Graham MacGregor of Twomac Consulting.