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Peter Rawson, Rockstar Mentor on 3 mentee’s businesses

Peter Rawson, Rockstar Mentor on 3 mentee’s businesses

Peter Rawson gives 3 examples here of how he has mentored 3 different mentees businesses out of signficant problems.

Case Study 1:

Restructuring a family business involving removal of the founder director, re-focusing the business and refinancing the business.

The business came to us with significant internal problems and appointing someone outside of the family to implement the right structure to the business was a huge advantage that led to its success.

The key points to be immediately addressed were: Business plans and strategy, evaluation of the business, restructure management, funding and targeting sales.

The right team members were allocated the targets and time frames to achieve the above points. Peter oversaw the targets and mentored the various family members to acheive their set goals. The increased margins that were achieved allowed the business to be re-financed, giving it more cash to reinvest back into the business.

Company sales revenue when Peter first became mentor was circa £500k with 20 employees. In its current state, the company was liable to fail and the board was at war.

Over the 2 years with a 1 day per week involvement, Peter’s focus was restructuring and growing this business with its team. It resulted in a smaller number of employees (16) , focussed responsibilities, sales growing to £800k and stability of the business achieved.

Case Study 2:

Expanding a UK Business into Europe. The company was a subsiiary of a large Japanese company that prodcued a number of tools and machinery for the construction industry. This was to be a significant expansion of the business as it was still a relatively young business that only a few short years earlier was a UK start up. Its goal was now to be a leader in Europe by both organic and acquisition growth.

Peter as a mentor in the business believed the most important points to focus on were:

Find and put in place local management teams, evaluate the markets and identify, negotiate and complete the acquisitions including overseeing Financial and Legal due diligence.

Assimilation of the new companies into the European structure.

Improve Plastics Design , Engineering , Tool making and Production.

Over 7 years, Peter saw it grow to circa £300m sales in Europe, 20 sites including 12 acquisitions from private, institutional, group and receiver owners. He was with them every step of the way.

Case Study 3:

Here Peter assisted a small food manufacturing bakery business find an acquirer for it and re-site manufacturing.

Peter identified the key initial focus had to be to firstly make the business look as attractive as possible to the short list of acquirers who would show interest. Therefore the key points achieved included:

Improving margin of business by reduction in costs in manufacturing. This was actually achieved by initially growing through acquistion.

Peter helped find, buy and move a small manufacturing bakery business from Gloucestershire to London. They then restarted manufacture to existing clients and immediately increased sales by £100k. Following its new and improved sales and margin, they approached within 2 years and the business sold into a larger company.