Vistage Blog

The thought of expanding your business into new territories can feel like standing on the edge of a cliff; terra firma beneath your feet and beyond, the vast unknown. You’ve established a business in a home market you know and understand, profits and growth are good, so why take that terrifying leap into unchartered waters?

The results of the first Vistage UK-IRL Confidence Index of 2019 are in.

When it comes to accelerating growth and scaling up businesses, there are few people who know more than Nicola Cook.

Elon Musk and Jack Ma are two very successful business magnates who have changed the game when it comes to putting a public face to their respective companies and utilising modern tactics and ideas to build a globally recognised brand.

Defined as a business with an average annualised return of at least 20% in the last three years - and with a minimum of 10 employees at the start of the period - scaleup businesses are those that demonstrate amazing levels of growth. According to the ScaleUp Institute’s Annual Scaleup Review 2018, the UK is now home to around 35,000 such businesses, contributing hugely to its economic growth and productivity.

In his essential entrepreneurial tome, “The Business of Expertise”, David C Baker explains that it’s often difficult to read the label on the jar when you're inside the jar yourself. This, in a nutshell, is why consultants exist. It can be difficult for business leaders to highlight the real issues when they're so close to them. It’s one of the reasons SMEs in the UK alone spend around £60 billion a year on expert consultants.

Every day, people upload 4 million hours of content to YouTube, bloggers, businesses and brands publish 2 million blog posts, and the chattering masses fire out over six hundred fifty-six million tweets. The internet is a busy place.

Growth is ultimately the goal for every business, but some grow faster than others. A scaleup business is defined as one with an average annualised return of at least 20% in the past three years, with at least ten employees at the beginning of the period.

Is workplace wellbeing on your agenda for 2019? It should be.

Published in November 2018, the Annual ScaleUp Review 2018 is the latest in-depth report from the ScaleUp Institute: a body whose mission is “to help the UK to become the best place in the world to grow a business as well as start one, and enable our existing high growth businesses to scale up even further”.