I.
£4,800 fixed
Strategy Workshops
A two-day deep dive with you and your senior team. We leave with a single agreed plan for the next twelve months — what you’re building, what you’re cutting, and who owns each piece.
Pivot PointBusiness Coaching
01451 405 220Cotswolds · Online · Est. 2010
Stuck at £500k? £1m? £5m? We’ve pivoted businesses past each.
Pivot Point is a small consulting practice for owner-managed businesses in the UK. We work with founders who have built something genuine and now find themselves stuck at a number — the one that will not move, no matter how many more hours they put in. We help you find the pivot, plan it, and live through it.
Cranfield-trained·20 years’ practice·$500m+ portfolio·Established 2010·UK & Online
01 — The Four Pivots
Every business hits a wall. Most are predictable.
i.
The £500k ceiling
Owner-dependent, founder still doing the work, no operating layer underneath. The pivot is delegation and the discipline of letting other people do it imperfectly.
ii.
The £1m plateau
Revenue stalls because the founder has run out of hours. The pivot is structural — a number two, a finance function, and a set of management metrics the owner can actually trust.
iii.
The £5m wall
Margin compresses, complexity multiplies, and the original team starts to break. The pivot is professionalisation — board, systems, and the difficult conversations that come with both.
iv.
The exit horizon
Eighteen months out, the owner discovers the business is not as sellable as they thought. The pivot is value engineering — recurring revenue, clean accounts, and a management team that does not include the founder.
02 — How We Work
Five defined engagements.
No open-ended retainers. No team of associates you have never met. Every engagement has a defined start, end, and deliverable — and you work directly with the principal throughout.
II.
£1,800 / month
1:1 CEO Coaching
Fortnightly sessions, ninety minutes, on Zoom or in person. The quiet hour you don’t get anywhere else. We work on the decisions you cannot bring to your team, your board, or your spouse.
III.
From £6,500
Operations Review
Three weeks inside the business. We look at margin, cashflow, hiring, and the systems holding it all together. You receive a written report with prioritised fixes — not a deck, not a workshop.
IV.
£8,500 fixed
Scaling Playbook
A bespoke twelve-month roadmap for owners moving from £1m to £5m. Covers hiring sequence, org design, financial controls, and the cultural shifts that derail most of them.
V.
On enquiry
Exit Planning
For owners eighteen to thirty-six months from a sale. Pre-sale value engineering, advisor selection, narrative preparation, and the personal questions most founders ignore until the day after completion.
03 — Case Notes
Three businesses. Anonymised.
Detail is changed where it could identify the client. The structure, the numbers, and the outcome are accurate. References available under NDA once we meet.
01
Manufacturing · Midlands
From £1.2m stuck to £4.1m in 30 months
Family-run engineering firm hitting the same number for four years. We rebuilt the sales process, brought in an ops director, and rewrote the pricing model. Margin tripled before the top line moved.
Outcome
+241%
02
Professional Services · London
Founder out of the day-to-day in 14 months
Boutique consultancy run by two partners, both billing full-time. We installed a delivery manager, restructured the partnership economics, and built the management layer that let the founders step back without revenue dropping.
Outcome
Founder 1 day/wk
03
B2B SaaS · Cotswolds
Sold to a US acquirer for an 8x multiple
Twenty-four month engagement starting at £2.1m ARR. Built the recurring revenue story, cleaned the cap table, and prepared the founder for a process he had previously walked away from twice.
Outcome
8.2x ARR
04 — The Founder
Richard Ainsworth. Twenty years of pivots, his own included.
Richard founded Pivot Point in 2010 after a decade running the UK arm of a mid-market private equity firm, where he sat on the boards of eleven portfolio companies with a combined enterprise value of over $500m.
Before that, two of his own businesses — one sold, one closed. The second teaches more than the first. He took a Cranfield MBA in 2003 and has since lectured occasionally at the Cranfield School of Management on owner-managed growth.
He works with a small number of clients each year. The practice is deliberately limited to six active CEO engagements at any time. When the diary is full, there is a waiting list — usually around four months.
05 — How We Work Differently
Three things you will not find elsewhere.
01
No retainer trap
Most of our engagements are fixed-fee with a defined end. We are not paid to keep showing up. We are paid to make ourselves redundant.
02
Owner-first, not investor-first
We work for the founder, not the board or the PE house. The advice you receive is shaped by what is right for you and the business — not the exit timeline of a third party.
03
Built, not borrowed
Every framework we use was developed in a real business, in a real market, with real consequences. We do not retail other people’s methodology.
From a client of seven years
“Richard tells you the thing your team will not tell you, your accountant cannot tell you, and your spouse has been trying to tell you for two years. The first six months are uncomfortable. The next six are the most productive of your career.”
CEO · Engineering Group · £14m turnover
06 — A First Conversation
Forty-five minutes.
No charge.
A discovery call on Zoom or, if you prefer, in person at our studio in the Cotswolds. We will listen, ask a number of awkward questions, and tell you honestly whether we believe we can help.
Call 01451 405 220 →Studio
The Old Mill
Bourton-on-the-Water
Gloucestershire GL54 2BY
Bourton-on-the-Water
Gloucestershire GL54 2BY
Availability
Monday – Thursday · 9.00 – 18.00
Friday · By appointment
Six active CEO clients at a time
Friday · By appointment
Six active CEO clients at a time
Telephone
01451 405 220