We’ve been established as a company now for 35 years and I’ve been Managing Director for 22 years, following the death of my father at a fairly young age. Although we’d been pretty successful for most of that period, I always had a nagging doubt over whether this was something I really wanted to do for the rest of my life, where I wanted to take the business and, indeed, if I could ever genuinely call it ‘my business’, as my father had founded it. As a consequence, there’s no doubt that I allowed the business to tick along, as we were always ‘ok’, without ever finding the necessary passion or pride in what we were doing to really think big, be really bold or get really excited. It felt as though the business was laying the path for my future and I was following it, when it should have been me controlling my direction and speed of travel.
In 2015, out-of-the blue, the opportunity to start working with Mandy Hildred materialised, and although I was a little sceptical at first, it soon became apparent that this might just have been the thing I’d been searching for over the years and that it was worth a shot. I can honestly say that working with Mandy, through fortnightly coaching sessions, the 90 Day planning events and further support along the way, my psychological attitude towards my business has been transformed, which has provided the platform for driving the changes and improvements we’ve made, that otherwise wouldn’t have occurred in such a successful, disciplined and swift manner.
I now feel a huge sense of passion and pride in what we’re doing now and what I’ve achieved over the past 22 years. Coaching with Mandy has helped me stay constantly focussed on what we’re doing now and on the vision and goals we need to set to continue the growth we’re enjoying. The results we’ve achieved have meant that our sales performance since the start of coaching is up by 40% while our net profits have increased by 75% and continue to grow.
Following large-scale investment in a new pre-treatment plant, one of last year’s most significant achievements, was to achieve Architecturally Approved Applicator Status, enabling us to guarantee the durability of our powder coating for 30 years. This was something I didn’t think we’d ever be able to achieve at our current site, and due to the paucity of approved powder coating applicators within a large geographical spread, we’ll be able to use this to our advantage to rapidly increase sales, particularly in the architectural aluminium markets. Due to this, we’ve set a sales target of £1,000,000 for 2018-19, which I firmly believe, mainly due to the confidence I’ve gained through coaching, is realistic and smart.
2018 also saw some other big wins for MCS. We successfully restructured our admin and accounting team and methods, removing a long-standing team challenge in the process and giving me a great opportunity to get real control of all aspects of the business’s finances like never before. We moved out of invoice financing, after eight years, reducing our costs and giving us back true control over our debtor’s book.
We have commissioned a large, advanced business management system, which will go live in 2018. This will automate many of our internal production and communication systems and provide our clients with much greater control and transparency over their ordering process. This will set us apart from any other metal finishing company in the North of England.
Our Team has increased by 33% from 12 to a workforce of 16. Our Team Culture is strong and we have worked hard on improving our internal communications which has significantly meant that we have an engaged and motivated team that also take pride in what we’re building.
All of these achievements have been driven by the hard work of my team and I, but it’s coaching that’s made me believe such things are possible and given me skills and learning to aid it and the belief that we can achieve whatever we need to in the future.
The future is very exciting for MCS, and it’s a future that is defined, structured and targeted like it never has been and without the key change in my approach to everything, that came as a result of coaching, we may have continued ‘ticking over’ with somewhat ‘drifting’ leadership indefinitely.
Gareth Deakin – Managing Director
