Mansfield - The Grown-Up Business

Youll love this book if youre

A business owner who loves what you do but its become a millstone around your neck.

Desperate to get out of the rut, increase sales, grow profits, reduce stress levels and get your life back.

Looking for a step-by-step program to get you back on track, boost your confidence and point you in the right direction.

Feeling alone.

Missing the money, profit, growth, free time, happy customers, fun and laughter that are the rewards for becoming a Grown-Up Business.

Determined to build a business that is better in every way to your peers and competitors.

Testimonials

If you operate a business, buy this book today. Not tomorrow. Today. Sam Carpenter - Author of Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less

The perfect book for a small business owner who wants better but isnt sure how to make it happen.
Tim Levey - Author of Profit Improvement in a Week and Never Cut Costs

This book is overflowing with useful ideas and strategies that would help a struggling or stagnant business blossom.
Jane Mallin

Running a business for years can sometimes mean you operate in a groove. The Grown-Up Business helps you to creatively step out of the groove to give you a new perspective on whats going on in your business and provides great strategies to reinvent or remodel the way you do things. One book to keep open on your desk!
Trish Stretton - MD, People face2face Ltd

Shirleys book is really helpful on two fronts, firstly its an easy to read and understand book on business and secondly because its so stuffed with ideas you can also use it as a work book as you follow step by step the key tasks identified in each chapter to help you make your business a success.
Laurence Ainsworth - Managing High Growth

Permissions

Excerpt from Bottys Rules by Nigel Botterill. Copyright 2011 by Nigel Botterill. Published by Vermillion.

Excerpt from Work The System, The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less by Sam Carpenter. Copyright 2012 by Sam Carpenter. Published by Greenleaf Book Group Press. www.workthesystem.com

Excerpt from The Artists Way by Julia Cameron. Copyright 1992 by Julia Cameron. Published by Souvenir Press.

Your Plan, Your Reality graphic by www.doghousediaries.com, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License.

Frog Designs brand manifesto, www.frogdesign.com.

About Shirley Mansfield

Shirley Mansfield is an author, a high growth business coach, trainer and facilitator, and has a formidable reputation for being a master problem solver for businesses.

Shirley understands fully that owning and running a business can be a lonely place, however supportive your family might be. In the same way that sportsmen and women have coaches to help them to perform to the best of their ability, Shirley believes that every business owner should have access to expert business coaching to help them grow.

Shirley has worked in business, for businesses and with businesses for over 30 years; the last five as a high growth business coach. She has been a company director, non-executive director, functional director and holds the IOD Certificate in Company Direction, MCIM and ACII qualifications.

During a 20-year career in the City, Shirley worked in financial and professional services, with a number of FTSE 250s in marketing, change, sales, and re-engineering, as a problem solver and solution finder. Shirley also worked in heavy manufacturing, the charity sector and with several family businesses. Now she trains, coaches and mentors business owners who want to make more money, have more time, less stress, and more business success. Since setting up her own coaching practice CoachSME, she has helped businesses of all sizes achieve their true potential by helping them to overcome the obstacles in their path.

In her new book The Grown-Up Business, Shirley helps business owners and their companies truly come of age, build on their initial enthusiasm and put down the firm foundations necessary for sustained growth. Shirley lives in Kent with her husband Steve, and can be found in the garden or on the golf course, where she is still trying to reduce her 16 handicap, when not helping businesses become a Grown-Up Business.

The Grown-Up Business is dedicated to anyone who looks for and finds the best in people, gives them a pat on the back, boosts their confidence, and tells them they can, not they cant!

Published by Filament Publishing Ltd
16 Croydon Road, Waddon, Croydon, Surrey CR0 4PA, United Kingdom
Telephone +44 (0)20 8688 2598 | Fax +44 (0)20 7183 7186

Copyright 2014 Shirley Mansfield. All rights reserved.

This book is designed to provide information on how you can improve your business.

The purpose of this book is to inform and entertain the reader on the subject, drawing on many sources of information as well as personal experience. It is published for general reference and is not intended to be definitive guidance on your circumstances or as a substitute for independent verification by readers.

Although the author and publisher have made all reasonable efforts to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the information contained within, we cannot assume any responsibility for errors, inaccuracies, omissions, or inconsistencies or reliance on the same.

This book is sold on the understanding that neither the publisher nor the author are engaged in providing accounting, legal or other professional services. If legal and/or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Neither the author nor the publisher accept any liability, howsoever caused, to any person and/or entity in relation to any loss, damage or expense caused or incurred as a result of acting, or failing to act as a result of information contained in this book.

The right of Shirley Mansfield to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Designs and Copyright Act 1988.

ISBN - 978-1-910125-32-8
ePub ISBN 978-1-910125-70-0
Mobi ISBN 978-1-910125-71-7

Printed by Berforts Information Press
Stevenage & Hastings

This book is subject to international copyright and may not be copied in any way without the prior written permission of the publishers.

Foreword

If you operate a business, buy this book today. Not tomorrow. Today.

Its not often that I endorse a business book because the vast majority beat around the bush and wax too philosophical for my taste. But Grown-Up is different. Its honed in the non-theoretical/lets-face-reality world, and is down-and-dirty useful. It is my pleasure to make a strong endorsement.

Im a systems-mindset, international business consultant specializing in fixing broken businesses and heres something that I know for sure: the fixing happens in the mechanics of an operation and that fixing can only begin at the very top, at the ownership level. Only there can permanent change begin to take place.

Another essential fact: a faux-business is one in which the owner insists on working inside, day and night, to make it work. Thats a job, and usually a lousy job at that. A true business is one that stands alone; one that produces a profit and provides jobs and a great product or service as a self-contained entity that is separate from the owner. Anything less than this is a self-imposed job.