About

From estimating desk to £23M CEO: why I built JWP Business Consultancy Yorkshire

Business owner to business owner — here is what I actually did, what I learned, and how I now help Yorkshire companies grow.

Most business consultants sell theory. They arrive with a PowerPoint, a framework, and a monthly retainer. They leave with the same problems still sitting on your desk.

I started JWP Business Consultancy Yorkshire because I am not a consultant in the traditional sense. I am an owner who has done it — built businesses, fixed broken ones, sold them, and walked away with the lessons. Now I take that same hands-on approach into Yorkshire businesses that want real growth, not another report.

My start: sales, estimating, and learning the numbers

I left school and went straight into estimating and sales for an industrial door company. It was a good grounding — you learn quickly that every quote has a margin, every job has a risk, and every customer has a story.

I moved up to Contracts Manager, running the operations side of the business and taking responsibility for credit control. That is where I learned that cash flow is more important than turnover, and that the difference between a profitable month and a disastrous one is often how tightly you manage the money already owed to you.

Becoming a director — and then selling to a multinational

I left to join a competitor, where I became Sales Director and eventually helped oversee the entire company. The business grew, and in 2013 the directors sold it to a multinational.

That taught me the first big lesson: businesses are built to be sold, even if you do not think you are selling. A buyer does not care about your passion. They care about clean financials, recurring revenue, systems that work without you, and a management team that can run the place if you are not there.

Buying it back and growing it again

In 2016, alongside trusted investors, I bought back part of the business. We took it from £8M turnover to £13M by 2025. That growth did not come from clever strategy alone. It came from:

• Fixing the sales process so the team could close consistently
• Tightening operations so jobs were delivered profitably
• Managing cash and credit control so growth did not strangle the bank account
• Building a team that could run the day-to-day without me in every meeting

Building two more businesses from scratch

While that business grew, I did not stop. In 2019, I set up a service business from nothing and grew it to £8M turnover by 2025. It was a profitable, well-run operation — 48% gross margin and 25% net margin. That did not happen by accident. It happened because we priced correctly, controlled costs, delivered consistently, and never let slow payers build up.

In 2022, I set up a dock leveller company and took it to £2M turnover by 2025.

By 2025, the combined group turnover was £23M, with EBITDA over £3M.

These were not side projects. They were real businesses with real staff, real customers, real P&Ls, and real problems. I had to make payroll, chase debtors, hire the right people, remove the wrong ones, negotiate with suppliers, and make decisions when the data was incomplete.

Selling everything and starting the next chapter

In 2025, I oversaw the sale of all three companies and exited after selling my shareholding.

I could have retired. But I enjoy the work. More importantly, I have a skill set that most Yorkshire business owners never get access to: someone who has been an owner, an MD, a CEO, and an operator, and has successfully built and sold multiple businesses.

That is why I started JWP Business Consultancy Yorkshire.

What I do differently

I do not write reports and disappear. I take a role inside your business. That might mean:

• Sitting in your management meetings
• Reviewing your sales pipeline and helping your team close
• Looking at your cash flow and fixing the slow payer problem
• Building systems that mean the business works without you
• Preparing the business for sale or investment

I am based in Yorkshire, I work with Yorkshire businesses, and I understand the reality of running an SME here: lean teams, tight margins, family dynamics, and no spare director to run a change programme.

Who this is for

You might benefit from working with me if:

• Your business has grown to a point where the owner is the bottleneck
• You have cash tied up in slow payers and need a practical credit control fix
• You want to increase sales but your team is not closing consistently
• Operations are jamming and you need someone to unpick the process
• You are thinking about investment, exit, or succession in the next few years
• You have tried consultants before and ended up with more paperwork than progress