The Growth Lab

Services

The Growth Lab is a new kind of financial consultancy. Set up to give small and medium sized businesses the strategic and financial foundations they need to grow. Working in a ground-breaking new way to transform businesses and help them succeed.

+ Planning

Helping you make the right decisions and develop a long term strategy to create the future you want.

+ Strategic planning

+ Financial forecasting

+ Raising investment

+ International expansion

+ Performance

Insightful analysis of your data to track performance, set KPIs and reward performance within the team.

+ Performance reporting

+ Profitability analysis

+ Pricing strategy

+ Staff motivation and reward

+ Efficiency

Planning, monitoring and maximising your resources.

+ Process review

+ Evaluation of costs

+ Designing & implementing systems

+ Financial training

+ Control

Minimising risk and making your cash work harder.

+ Cash management

+ Regulatory compliance

+ Risk management

+ Corporate governance

Why The Growth Lab?

+ World-class but affordable

The Growth Lab brings you Big Four accountancy firm expertise, without the intimidating price tag. Flexible part-time support means you can have world-class consultancy, from as little as one day a month.

+ Part of your team

From day 1, the Growth Lab works side-by-side with you and your team to understand your ambitions, priorities and day-to-day business. And to tailor-make a strategic approach that maximises your finances to deliver the planning, efficiency, controls and performance you need to grow.

+ Guaranteed impact

The Growth Lab doesn’t do 100-page PowerPoint presentations. It’s all about smart, actionable ideas that will help you achieve your ambitions. It’s not just about advice, it’s about actually making things happen. Things that make a difference to your bottom line now and for years to come.

+ Super sustainable

Once your plans are set in motion, the Growth Lab mentors your finance people to teach them the skills they need to make everything work like a dream.

+ Infinitely flexible

Unexpected things happen. Unforeseen problems arise. Unmissable opportunities crop up. Your plans will always need to change. That’s a good thing. The Growth Lab believes in flexibility. Constantly re-evaluating and reinventing your solutions to meet your changing needs.

About

For years, Rachel Cheal has worked as a part-time strategic financial director, for a number of creative businesses. She spotted the huge demand for high-quality, straight-talking financial consulting among small and medium sized companies – a need that could be affordably and effectively satisfied with flexible, part-time support. So she set up the Growth Lab to focus on what she loves to do: helping businesses to grow.

Rachel is a qualified chartered accountant with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. She has spent over 15 years working in strategic and commercial finance positions across a wide range of small and large businesses such as Arthur Andersen, Deloitte, Music Choice, Warner Bros, Turner Broadcasting and most recently as Group Finance Director at Tigerspike.

Rachel was recently named in the Power Part Time Top 50, a prestigious list of the top 50 senior part-time workers in the UK, published in the Financial Times in November 2012.

Rachel believes in working in partnership with the senior management team of the companies she advises. She becomes part of the team, understanding the day to day running of the business, inside out. Problem solving, trouble-shooting and putting the right plans, systems and people in place to help businesses leap ahead and lead.

Testimonials

The Tech Start Up

“Under Rachel’s tutelage, we now have a sophisticated model that adheres to standard modelling principles and as a result, we finally have clear sight in terms of predicting cashflow. Rachel provided long-term introductory accounting training for our junior finance associate and invaluable outside counsel as we negotiated with our accounting firm. From an operations perspective, Rachel has assisted us with a number of sensitive HR matters that we had not previously encountered. Further, Rachel freely makes introductions to service providers in her own network, which has helped us enormously.”

Alison Schwartz – Co-Founder & Editorial Director, Lulu
The Media Company

“We contacted The Growth Lab when we needed to pull together a business plan to help raise investment for our film. In addition to that, Rachel was also able to reach out to her network of potential investors, as well as letting us know about tax breaks available to us.”

Guy Pitt, Producer, Greyhawk
The Multinational Digital Developer

“Tigerspike had a real need to bring on someone in a senior strategic finance role to help grow the company and raise investment. Since coming on board, Rachel has been instrumental in a number of transformational projects such as overseeing our first round of investment, rolling out an accounting/CRM system for businesses across the world to follow, approving business cases for investment spend, opening up new offices and rolling out a clear forecasting and management reporting process.”

Luke Janssen – Founder & CEO of personal media technology specialist Tigerspike
The Beauty Business

“Rachel’s guidance was crucial in the early stages of setting up my business. Not only did Rachel create a strong business plan to help me raise a bank loan, she also devised a clear and comprehensible cost/benefit analysis, which enabled me to decide whether to purchase or hire the vital equipment I needed.”

Eleanor Gallagher – Founder of aesthetic technology salon Be