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Do It Yourself draft do not use

We believe private business owners are the most invested stakeholders in any economy. This is the segment that is investing constantly, to grow, driving innovation from necessity, to stay ahead of the competition, employing and upskilling, and contributing to thriving industries. Your success creates prosperity for all. The resources below were all created with established private business owners in mind. Use them, and if they resonate, pay it forward, and share them with your clients, suppliers, peers and colleagues.

BOOKS:

Pavlo Phitidis’s first book, Sweat Scale $ell is The playbook to build your business into an Asset of Value. Pavlo shares the stories of real business owners who have gotten it right and shares how you can too.

In Reset Rebuild Reignite, he Pavlo shows how any crisis can be an opportunity to reset your business to get relevant, rebuild it to scale, and reignite it to accelerate growth 

BUSINESS BUILDERS

Real stories and real strategies from growth minded business owners who are building, growing and scaling their businesses regardless of the perceived challenges in their operating environment. Subscribe for weekly videos where Pavlo will highlight and issue raised through his daily work with business owners and troubleshoot it.

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Aurik ScaleUp Roundtable Breakfast Joburg 15 May

A private Scaleup Roundtable Breakfast for established business owners who know there is more growth in the business, but who still feel too pulled into the engine room.

Build Your ScaleUp & Growth

Date: 15 May 2026 
Time:  7.30am to 9.30am
Venue: Aurik, 2nd Floor, BluBird Offices, 1 Park Road, Birnam  
Hosted by: Pavlo Phitidis

Why Join?

Most established businesses do not get stuck because the owner lacks ambition, care, or effort.

They get stuck because growth has outgrown the way the business is built to perform.

Too much still depends on the owner.
Too much still sits in key people.
Too much still needs pushing, checking, chasing, fixing, and carrying.

The business may be moving. It may even be growing. But it is not moving as cleanly, as confidently, or as freely as it should.

And after a while, that takes its toll.

You start to feel the drag of slow implementation, uneven delegation, recurring bottlenecks, and the frustration of knowing what should change without seeing it stick.

That is what this roundtable is built to address.

This is not a seminar. It is a practical breakfast conversation for owners

This breakfast brings together a small group of business owners at different stages of growth and decision-making.

Some are exploring what is keeping the business stuck.
Some are already deep in that thinking.
Some are close to making a move.

The purpose is to create a serious, useful conversation around the real constraints that slow growth down in established businesses and to help owners see more clearly what it takes to move forward.

This is not about generic advice.

It is about understanding:

  • what is really constraining growth in your business right now
  • why that constraint has likely stayed around longer than it should have
  • why instruction alone rarely creates lasting change
  • what it takes to build a stronger commercial platform with the team so performance becomes more scalable, more consistent, and less dependent on the owner

This breakfast is for you if…

This roundtable is built for established business owners who:

  • feel too pulled into the day-to-day running of the business
  • know growth should be moving faster or more cleanly than it is
  • are frustrated by recurring bottlenecks and uneven execution
  • want the team to carry more, but know that simply telling them to do so is not enough
  • are serious about building a business that can scale, grow, and deepen in value

It is especially relevant if you feel the business has outgrown the way it currently operates, but the next stage still feels harder to grasp than it should.

Host:

Pavlo Phitidis 

Pavlo

As an entrepreneur, Pavlo Phitidis cut his teeth in turnaround companies. Then spent a few years in M&A, which allowed him to conclude 68 transactions before answering a call of duty in a family business, which enabled his parents’ retirement.

Pavlo co-founded Aurik by directly starting, growing and exiting 12 businesses to develop a business growth system, which has worked with upwards of 3,500 established companies in 4 countries.

Pavlo is a passionate advocate for business as a force for good and has brought this to life through more than 1,200 radio segments, two books, Sweat, Scale $ell and Reset, Rebuild, Reignite and hundreds of articles for columns across business and lifestyle titles.

Daily, he works with private business owners, personally and through his company, to resolve growth and value challenges.


What you will leave with:

By the end of the breakfast, you should have greater clarity on:

  • the real constraint slowing growth in your business
  • where the business still relies too heavily on you
  • why change has been slower and stickier than it should be
  • why involving the team in building forward matters more than instructing them to perform differently
  • what it takes to create a business that runs with you, not because of you

You will leave with sharper perspective, stronger language for what is happening in your business, and a clearer sense of what the next step should be.

The issue is not whether your business can grow. It is whether it can grow without demanding more of you each time

If every phase of growth asks for more owner energy, more decision-making, more intervention, and more rescue work, the business is not scaling properly.

That has consequences.

Growth slows.
Teams wait.
Capability builds too slowly.
The owner stays trapped in the engine room.
The value of the business becomes harder to deepen.

A business becomes more valuable when it is built around a clear problem it solves, a strong market position, a repeatable delivery system, and a team structured to carry that experience consistently. Positioning becomes the blueprint for how the business delivers, how the team performs, and how growth is pursued over time.

That is why this conversation matters.

Register here



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Furniture Makers Company: Get Digital Done 16 April 2026

Join a 90 minute working session for a non-tech approach to digitising your business. 

MOSTE webinar

Date: Thursday 16 April 2026 
Time: 08h30 to 09h30 including Q&A
Venue: Zoom, link supplied on registration

This practical, non-technical workshop is for established business owners with between 15 and 150 employees who want to:

  • Digitise with purpose and intent, not panic
  • Scale their business without increasing chaos
  • Boost productivity and team performance without becoming more dependent
  • Unlock time and headspace to lead, not react
  • Increase company value and future saleability
  • An interest in removing dependency, improving team performance, and avoiding wasted tech investments

Whether you’re in manufacturing, services, retail, or distribution, if you’re a business owner driving growth, signing off the tech budget, and carrying the weight of the business, this is built for you.

What You’ll Get From It

Five crisp, practical outcomes:

  1. Clarity on what to digitise — and what not to
    → You’ll map your systems and identify high-impact digital wins.
  2. A practical tool to build and test your digitisation use case
    → No more wasted spend, broken adoption, or tech that no one uses.
  3. A business-first lens on tech decisions
    → You’ll learn how to align systems and digitisation with your scale strategy.
  4. A scorecard to evaluate every future tech investment
    → Confident go/no-go decisions that build value, not cost.
  5. The confidence to lead your team through change
    → You’ll leave with a blueprint to drive productivity, profitability, and performance,  without being a tech expert.

 This Is Not For

  • Startups or microbusinesses
  • Delegated tech managers (this is for owners)
  • People looking for software demos or platforms to buy

Who should attend?


Register here



Presenter: Pavlo Phitidis

As an entrepreneur, Pavlo Phitidis cut his teeth in turnaround companies. Then spent a few years in M&A, which allowed him to conclude 68 transactions before answering a call of duty in a family business, which enabled his parents’ retirement.

Pavlo co-founded Aurik by directly starting, growing and exiting 12 businesses to develop a business growth system, which has worked with upwards of 3,500 established companies in 4 countries.

Pavlo is a passionate advocate for business as a force for good and has brought this to life through more than 1,200 radio segments, two books, Sweat, Scale $ell and Reset, Rebuild, Reignite and hundreds of articles for columns across business and lifestyle titles.

Daily, he works with private business owners, personally and through his company, to resolve growth and value challenges.

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13 May 2026 Successful Succession online session

Join us for 55 minutes on 3rd November to understand  how we would work with you and your team to achieve your business goals and ambitions. 

This event has passed. 

Register your interest in our next events here and we will notify you ahead of time: https://aurik.com/2025/07/10/register-for-a-scale-up-growth-blueprint-workshop/

AoV 03.11.2021

Leave with insights and action on: 

  • A practical definition of succession and the four stages that make it possible
  • A clearer understanding of why succession should start before exit is on the horizon
  • Insight into why know-how and know-to-do are hard to transfer
  • A view of how Aurik builds succession over time through the Asset of Value
  • A realistic sense of the timeline required to transfer operations, management, leadership, and ownership well
  • A next step to begin building your own succession blueprint

Date: 13 May 2026 

Time: 8am to 9am BST 
           9am to 10am SAST 
Zoom – link to be provided on registration 

Most business owners think succession starts when they are ready to step back. It does not. 

It starts much earlier, when the business begins to carry more of the load without depending on one person to hold it together. 

In this fast-paced online session, Pavlo Phitidis unpacks what succession really is: the structured transfer of operational, managerial, leadership, and ownership responsibility from one generation to the next. 

You will see why succession matters long before an exit is on the table. First, it frees leaders from the day-to-day so they can focus on growth. Second, it creates the continuity and commercial strength needed for ownership to transfer for value without weakening the business ahead. 

Pavlo will also show why succession is hard to get right. Much of what current leaders know sits in experience, judgment, and instinct. It cannot be transferred through instruction alone. It must be built through guided responsibility, real learning, and a business designed to carry performance beyond one generation. 

Using Aurik’s Asset of Value growth system, this session shows how succession is built over time through four stages: operational, managerial, leadership, and ownership succession. 

If you want to build a business that can continue, grow, and create wealth beyond its current leaders, this session will show you where to start.


Speaker

Pavlo Phitidis

As an entrepreneur, Pavlo Phitidis cut his teeth in turnaround companies. Then spent a few years in M&A, which allowed him to conclude 68 transactions before answering a call of duty in a family business, which enabled his parents’ retirement.

Pavlo co-founded Aurik by directly starting, growing and exiting 12 businesses to develop a business growth system, which has worked with upwards of 3,500 established companies in 4 countries.

Pavlo is a passionate advocate for business as a force for good and has brought this to life through more than 1,200 radio segments, two books, Sweat, Scale $ell and Reset, Rebuild, Reignite and hundreds of articles for columns across business and lifestyle titles.

Daily, he works with private business owners, personally and through his company, to resolve growth and value challenges.


Register here



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Furniture Makers

Worshipful Company of Entrepreneurs Build Your Scale Up Blueprint workshop

UK - Your CEO business blueprint to scale, grow and dominate your industry

This workshop is designed for business owners ready to take their company to the next level. Be it scale-up growth, succession or an exit, walk out with a customised, actionable blueprint to attain your 3–5-year ambitions

Key takeaways:

Identify Your Growth Impediments:
Spot recurring impediments to growth and value and how to resolve them

Design Your Actionable Scaleup Blueprint:

Develop a three-to-five-year roadmap to deliver growth, improved value, and operational and management succession. Including:

  • Crafting a lasting brand distinction and clear purpose
  • Engineered scale delivering predictable, consistent customer experiences
  • Building a motivated, effective team
  • 4 growth strategies to achieve defined outcomes
  • An understanding of the 5 levers of company value
  • Embedding the levers to support valuation, capital raise, succession and exits

“Real-world relatability to any business in any industry”

Host:

Gary Baker

Gary

After 10 years in the legal profession Gary changed direction to spend 17 years running and growing CD (UK) Ltd, and a corporate member of the Furniture Makers Company.
Initially working with his father, Gary managed the transition to take over leading the business at the same time as finding a way to release value for his father. Gary then sold CDUK through an MBO process to the company’s Managing Director.

Having also gone through the ups and downs of founding an internet start-up business, Gary brings a unique set of experiences to Aurik that can help business owners scale and grow towards an exit or to succeed the business to the next generation.

Presenter:

Pavlo Phitidis 

Pavlo

As an entrepreneur, Pavlo Phitidis cut his teeth in turnaround companies. Then spent a few years in M&A, which allowed him to conclude 68 transactions before answering a call of duty in a family business, which enabled his parents’ retirement.

Pavlo co-founded Aurik by directly starting, growing and exiting 12 businesses to develop a business growth system, which has worked with upwards of 3,500 established companies in 4 countries.

Pavlo is a passionate advocate for business as a force for good and has brought this to life through more than 1,200 radio segments, two books, Sweat, Scale $ell and Reset, Rebuild, Reignite and hundreds of articles for columns across business and lifestyle titles.

Daily, he works with private business owners, personally and through his company, to resolve growth and value challenges.


Date:       9th September 2026
Time:       TBC
Venue:    Drapers’ Hall, Throgmorton Avenue, London EC2N 2DQ 2HE 

Outcomes:

Leave with a practical, customised, actionable blueprint to implement in your business the next day, setting you on a clear path to achieving your ambitions.

“Very informative and simplified a complex process”

Register here



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Aurik Windhoek Roundtable 24 March 2026

Roundtable

Join a closed-door roundtable for established private business owners ready to build a business that can run, grow and endure — without the owner being front and centre of everything. 

You didn’t set out to build a job…

But many successful businesses quietly become dependent on the owner’s judgement, energy and daily presence.

At a certain stage, that dependency isn’t a motivation problem.
It’s structural.

This roundtable is for owners asking a more valuable question:

“If I stepped back, what would actually keep this business performing?”

The reality most owners recognise:

In established businesses, owner-dependency usually shows up as:

  • Decisions sitting too high

  • Execution relying on tacit knowledge

  • Systems that exist but aren’t consistently used

  • Teams that work hard but don’t fully own outcomes

  • Growth increasing pressure instead of reducing it

These are common patterns in growing businesses and they’re solvable with the right structure.

Facilitator: Pavlo Phitidis

Pavlo

As an entrepreneur, Pavlo Phitidis cut his teeth in turnaround companies. Then spent a few years in M&A, which allowed him to conclude 68 transactions before answering a call of duty in a family business, which enabled his parents’ retirement.

Pavlo co-founded Aurik by directly starting, growing and exiting 12 businesses to develop a business growth system, which has worked with upwards of 3,500 established companies in 4 countries.

Pavlo is a passionate advocate for business as a force for good and has brought this to life through more than 1,200 radio segments, two books, Sweat, Scale $ell and Reset, Rebuild, Reignite and hundreds of articles for columns across business and lifestyle titles.

Daily, he works with private business owners, personally and through his company, to resolve growth and value challenges.

Hosts:

Christo Swartz & Fanie Steenkamp

CHRISTO

Christo is a born entrepreneur and a chartered accountant with senior financial leadership experience in large financial services corporates. He founded Alora Financial Partners in Windhoek, Namibia, and brought Aurik to the region.

Fanie has more than 20 years of experience in corporate and commercial banking, as well as an MBA to his name. He is the co-principal of Aurik Namibia


Date: 24th March 2026 
Time: 16h00 to 18h00 
Venue: Stellenbosch Tasting Room, The Green Room

What this roundtable is, and isn’t

This is not a seminar, keynote or motivational session.

It’s a practical, peer-level discussion led by Pavlo Phitidis, bringing together experienced owners to explore how businesses are deliberately built into Assets of Value™  businesses that:

  • Run on systems, not personalities

  • Perform without constant owner intervention

  • Can be handed over, stepped back from or sold at a premium value

The conversation is grounded, candid and focused on real constraints and real decisions.

Register here, space is limited



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Registration Details Build your Business Backwards 17 March 2026

Registration Details Build your Business Backwards 20 March 2026

Join us for 55 minutes on 29th September to understand how we have gotten this right, and how we would work with you and your team to achieve the same, or more.

You’re registered!
Download the details for the session 

Click on the button to download the diary entry and save it into your calendar. 

Date: Friday 20 March 2026 
Time: 10am to 11am SAST / 8am to 9am GMT 
Location: Zoom https://aurik.zoom.us/j/86892954184?pwd=skqbou1602aqebz3z0P4LFF8aRk7eY.1 

We will be in touch nearer the time and look forward to seeing you there. 

Registration Details Build your Business Backwards 17 March 2026


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Registration Details Build your Business Backwards 17 March 2026

20 March 2026 Build backwards online session

Registration Details Build your Business Backwards 17 March 2026

This event has closed. Please check Aurik’s events page for upcoming events or you can register your interest in events in your area, by clicking HERE



Date: Friday 20 March 2026 
Time: 10am to 11am SAST / 8am to 9am GMT

Closure, handover, or sale – every business ends one of three ways.
The question is: Will it be by design or default?

Join us for a powerful, fast-paced session that flips the script:
Build your business backwards – start with your desired endgame and engineer your business to meet it.

In just 45 minutes, you’ll:

  • Understand the four calculators for four future outcomes
  • Measure the gap between where you are and where you want to be
  • Learn the architecture to scale, grow, and embed value with intent
  • Shift from reacting to events to taking control of your destiny

This is not theory. It’s action. Designed for business owners who are:
– Seasoned, successful, ambitious
– Under pressure but unwilling to compromise the future
– Ready for a new way to lead, grow, and exit, but on your terms

“Real-world relatability to any business in any industry”

Host & Presenter:

Pavlo Phitidis 

Pavlo

As an entrepreneur, Pavlo Phitidis cut his teeth in turnaround companies. Then spent a few years in M&A, which allowed him to conclude 68 transactions before answering a call of duty in a family business, which enabled his parents’ retirement.

Pavlo co-founded Aurik by directly starting, growing and exiting 12 businesses to develop a business growth system, which has worked with upwards of 4,000 established companies in 5 countries.

Pavlo is a passionate advocate for business as a force for good and has brought this to life through more than 1,200 radio segments, two books, Sweat, Scale $ell and Reset, Rebuild, Reignite and hundreds of articles for columns across business and lifestyle titles.

Daily, he works with private business owners, personally and through his company, to resolve growth and value challenges.


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Aurik CEO Session: Digitise Your Business 29 January 2026

Join a 90 minute working session for a non-tech approach to digitising your business. 


This event has closed, visit our events page for upcoming events 

MOSTE webinar

Date: Thursday 29 January 2026 
Time: 09h00 to 10h00 SAST including Q&A
Venue: Zoom, link supplied on registration

This practical, non-technical workshop is for established business owners with between 15 and 150 employees who want to:

  • Digitise with purpose and intent, not panic
  • Scale their business without increasing chaos
  • Boost productivity and team performance without becoming more dependent
  • Unlock time and headspace to lead, not react
  • Increase company value and future saleability
  • An interest in removing dependency, improving team performance, and avoiding wasted tech investments

Whether you’re in manufacturing, services, retail, or distribution, if you’re a business owner driving growth, signing off the tech budget, and carrying the weight of the business, this is built for you.

What You’ll Get From It

Five crisp, practical outcomes:

  1. Clarity on what to digitise — and what not to
    → You’ll map your systems and identify high-impact digital wins.
  2. A practical tool to build and test your digitisation use case
    → No more wasted spend, broken adoption, or tech that no one uses.
  3. A business-first lens on tech decisions
    → You’ll learn how to align systems and digitisation with your scale strategy.
  4. A scorecard to evaluate every future tech investment
    → Confident go/no-go decisions that build value, not cost.
  5. The confidence to lead your team through change
    → You’ll leave with a blueprint to drive productivity, profitability, and performance,  without being a tech expert.

 This Is Not For

  • Startups or microbusinesses
  • Delegated tech managers (this is for owners)
  • People looking for software demos or platforms to buy

Who should attend?


Register here



Presenter: Pavlo Phitidis

As an entrepreneur, Pavlo Phitidis cut his teeth in turnaround companies. Then spent a few years in M&A, which allowed him to conclude 68 transactions before answering a call of duty in a family business, which enabled his parents’ retirement.

Pavlo co-founded Aurik by directly starting, growing and exiting 12 businesses to develop a business growth system, which has worked with upwards of 3,500 established companies in 4 countries.

Pavlo is a passionate advocate for business as a force for good and has brought this to life through more than 1,200 radio segments, two books, Sweat, Scale $ell and Reset, Rebuild, Reignite and hundreds of articles for columns across business and lifestyle titles.

Daily, he works with private business owners, personally and through his company, to resolve growth and value challenges.

Continue reading

Registration Details Digitise Deliberately 29 January 2026

Join us for 55 minutes on 29th September to understand how we have gotten this right, and how we would work with you and your team to achieve the same, or more.

You’re registered!
Download the details for the Digitisation Session 

Click on the button to download the diary entry and save it into your calendar. 

Date: Thursday 29 January 2026 
Time: 9am to 10am SAST 
Location: Zoom https://aurik.zoom.us/j/81264015431?pwd=Tklf9Qpn5Oggb6PcnZ2JnBbH05U5Kj.1

We will be in touch nearer the time and look forward to seeing you there. 

KZN Workshop


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