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Tag: Business Growth

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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Supafoods: Shifting from a supplier to a solution

Based in Umgeni Business Park in Durban, Supafoods has established itself as a trusted manufacturer and supplier within South Africa’s bakery and food supply sector. What began as a modest operation has grown into a fully equipped food manufacturing facility, supplying bakery ingredients to retail groups, independent bakeries and community-based organisations across the country.

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Why growth feels risky for so many good businesses

Elite Business: Why growth feels risky for so many good businesses

In this article, originally featured in Elite Business: Growth exposes structural weaknesses in good businesses long before it delivers the rewards owners expect


For many established business owners, growth is supposed to feel like progress. More customers. Bigger contracts. Wider reach. Yet time and again, I see owners hesitate at precisely the moment their business should be scaling.

Not because they lack ambition.
But because growth feels risky.

I recently sat with an owner of a well-established manufacturing business supplying large retailers. This wasn’t a start-up chasing its first break. It was a second-generation company with years of hard-earned credibility, strong demand and trusted relationships. A national opportunity was on the table, the kind most founders dream of.

And yet, the dominant emotion wasn’t excitement. It was unease.

That feeling is far more rational than many people realise. Businesses rarely stall because they can’t sell. They stall because they can’t deliver consistently once complexity increases.

In this case, the product was used in-store by retail staff across hundreds of locations. Quality depended on how well individuals handled, prepared and applied it. When everything went right, the outcome was excellent. When it didn’t, the brand paid the price, often without knowing where things had gone wrong.

That’s not a people problem. It’s a structural one.

When consistency relies on people “just knowing” what to do, growth becomes fragile. Owners sense this instinctively. They worry about reputation risk, loss of control and the creeping reality that success might actually increase stress rather than reduce it.

The most common mistake at this point is to look for answers in the wrong places. Owners talk about more capacity, more factories, more trucks or more effort. They push harder, believing growth is a matter of energy and ambition.

But scale doesn’t fail because of ambition. It fails because systems don’t keep up.

The turning point in this business came when the question changed. Instead of asking how to supply nationally, the owner asked how to remove variability from the system altogether. The answer was not complicated, but it was powerful: a clear system of delivery.

They began building a simple online training platform for store staff. Short, practical videos showed exactly how the product should be handled, prepared and stored. One standard. One way of doing things. Staff completed the training, passed a basic assessment and were accredited.

Nothing flashy. Just clarity and repeatability.

That shift transformed the business. Quality no longer depended on constant supervision or experience living in people’s heads. The retailer’s operational burden reduced. The supplier moved from being a commodity to a strategic partner. And critically, the owner was no longer the glue holding everything together.

I often say that structure determines behaviour, and behaviour determines outcomes. If a business depends on the owner checking everything and fixing problems after the fact, growth will always feel dangerous. Systems are what make scale sustainable.

There’s an uncomfortable truth beneath many growth conversations. If landing one big contract would dramatically change your life, your business isn’t quite ready yet. That doesn’t mean you’re in trouble, it means your structure hasn’t caught up with your ambition.

Growth isn’t about pushing harder. It’s about building better architecture. When the structure is right, growth stops feeling like a threat and starts becoming the reward business owners worked so hard for in the first place.

By Pavlo Phitidis

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

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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The Future 50: Backing the businesses that build a nation

Get your business story heard by up to 4.5million listeners across three radio stations, and get their audiences to support your next level growth


The Future 50 with Pavlo Phitidis, powered by FNB Business highlights the critical importance of established businesses to the country’s growth and prosperity. This weekly radio feature shares the story of a business that is doing great things across three radio stations: ECR, Jacaranda FM and Smile 90.4 FM. The total listenership across all three is 4.5million! Among these could be a business’s next supplier, customer, partner, funder or a key contact or introduction to accelerate their expansion. Pavlo not only shares the story of the business, and why they matter to the economy and country, he also calls on the audience to support their growth.

If you are an established company that has a great story to tell, and could benefit from this radio exposure, nominate yourself below. And tune in to listen to the inspiring stories of the Future 50 business on Tuesday mornings between 8am and 8.30am.

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

Build your business battleplan in a 3 hour workshop

Aurik build your leadership team’s scaleup and growth blueprint

Build your business battleplan in a 3 hour workshop

Align as a team around a clear, shared way to grow, and turn it into practical steps you can use the following week. We build on your business, your customers, and your numbers. No theory, no talk-shop.

Key takeaways:

The forces of change are compounding. This session helps you focus your efforts where they count and execute with pace.

            Skills scarcity → design work into systems, not heroics

            Increased regulation → cleaner processes and reporting

            Customer scepticism → sharper positioning and proof at every step

            Accelerating technologies → tools that fit real workflows

            Moribund economy → tighter segmentation and value story

            Uncertain geopolitics → more resilient delivery

            Rising operating costs → efficiency protects margin

            Complex buying decisions → co-ordinated engagement across influencers

            Old marketing & sales playbooks → systemise, measure, improve

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

Register here



Date: 17 February  2026
Time: 8.30am arrival for 9am start to 1pm 
Venue: Consort

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, including:

Single purpose, one path: A co-created growth path everyone agrees to and follows.

Aligned as one team: One objective, shared priorities, clear ownership.

Co-ordinated execution: A joined-up plan across functions; marketing, sales, delivery and finance moving together.

Mutual accountability: Peers hold each other to commitments and cadence.

Clarity and line-of-sight: Cleaner interfaces between functions, fewer hand-offs.

Customer-led workflows (not silos): Predictable, joined-up customer experience.

Digitisation & productivity wins: Tech applied where measured work happens.

More time leading, less time doing: Simpler processes and delegation that hold.

Faster decisions, less friction: A familiar playbook and a weekly rhythm.

“Very informative and simplified a complex process”

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.

Host:

Gary Baker 

Gary

After 10 years in the legal profession Gary changed direction to spend 17 years running and growing CD (UK) Ltd. 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.


Continue reading

MOSTE

Online CEO Session: Digitise Your Business

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


CEO Session: Digitise Your Business

MOSTE webinar

Date: Wednesday11 February 2026 
Time: 09h00 to 10h30 including Q&A
Venue: Allica Bank, High street, Manchester

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