LEAD YOUR BUSINESS FROM START-UP TO SCALE-UP TO GROWN-UP
The founder path is isolating, stressful and overwhelming, and few founders survive the scale-up journey unscathed. According to research by Fundsquire, a global start-up funding network, 20% of small businesses fail in their first year in the UK, with the percentage rising to a whopping 60% within the first three years.
Rachel Turner is co-founder of VC Talent Lab which offers founder and scale-up coaching to ambitious founders in venture-capital backed environments. Rachel believes that if founders do not scale their leadership as they grow their company, they are unlikely to survive.
In The Founder’s Survival Guide, Rachel reveals how the reader can shift from ‘brave warrior’, to ‘considered architect’, to ‘wise monarch’ as the business grows, all by adapting their leadership style. It addresses some of the most common challenges scale-up founders face, and provides an extensive toolbox to help founders manage their team, their energy and their mind.
“Very few founders survive the scale-up journey, let alone thrive during it. Having spent my life coaching and enabling founders to survive and thrive so that they can lead profitable, healthy and successful businesses and enjoy the journey along the way, my new book aims to show you how to do the same,” says Rachel.
Rachel comes from a family of founders and has been one herself. Drawing on her 20+ years of experience as a transformative leadership advisor to start-up and scale-up businesses, The Founder’s Survival Guide is a book every business founder should read if they are looking to get out of their own way and become the CEO their business needs to thrive in such a competitive market.
Described by Rachel as ‘a love letter to founders’, the book provides the reader with the master skills of communicating to influence and communicating to manage, and knowing when to use which. The book aims to help readers understand what their business, people and stakeholders require from them at different stages of growth, and adapt their leadership style accordingly. It also reveals how to avoid the self-sabotaging ego defences that can hold back even the most inspiring founder.
“I have huge affection for the unique combination of skill, mindset and motivation that makes somebody want to start their own business. You need to be a visionary leader, skilled manager, operations genius, salesperson par excellence and technical whizz-kid, of-ten all on the same day. With a to-do list as long as your arm, it’s important to stay energetically fit for the marathon, not the sprint. This book shows you how,” adds Rachel.