Business Owners Growth Strategy Workshop
About this Event
Costs are rising. Customers are more cautious. Margins are under pressure.
And waiting for everything to settle down is no longer a strategy.
What you can do is prepare for an uncertain world with a clear understanding of what works in the real world for Waikato businesses.
Recent MBIE research found that 80% of New Zealand businesses had experienced higher operating costs, 58% reported declining profitability, and 54% reported lower revenue than a year earlier.
The challenge is not simply surviving difficult conditions. It is deciding where profitable growth will come from regardless of what's going on, what needs to change and what deserves your attention now.
This Workshop is a practical, four-hour working session for Waikato business owners who want to make those decisions and turn them into action.
You will work directly on your own business throughout the morning. By midday, you will have a focused growth plan, clear commercial priorities and a practical, executable action plan.
This is not another seminar.
You will be working on your own business.
It is not four hours of predictions, economic commentary or vague goal setting. It is a small, facilitated planning session designed to help you make better decisions using the information already available inside and around your business.
WHAT YOU WILL WORK THROUGH
1. Where will profitable growth come from?
Identify the customers, products, services and opportunities most likely to create profitable growth. Separate genuine opportunities from attractive distractions.
2. What needs to stop?
Find the low-margin work, unnecessary complexity and owner-dependent activities consuming time and capacity. Decide what should be stopped, simplified, delegated or redesigned.
3. What is changing around your business?
Identify the changes in customer behaviour, costs, technology, regulation and your wider market that could affect the business. Work out what you need to monitor so you are not the last to know.
4. What do your forward numbers say?
Determine which numbers provide an early view of demand. These may include enquiries, quotes, bookings, conversion rates, forward orders or another measure specific to your business.
Revenue tells you what happened. Your forward indicators tell you what may be arriving next.
5. How much room do you have?
Assess the cash, capacity, people, time and decision-making authority available to support growth. A business cannot act on an opportunity if it has no room left to move.
6. What will you execute during the next 60 days?
Turn your strategy into a small number of specific priorities. Give each action a measure, an owner and a deadline so the plan survives contact with Monday morning.
WHAT YOU WILL LEAVE WITH
• A focused growth plan built around your business
• A clear definition of where profitable growth will come from
• Decisions about what to stop, simplify or change
• The key numbers you need to monitor
• Defined commercial priorities for the next Quarter
• Specific actions, responsibilities and deadlines with names attached
• A simple process for reviewing and adapting the plan
This is a working document designed to be used, not admired.
WHO THIS WORKSHOP IS FOR
This workshop is for established business owners who:
• Want to grow but are being pulled in too many directions
• Have plenty of ideas but no clear order of priority
• Are experiencing pressure on sales, cash flow or margins
• Need to make decisions about pricing, customers, capacity or investment
• Are too involved in daily operations to focus properly on growth
• Want a practical plan rather than another round of motivation
• Are prepared to challenge their assumptions and make decisions
PRE-WORK
The workshop begins before you enter the room.
After booking, you will receive a short pre-work pack.
The pre-work will help you define what growth means for your business, record your current revenue and profitability position, gather your forward sales numbers, identify constraints and consider the changes most likely to affect your business.
Completing the pre-work is essential. It means we can spend the workshop challenging your thinking, making decisions and building your plan instead of gathering information you already have.
THE FORMAT
Attendance is strictly limited to 14 business owners.
The small group provides room for discussion, challenge and direct input from facilitator Matt Fitzsimmons.
You will not leave with a generic template filled with good intentions. You will leave knowing what your business needs to do next, why it matters and when it will happen.
AGENDA
8:00am | Where are you now?
Define what growth means for your business and identify the commercial realities your plan must address.
8:45am | Where will profitable growth come from?
Examine customers, offers, opportunities, margins and the constraints limiting growth.
9:45am | Break
10:00am | Build the growth plan
Choose your priorities, identify the measures that matter and build your focused plan.
11:15am | Turn the plan into action
Create your 60-day action plan, assign responsibilities and establish a review rhythm that keeps the plan alive.
12:00pm | Workshop concludes
ABOUT MATT FITZSIMMONS
Matt Fitzsimmons has spent 25 years working with business leaders on growth, planning, decision-making and execution.
His approach is practical and direct. A strategy should help an owner make better decisions, focus the business and get important work done.
Matt also presents Welcome to the New Normal, a seminar exploring how businesses can remain focused, adaptable and ready to act when change arrives faster than forecasts.
The workshop builds on those ideas but stands on its own. You do not need to have attended the seminar.
EVENT DETAILS
Wednesday, 7 October 2026
8:00am to 12:00pm
BNZ Business Centre, Victoria Street, Hamilton
$1,295 per person, including GST
Limited to 14 business owners
Conditions may remain uncertain. Your next move does not have to be.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
NZD 1295.00
