After 30 years of building her fashion business, Fen Dorre has sold up in a matter of weeks, with £3m cash in hand. However, in her early 50s, she’s not ready for retirement and wants to put her hard-earned experience as an owner-manager to good use, while protecting her new-found wealth. What should she do?
With her extensive customer service experience, Niamh is dedicated to delivering outstanding support and prioritising client satisfaction. Her professional background spans a range of industries where she has consistently placed clients first, fostering positive and lasting relationships.
Equipped with strong organisational and administrative skills, Niamh efficiently manages schedules, communications, and high-priority tasks. She has a strong interest in furthering her career in the industry and is passionate about combining her proactive approach with meticulous attention to detail to help clients achieve their goals effortlessly.
Business growth consultancy, Rockfine Group, has supported 80 businesses in the Worcestershire region to achieve measurable growth with financial support from the Elevate Growth programme.
The Elevate Growth programme is designed to give already successful businesses expert advice and guidance on scaling their business, whether that’s through innovation adoption, management restructure, new technologies or more commonly, increased sales.
Worcestershire County Council (WCC) selected Rockfine Group to provide the service through an open tender process in July 2023. In the 15 months Rockfine has been delivering the programme for WCC, businesses have received:
The support has been welcomed by business owners and management teams, resulting in a reported:
Additionally, through the networking and introductions made by the business coaches, we know at least 10 of the businesses are now working with another local Worcestershire businesses.
“We have benefitted greatly from the 1:1 coaching and peer sessions through the Elevate Growth programme, giving us a platform to talk through business challenges and learn effective strategies from others” notes Adam Buick, owner of Kidderminster-based Top Escape Rooms.
“Our business expansion during the programme meant we immediately applied the new concepts and realised increased profits and employee retention. Thank you Worcestershire County Council.”
Worcestershire County Council is very pleased with the outstanding service companies have received through Rockfine’s delivery of the Elevate Growth programme, as pointed out by Wendy Garrad, Business Growth Team Manager: “The team at Rockfine Group have been a pleasure to work with and delivered an excellent service to the businesses participating in the Elevate Growth programme. The spread of support throughout the region (across Redditch, Bromsgrove, Wychoven, Kidderminster, Wyre Forest and Worcester City) demonstrates the reach of their network and value of their expertise. Their engaging style and value-driven interactions resulted in the successful, 100% completion of all participants ahead of schedule, with impeccable record keeping and “outstanding” client satisfaction.”
“We are thrilled to have delivered such a valuable and impressive programme to so many amazing businesses in Worcestershire” notes Rockfine Group’s managing director, Michelle Dalton. “From project initiation through to the final claim, our team have been impressed with the dedicated support provided by Worcestershire County Council to its resident businesses, and the supporting grant structure to implement the growth plans created through the business support service.”
Worcestershire-based companies still wanting to take advantage of this fantastic support should reach out directly to WCC as there are a very few number of places left on the overall programme.
Rockfine Group proudly announces that our Managing Director, Michelle Dalton, has been selected as a mentor for the Diverse Innovation Accelerator programme, championing female founders in the West Midlands.
Michelle brings over two decades of expertise in private healthcare project management, marketing, and high-tech PR. As a female business founder, she is uniquely positioned to guide and inspire participants, drawing on her experience to foster innovation and growth.
This partnership reflects Rockfine Group’s commitment to inclusivity and supporting the next generation of diverse entrepreneurs.
In this podcast, Melanie Dulbecco, CEO of the instantly recognisable syrup and flavour brand Torani, shares amazing ideas and fresh perspective on how you grow $10 million to $500 million.
Get ready for an energizing and insightful episode of the Grow Sell and Retire Podcast, where B.D. Dalton sits down with the brilliant Melanie Dulbecco, CEO of Torani! In this episode, Melanie dives into her journey through the Liquor Era, Café Era, and now the booming Consumer Era, sharing what it takes to empower teams and lead them through growth and transformation. Her contagious energy and hands-on approach to leadership will leave you feeling inspired and ready to take on your own business challenges.
Melanie doesn’t just talk about success; she lives it! She discusses her philosophy of setting three-year plans to keep teams aligned and motivated, with a laser focus on actionable goals. Her insights into Torani’s incredible journey, including how they looked to trailblazing companies like Cliff Bar for guidance when scaling from $50 million to $100 million, are invaluable for any business owner with big dreams of expansion.
Tune in to hear all about Melanie’s “Success Journeys,” where she gathers wisdom from those further ahead in their growth trajectory, and learn how you, too, can leverage the experience of others to power your own success. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to grow, scale, and empower their team like never before!
It all started on Temple Row in Birmingham, where we at Rockfine transformed our own business into a living blueprint of the Minimum Viable Company (MVC) concept. Our journey began with a sprawling financial services operation managing 800 households, supported by a team of 8 staff, operating with the conventional wisdom that more clients and more employees equalled success. But we challenged that narrative completely. By ruthlessly refining our approach, we dramatically restructured to serve just 55 carefully selected households with a lean team of just 3 professionals—and remarkably, maintained the same level of profitability while dramatically improving client quality and engagement.
This wasn’t just a business pivot; it was the practical embodiment of our “Grow, Sell, Retire” philosophy. We demonstrated that strategic reduction isn’t about contraction, but about precision, focus, and delivering exceptional value. Since 2020, we’ve applied this transformative MVC approach across more than 250 companies—navigating through the unprecedented challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and spanning industries from technology and creative services to manufacturing and professional consulting. Each engagement reinforced our fundamental belief: success is about impact, not scale.
Over the last four years, we’ve been a crusader for cutting through the fluff of bloated businesses, bringing our client-centered, profit-focused plans to companies drowning in the “success myth” that more employees or massive office spaces equal a healthy bottom line.
Recently, Michael Gowen from Celerity summed up our approach perfectly with a term we’ve believed in for years: the Minimum Viable Company (MVC). Think of it like a streamlined, fighting-fit athlete. No wasted effort, just the essentials to deliver knockout results.
At its heart, an MVC is the smallest, leanest version of your business that can still serve customers, make a profit, and keep the lights on. Rather than getting caught up in vanity metrics like employee headcount or impressive office spaces, an MVC focuses on what truly matters. It’s about identifying your company’s core superpower—the mission-critical services that are essential to survival and success. The MVC mindset is about getting to market quickly by solving real customer problems, then iterating from there. Most importantly, it’s about stripping away the nice-to-haves and delivering exactly what’s needed to make customers happy and turn a profit.
We’ve seen it time and again—companies in industries obsessed with measuring success by size. When Michael Gowen introduced us to the MVC concept, it was like someone had finally articulated the strategy we’d been implementing intuitively. Imagine a business as a finely-tuned athlete—lean, powerful, with every movement purposeful and precise.
We watched as countless businesses fell into the trap of measuring success by vanity metrics. More employees, bigger offices, flashier company cars—but at what cost? Their bank accounts told a different story, one of complexity drowning out profitability. In contrast, we at Rockfine were proving that smaller could indeed be mightier.
By shifting these businesses to an MVC model, we’ve delivered results like a consultancy firm that went from 12 employees to 6—and doubled their profit. A creative agency that focused on two core services instead of five and landed their biggest client ever. Their secret? Smaller. Sharper. Profitable.
For businesses looking to embrace the MVC philosophy, we’ve distilled three critical strategies that can transform your approach:
Sit down and critically examine every single service, team member, and process through a single lens: “Does this directly contribute to our core value proposition?” Most companies are carrying dead weight they’ve accumulated over years—projects that seemed promising, roles that no longer serve a purpose, processes that exist purely out of habit.
We challenge our clients to imagine their business as a survival scenario: if you could only keep three things that genuinely drive revenue and customer satisfaction, what would they be? This isn’t just an exercise—it’s a radical reimagining of your business’s true potential.
Design your offerings to be laser-focused and premium. This might mean increasing your prices while simultaneously reducing the breadth of your services. It sounds counterintuitive, but clients actually appreciate specialists who excel in a narrow, critical domain rather than generalists who do everything adequately.
By charging more for your core competencies, you create space to deliver exceptional, high-touch value without the overhead of managing countless peripheral services.
Track every single hour of your team’s time and match it directly to revenue generation. This doesn’t mean becoming a soulless metrics machine, but rather understanding precisely how each team member contributes to the company’s success.
We’ve seen companies reduce their team size by 50% while maintaining—or even increasing—their profitability by ensuring that every single role is not just justified, but essential. It’s about quality over quantity, expertise over headcount.
The magic of Minimum Viable Companies lies in their inherent resilience and strategic focus. When economic challenges hit, MVCs remain calm and adaptable, with fewer moving parts to complicate their response. By concentrating resources where they truly count, these businesses eliminate distractions and focus purely on delivering core value. Their greatest strength is the ability to launch quickly, learn continuously, and improve rapidly—outmaneuvering bloated competitors who are weighed down by unnecessary complexity.
Sure, the MVC concept sounds a bit like the buzzwordy cousin of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP), but let’s be clear—it’s not just for scrappy startups. Established businesses can benefit too, especially those stuck in “busy but broke” mode.
At Rockfine, we’ve proven time and again that businesses can thrive with less—less overhead, less complexity, but way more focus on what actually works.
Michael Gowen from Celerity, you nailed it by giving a name to what we’ve been championing for years. Minimum Viable Companies are the way forward for those of us who believe in profit over posturing.
So, if you’re tired of being “big” for the sake of it and ready to be lean, profitable, and purpose-driven, let’s chat. Drop us a message and we’ll help you craft your own MVC strategy. Because small and mighty beats big and bloated every single day.
Success isn’t headcount—it’s money in the bank and happy customers. As we reflect on our journey from a small team on Temple Row to a consultancy that’s helped transform numerous businesses, we’ve remained true to our core belief: being small can be your greatest strength.
I vividly remember the day my relentless quest for knowledge paid off in the most unexpected way. It wasn’t during a high-stakes negotiation or while unveiling a groundbreaking strategy to the board. No, it happened right in my office, helping Colleen, a client and friend of many years, choose between two investments.
“Maytag or Whirlpool?” she asked nonchalantly after we’d wrapped up discussing her investment portfolio.
Without missing a beat, I launched into a detailed exposition of each company’s engineering quirks, energy efficiency ratings, and customer service reputations. Colleen burst into laughter. “I was just looking for a recommendation on a dishwasher, not a master’s thesis on investments!” she exclaimed. “But this is exactly why I trust you with everything—you know more about appliances than the people who make them!”
That light-hearted moment crystallized a belief I’ve held for as long as I can remember: In the business world, your capacity to earn is directly linked to your willingness to learn. The moment you stop learning, you inadvertently cap your own potential.
Throughout my professional journey, I’ve donned more hats than you could spot at a royal wedding—running a law firm, overseeing logistics operations, brokering corporate alliances, and advising on wealth management. Each role was a masterclass that equipped me with unexpected insights, later proving invaluable in the most surprising situations.
Consider my tenure in logistics. Understanding the nuances of supply chain dynamics helped me identify a critical bottleneck in a client’s legal practice years later. Who would have thought that knowledge about freight scheduling could streamline the flow of legal documents? This eclectic mix of expertise has become my secret sauce in navigating today’s intricate business landscape.
Here’s the blueprint that’s worked for me and the trailblazers I admire:
Let’s set the record straight—this isn’t about hoarding trivial facts or hopping on every passing trend. It’s about cultivating a mental toolkit that enables you to spot patterns, tackle challenges, and seize opportunities others overlook.
When a client presents me with a complex issue, I’m not just tapping into my direct experience in their industry. I’m drawing upon insights from every book I’ve skimmed, every podcast I’ve listened to, and every enlightening conversation I’ve had over coffee. That’s what elevates you from being just another advisor to becoming the go-to guru people rely on for their toughest decisions.
The most impactful leaders I’ve encountered share a common trait: They’re endlessly inquisitive. They read voraciously, question relentlessly, and aren’t afraid to venture into uncharted territory. They understand that in today’s hyper-competitive landscape, being a specialist isn’t sufficient—you need to be a polymath who can weave together threads from disparate fields.
In my 25-plus years traversing the twists and turns of the business world, I’ve witnessed trends rise like meteors and fizzle out just as quickly. Yet one principle remains etched in stone: The instant you believe you’ve learned it all is the moment you start your descent into irrelevance.
So keep that curiosity flame burning. Embrace the awkwardness of not knowing. Enroll in that seemingly unrelated workshop on astrophysics or medieval history. Your future self will not only thank you but might just write you a heartfelt letter of gratitude—and your financial statements will reflect that growth.
Ruth is a highly experienced Account Manager with comprehensive experience across the Vehicle Rental Industry, from Operations to Corporate Sales. She’s dedicated to delivering outstanding customer service and consistently goes above and beyond to meet customer needs.
With an impressive and diverse background in sales and business development, Ruth is a dynamic and confident communicator, skilled at engaging with stakeholders across all levels of government, industry, and beyond. Known for her enthusiasm and insatiable curiosity, Ruth is always eager to learn, adapt, and bring fresh perspectives to every project she undertakes.
A true multitasker, Ruth is well-versed in Project Management practices, seamlessly managing multiple projects, overseeing numerous dashboards, and balancing various priorities with finesse. Her hands-on approach ensures smooth and efficient business support delivery, with a constant focus on clear and effective communication with clients at every stage.
Ruth has built a solid reputation working with both national giants like Arnold Clark and Europcar, as well as local logistics firms, where she has contributed her expertise in business development, sales strategy, and project management. Her ability to navigate complex challenges and drive results has made her a trusted partner to organizations looking to elevate their operations and achieve sustained success.
With over a decade of experience in the UK lift industry, Harriet successfully scaled and sold her business, Elevate UK Lifts Ltd., in the summer of 2024. Throughout her career, she focused on building strong client relationships, optimising operations, and maintaining rigorous health and safety standards. She gained certifications in IOSH Managing Safely, ISO9001, and ISO45001, and was responsible for overseeing health and safety compliance within the business while building a passionate and empowered team.
In addition to hands-on industry experience, Harriet is passionate about mentoring and empowering entrepreneurs. She has had the privilege of mentoring for the past two years as part of the “Help to Grow” programme delivered by Enterprise Nation, as well as through her own mentoring company, Duo Growth. Her focus is on service-based businesses, drawing on both her personal journey as a business owner and her knowledge of scalable business processes. Harriet has also completed the “ABM Foundation in Business Mentoring” course, further strengthening their mentoring skills.
Ambitious businesses in Worcestershire are being offered the chance to accelerate their growth through Rockfine Group’s High Growth Activate Programme. This initiative, designed specifically for companies in their early stages, provides practical, high-impact support to help them achieve 20% annual revenue growth over the next three years.
Open to all industries, this exclusive programme seeks businesses established since 2020 that have strong growth potential and an innovative approach to their market. Eligible applicants will benefit from 1:1 sessions with Rockfine’s team of seasoned business coaches, who will guide participants in crafting a clear, actionable three-year growth plan. Additionally, expert advice on grant funding opportunities will be provided.
The High Growth Activate Programme, delivered in partnership with Enterprising Worcestershire, includes a robust lineup of workshops led by experienced professionals. Sessions will cover essential topics like financial management, building and managing a team, diversifying revenue streams, and perfecting your business pitch. Alongside the workshops, participants will join peer support groups and receive tailored advice on areas such as marketing, HR, and finance.
BD Dalton, Strategic Director of Rockfine Group, explains the programme’s mission:
“Our goal is to help young businesses overcome early challenges and build a foundation for sustainable, high-value growth. We focus on companies with strong concepts and the ambition to disrupt their markets. High Growth Activate offers an unparalleled package of support, designed to work around busy schedules, apart from fixed workshop dates.”
One recent success story comes from Worcester-based Split Second Research. Co-founder Dr. Eamon Fulcher credits Rockfine’s guidance with giving his business “a meaningful direction” and providing clarity during challenging times:
“Rockfine’s support has been invaluable. It’s great to get an outsider’s perspective to avoid becoming too narrowly focused.”
This transformative programme is supported by the European Regional Development Fund, Worcestershire County Council, and Midlands Engine. It is specifically designed for B2B-focused businesses, with at least 70% of revenue coming from business clients.
Tom Young, Project Manager for Enterprising Worcestershire, highlights the initiative’s wider impact:
“Worcestershire is home to an exciting new business ecosystem. High Growth Activate supports our mission to drive regional economic development by fostering strong, innovative businesses and creating new jobs.”
Ready to take the next step in your business journey? Apply now to join High Growth Activate and discover how Rockfine Group can help unlock your company’s potential.