Rotorua's Firestation seeks 10 businesses for growth challenge

A central North Island business growth centre is rallying Rotorua business owners to grow ten times faster and apply for its business training programme.

Firestation is located in Rotorua's central business district and will run its ACCELERATE business training programme next month.

The programme will take on up to 10 businesses, subsidised with funding from Rotorua Economic Development (Destination Rotorua).

According to programme director Darren McGarvie, the ultimate goal is for participants to expand – whether regionally, nationally, or even internationally.

"This programme is for business owners and senior leaders of established medium size businesses. It helps in all facets of growth from organisations that are growing really fast and don't know how to handle the growth through to businesses where their growth has stagnated, and they want to re-ignite the growth.

Over a six-month period, business owners will attend fortnightly sessions that grow capabilities in areas such as brand, finance, leadership, planning, and sales.

Participants need to commit to 2-3 hours per fortnight for the training and business coaching sessions over six months.

They will also work in group training and individual coaching sessions to develop a growth mindset.

"Participants receive a mix of professional coaching and business capability training with the focus on participants setting goals, implementing actions and increasing success through planning for growth," McGarvie says.

More than 40 businesses have graduated from the programme. A recent graduate survey showed revenue growth accelerated from an average of 1% to 10% per year.

"The other real benefit of the programme is meeting other like-minded business owners and senior leaders. We find groups continue to stay in touch after the programme. In fact, our first cohort in Taupō which finished in 2015 still catch up on a regular basis," McGarvie said.

Index Engineering's Ingrid Snyman, who completed the last Rotorua Accelerate course in March, recommends the programme to others.

"Doing the Accelerate programme forces you to have focussed time each fortnight to be thinking of the Big Picture and then you put it all together into a Strategic Plan," she says.

"By the end of the course I felt more in control and more organised. We now have a clear direction for the next year and as a result I feel more confident, purposeful and excited about the future.

"It was also valuable to sit around the table with other business owners and share some of our challenges and opportunities. This made it quite different than doing something like a polytechnic based business course.

Applications close Friday, July 6.