Breakthrough helped our struggling business to grow
Breakthrough helped scale up our business
Let’s set the scene: A beautiful Cornish country home, curled up in front of a roaring fire, nice glass of wine, pen in hand, favourite notebook open on a clean page – all the makings of your next sell-out novel, perhaps?
Or just the location of a Writing Retreat weekend…at least it would have been if it weren’t for Covid.
The Writing Retreat, offering short breaks for small groups of writers, was set up by two friends, and creative wordsmiths, Jane Moss and Kath Morgan.
Rewriting a sustainable business plan
“Since setting up our business in 2014 we have developed a great product which our customers love” says Kath “but it has not been financially viable, because of high overheads.”
When Covid locked the business down, Jane and Kath couldn’t get people in a room anymore. Their customers still existed, but their needs had changed. There were also new opportunities. For some people, lockdown meant more spare time, and more time to write or develop a new-found hobby.
Jane said,
Our customers were still out there, ready to buy our services but suddenly there was a whole new audience that we didn’t have before. The pandemic has given us an unexpected opportunity for our business to become sustainable long term, but we had to successfully make the shift online.
Business support through Breakthrough
Attending the interactive Breakthrough online workshops gave Jane and Kath the chance to talk through new ideas, one to one with a Business Development Manager and receive support from other business owners facing similar situations.
Kath commented,
Breakthrough helped us quickly realise that taking The Writing Retreat online would grow our business on a scale that would have been impossible if we simply returned to running our business ‘as normal’ – it was a massive lightbulb moment for us and confirmed the direction that we needed to take our business in.
Now Jane and Kath have a new business strategy in place for 2021. Taking The Writing Retreat online, they’ve rebranded, introduced new products and courses to their portfolio, spent time building a new database of customers and are relaunching their website this Spring.
We’ve transformed our business thanks to the support received from Breakthrough. Our eyes have been opened to the potential income we can now make from it. Breakthrough has given us much-needed structure and guidance during what would have been an overwhelming transition process.
If you have had to shift course onto an unfamiliar path in recent months, tell us about your business and what support we could help you with. Our next online Breakthrough workshop takes place next month.