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SCALEX™

Accelerator
Programme

The ScaleX™ Accelerator Programme is an exclusive 12-month programme specifically designed for CEOs, Founders and Managing Directors of SMEs who have the ambition to scale.

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Trusted
globally

Fintech
Belfast, Ireland
Engineering
Armagh, Northern Ireland
Health & Wellbeing
Northern Ireland
Construction
Magherafelt, Northern Ireland
Retail
Northern Ireland
Engineering & Manufacturing
Coleraine, Northern Ireland
Motor Trade
Portadown, Northern Ireland
Facilities Management
Magherafelt, Northern Ireland
Security
Dublin, Ireland
Scale X™ Accelerator programme

What is the
Accelerator programme?

The ScaleX™ Accelerator Programme is a 12-month programme for leaders of SMEs based on the 10 principles of the ScaleX™ framework – the most holistic and comprehensive framework for scaling globally.

The programme is delivered by Scaling Specialists who have been through the scaling journey with their own businesses and want to help others achieve the same.

Throughout the Programme, they’ll break down the mysteries and complexities of scaling, helping you develop the right thinking, environment and essential systems required for accelerated growth.

OUR WHY

SMEs are the lifeblood of our local and national economies. They provide essential jobs, create valuable products and services and generate income that greatly benefits the local community.
Sadly, less than 2% of the estimated 400m SMEs globally ever achieve scale despite their huge benefits.

WHO IS IT FOR

We don’t discover powerful leaders, we help people in leadership positions unlock the power of their own voice.

Leading a business can be a very isolating job. Leaders seeking to scale their business can sometimes struggle with their personal ‘why, how, and what?’. Often, it’s the internal fears, self-doubt and a sense of isolation that hold them back, which in turn holds their business back.

Some say that to build a business, you need to sacrifice your personal time, health, and relationships. We don’t agree with this. Our belief is that to scale a business, you need to build the leader. And to build a leader, you start by building the person.

ScaleX™ Framework

The Accelerator programme is based on the ScaleX™ Framework.
10 timeless principles of scaling that can be readily implemented by SME leaders to deliver long-term, repeatable, sustainable growth.

PHASE
Inspire
Orientate
Accelerate
01

Manage Your Psyche

When you learn how to master the right psyche to achieve your scaling ambition, your success becomes not merely possible or probable…
it becomes inevitable

02

Purpose & vision

A meaningful purpose, joyfully formed and articulately expressed by you is the first and most critical step towards creating the results you want. Let us show you how to do this with eloquence and finesse.

03

Build Your People and Spark their Passion

When the right people are intrinsically and emotionally invested in your purpose and vision they will bring their brains, bodies and their hearts to work.

04

Plan Your Journey to go Further, Faster

Deliberate action against your most important priorities, coupled with grit and perseverance against a well-informed plan, will enable you to strive for extraordinary scaling

05

Build Smart Processes, Systems & Technology

Learn how to build smart and simple processes and systems, automating as much as possible to keep your business operationally fit for scaling.

06

Inspire World Beating Performance

Identifying and monitoring the right key performance metrics will help you to understand what you need to do to become better, faster and more efficient than you were before

07

Your Proposition in the Eyes of Your Customer

Developing a clear articulation of your company’s competitive strength in the eyes of your customers is key to steering you away from the complexity trap…

08

Explore Your Place in the World

You will learn to embrace the challenges of accessing new markets which will make you raise your game and enhance your opportunities to grow both professionally and personally.

09

Accelerate Scaling with Strategic Partnerships

Entering into a strategic partnership
is an attractive way to accelerate your scaling business and increase your reach beyond what would have been possible by going alone

10

Cultivating a Positive Growth Culture

Learn how to intentionally create and sustain the right system of behaviours for your people to
follow which will enable you to realise your scaling ambition.

01

Manage Your Psyche

When you learn how to master the right psyche to achieve your scaling ambition, your success becomes not merely possible or probable…
it becomes inevitable

02

Purpose & vision

A meaningful purpose, joyfully formed and articulately expressed by you is the first and most critical step towards creating the results you want. Let us show you how to do this with eloquence and finesse.

03

Build Your People and Spark their Passion

When the right people are intrinsically and emotionally invested in your purpose and vision they will bring their brains, bodies and their hearts to work.

04

Plan Your Journey to go Further, Faster

Deliberate action against your most important priorities, coupled with grit and perseverance against a well-informed plan, will enable you to strive for extraordinary scaling

05

Build Smart Processes, Systems & Technology

Learn how to build smart and simple processes and systems, automating as much as possible to keep your business operationally fit for scaling.

06

Inspire World Beating Performance

Identifying and monitoring the right key performance metrics will help you to understand what you need to do to become better, faster and more efficient than you were before

07

Your Proposition in the Eyes of Your Customer

Developing a clear articulation of your company’s competitive strength in the eyes of your customers is key to steering you away from the complexity trap…

08

Explore Your Place in the World

You will learn to embrace the challenges of accessing new markets which will make you raise your game and enhance your opportunities to grow both professionally and personally.

09

Accelerate Scaling with Strategic Partnerships

Entering into a strategic partnership
is an attractive way to accelerate your scaling business and increase your reach beyond what would have been possible by going alone

10

Cultivating a Positive Growth Culture

Learn how to intentionally create and sustain the right system of behaviours for your people to
follow which will enable you to realise your scaling ambition.

Scale X™ Accelerator programme

What you’ll get:

The programme is delivered across 12-months and includes:

  • A tailored ScaleX™ Insights assessment of your business
  • 12 x in-person practical group workshops
  • 3 x overnight residentials
  • 12 x 90-minute online monthly mastermind sessions
  • One full-day Vision and Planning on-site workshop with your wider team
  • All reading materials (plus a 1-year Audible subscription)
  • Exclusive membership to the ScaleX™ Club
  • Access to member-only benefits
Step 1
Insights + Roadmap

Often, when we get too close to the problems that exist in our business it becomes easy to get lost in the weeds. Working collaboratively with you, we undertake an in-depth MRI of your business against our ScaleXTM framework. Not only does this provide us with the insight to fully understand how we can support you on your scaling journey, but our expertise frequently unearths solutions to problems that have appeared intractable for decades. As a result of the MRI, we will provide you with a scaling roadmap that you can share with your wider team highlighting the priorities to focus on first.

 

Step 2
12x [1 day] Interactive/practical sessions

You will be invited to attend 12 carefully designed and choreographed 1-day workshops in line with the ScaleXTM Framework where you will gain a complete, in-depth, lived insight into the scaling journey. Highly interactive; you will participate in active discussion, learn practical approaches to successfully scale your business and share stories of scaling successes with those within your group.

Step 3
Elite Mastermind Group

Our Elite Mastermind Group will bring you together with your peer group to explore the 10 principles of successful scaling and the fundamental associated challenges. Benefit from being part of this exclusive community of scaling leaders by building close bonds with those around you and holding each other accountable for implementing change.

ScaleX™ Accelerator highlights

Meet Your Hosts

Meet some of the Programme’s world-class Advisors and Contributors.

Resilience

with Wim Hof Instructor Niall Ó Murchú

Niall will show you how to find natural ways of restoring and improving your strength, health and happiness by learning to breathe in a transformative way and use the cold as a force for good.

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Confidence

with Lucy Key

Develop the essential skills for successful communication, presentation and peak performance by using the secrets of the stage with theatre directors Chris and Lucy Key.

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Innovation

with Paul Akers

FastCap Founder and global thought leader Pauk Akers will guide you through the pillars of Lean manufacturing and culture and how it can transform your business and creativity.

SHOW MORE

Mindset

with Dr. Ryan Gottfredson

Learn how to unlock the growth mindset
of you and your team with leading mindset author and researcher Dr Ryan Gottfredson.

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Sustainability

with Marga Hoek

Learn what it takes to transition to more sustainable practices while also scaling your business with CEO, Award Winning Author, and Global Thought Leader Marga Hoek

SHOW MORE

Growth

with George Burt

Acquire the skills to go beyond your perceived limitations to pursue high growth, expanded relevance, and strong customer attachment with global author and marketer Gabor George Burt.

SHOW MORE
SIMPLE Scaling benefits

Why
Simple Scaling?

Networking

Build enriching connections and partnerships with other leaders on the same journey.

Profits

Maximise your profits by consistently growing your business year-on-year in tough market conditions.

Vision and purpose

Solidify a vision and purpose that aligns your whole team.

Mindset

Be inspired by some of the world’s most influential minds and build a mindset for scaling success.

INNOVATION

Delight your customers and save your company from mediocrity by propelling it towards excellence.

Find your flow

Let go of the worries of day-to-day operations and learn to lead with more joy, flow and ease.

Results that speak for themselves

Don’t take our word for it, read some of the testimonials from our happy customers.

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Enagaged Followers
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Books Sold

Start your scaling journey today

Why simple scaling?

What’s different?

Unlike other growth programmes, ScaleX™ Accelerator has a strong focus on the well-being of the leader, as we believe that better leaders build better businesses.

We’ll teach you techniques to build resilience and increase your self-awareness and confidence, helping you to become a better leader of others.

Systems and structure

Our 10-step framework will provide the structure and systems to scale your business with purpose.

Personal growth

You’ll develop the personal tools to find your voice, clarify your vision and lead with joy, flow and ease.

Inspire.
Connect.
Enable.

Discover our 12-month programme that helps the world’s most promising SMEs to accelerate their growth and unlock the key to successful scaling.

We don’t discover powerful leaders, we help people in leadership positions unlock the power of their own voice.

Net promoter score 10/10
Success
Stories
This is a life-changing programme. It will challenge you in every way to grow yourself and grow your business.
Gareth Morrison, CEO, The Lava Group

Your questions answered…

Find answers to the most common questions about the ScaleX Accelerator. If you have any other questions please get in touch.

What is scaling exactly? It’s not a term I’m very familiar with.

‘Scaling’ is a term that is becoming more commonly used in today’s business lexicon.

The OECD (Organisation for Economic Development) defines a ‘scaling’ as average annualised growth of 20% over 3 consecutive years either in revenue or employee numbers, and which has 10 or more employees at the start of the observation period.

Staggeringly, less than 2% of SMEs (Small to Medium sized Enterprises) achieve this, globally.

In the UK alone, there are 5.7M SMEs generating £2Trn for the UK economy, 50% of which comes from ‘scale-ups’ of which there are only 34,000.

This is our purpose.  We are moving the dial on this.

What is the difference between ‘growth’ and ‘scaling’?

Growth is achieving more results through the same or more effort. Scaling is achieving more results with less effort. Essentially Growing is doing more with more, Scaling is doing more with leverage (leveraging processes for example).

As a company moves from start-up to scale-up and starts to think about how they can take their product or service to a much greater audience, the focus must be less on experimentation and one-off wins and more on establishing the systems which enable long term, repeatable, sustainable growth.

Very few business leaders set aside time to think critically about the changes they need to make to scale, let alone master the formula of scaling.

What is ScaleX™?

ScaleX™ is the most holistic and comprehensive framework for scaling up an organisation. It is a framework designed by scaling leaders for scaling leaders and is based on 10 timeless principles of scaling.

It was developed by founders, Brendan McGurgan & Claire Colvin, who have been steeped in scaling businesses for their entire careers.

Brendan led the scaling of Northern Ireland based company CDE Global. When he joined in 2003, the company had 15 people and £3M revenue. Over a 12-year period he led the business to £100M revenue per annum with 700 people located in 6 continents. Brendan is now the host of the ScaleX™ Insider Podcast and he interviews global leaders and subject matter experts on each principle within ScaleX™. Claire is an experienced People Director who has spent her entire career attracting great talent into scaling SMEs, building their capability and creating the right environment for them to thrive. On the Board of CDE Global, she developed the people systems and structure to enable the company to scale globally and prior to that, she led the Talent function within a scaling technology business growing 30% year on year. Claire and Brendan now work with ambitious leaders around the world to guide and support them on their scaling journey.

In 2019 they carried out extensive research into high growth, long-standing and successfully scaled companies across various industries around the world and authored the Amazon Best Selling book, ‘Simple Scaling – 10 proven principles to 10x your business’ which was published in March 2022.

Together, they are driven to remove the mystery around scaling up a business so that all ambitious, well-meaning business leaders can achieve it too. They continue on their scaling journey with us as they scale their own business.

But scaling a business isn’t simple?

This is often misconstrued. Simple does not mean easy.  Scaling a business is not at all easy, but it must never be complicated. Simple scales, complex fails.

Simplicity can often require the most advanced thinking and it is this that has already been done for you.  The most important piece of advice that runs through the whole ScaleX™ programme is to keep it simple, keep it honest and keep it real.

Being able to share complex matters in a simple (but not oversimplified) way requires a level of maturity and clear understanding of a situation.

We want to lay the code out for everyone to see and understand.

I’m not sure I’m ready to scale my business?

This programme is not for leaders of start-ups.  You will have already have proven your product-market fit and will be experiencing growth, coupled with the challenges that come along with it.  Typically, you will have achieved revenues of £1M – £15M in revenue.

You will be driven to take your product or service to a much wider audience and recognise the need to transform into a scale up, putting the right systems in place to enable you to sustain and accelerate this growth.

I’m not sure now is the best time. We’ve a lot going on!

There is no ‘right time’ to sign up for the ScaleX™ Programme but the sooner you do, the sooner you will begin your scaling journey.

The general nature of Founders/CEOs/MDs is that we are typically always busy.  We will always fill up our diaries no matter how much ‘space’ we clear in them.  Almost all of our participants join us because they are hungry for clarity around the scaling process, for more structure and for more freedom to get back to doing what they really enjoy doing.

If you genuinely want to scale up and set a strong foundation for this to happen, this is the perfect time to join us.

Attending 1 workshop each month can also serve as a test to see if you can take your hands off your business for 1 day a month.  Past participants have expressed to us how their teams loved it when they went on the workshops because after each one, they returned to the business inspired, motivated and fully equipped to drive change.

It costs a lot of money and I don’t have the budget for it

The cost of the programme is an investment – an investment in you and your business.  It equates to the cost of a good Personal Assistant or an NED (Non-Executive Director) for a year but in essence you’re gaining the knowledge of how to successfully achieve scaling up PLUS the experience and insights of up to 11 other CEOs to champion, support and advise you on a peer-to-peer level.

Existing participants say that the value they received from the tools, insights and guidance within the first 3 months of the Programme is worth the cost of the full programme.  They tell us that we don’t charge enough!

What do I actually have at the end of my year on the programme?
  • You will have the playbook for scaling up your own business
  • You will have the ScaleX™ Insights feedback report
  • You will have a team who are feeling energised after receiving our feedback and attending the Vision & Planning Workshop.
  • You will learn how to develop new daily routines and habits to manage your personal scaling journey.
  • You will learn about and practice the Wim Hof method, including cold water exposure and guided breathing and be provided with an App to support you.
  • You will have identified the Purpose of your business that both encapsulates and inspires others to want to join you (Your “WHY”) along with your long-term Vision that aligns the team so that you are all moving in the same direction.
  • You will have a clear and simple one page plan (ScaleX™ Navigator) with clear goals, objectives and key results assigned to owners to gain necessary traction.
  • You will receive access to all ScaleX™ resources and a full set of reading materials all supporting the scaling process.
How is ScaleX™ any different to any other ‘course’?
  • ScaleX™ is not really a ‘course’. It’s a journey of transformation.
  • It is THE most holistic and comprehensive framework for scaling globally.
  • It provides structure & is delivered in a logical flow, giving our participants the clarity they crave.
  • Our programme is delivered by leaders who have been there and done it – they are scaling specialists who want to help others to achieve the same.
  • ScaleX™ has a strong focus on the well-being of the leader. We teach you the techniques to increase your self awareness, helping you to become a better leader of others.
  • The extended ScaleX™ tribe are champions of each other. It has been described as ‘an environment full of ambition, where everyone has an easy confidence and the only person you are competing with is yourself.’

Are you ready to start your Simple Scaling journey?

Get in touch with our team to register your interest in the next cohort of ScaleX, places are filling up fast.

DON’T TAKE OUR WORD FOR IT…

Success Stories

SEE ALL SUCCESS STORIES

“Ciaran clarified the company’s vision and brought everyone on board for the scaling journey”

Ciaran Devine
CEO & Founder of Evermore Energy

“Alison acquired the tools and mindset to scale her business while making new connections”

Alison McFadden
Director of Continu

“Martin has transformed the way he measures performance and success at TextHelp”

Martin McKay
CEO & Co-Founder of TextHelp