Supporting Small Business Owners

Business Adviser for Nanaimo and Vancouver Island
  • Business Advice

  • Business Coaching

  • Strategy Consulting and

  • Fractional CFO Services

How I Help Business Owners

Business Advisory

Selling your business is a huge challenge and Nick makes everything so much more approachable.
— Karen Hankins, Dean's Marine

Preparing for sale, integrating acquisitions, and turning strategy into action

If you’re thinking about selling one day, especially if that is a few years away, the work should start now.

I help owners:

  • Build their business in a structured way that makes passing it on to new owners, be they: family, employees, business partners or a 3rd party, attractive and an easy transition;

  • Identify and plan for acquiring a new business. Assist with due diligence analysing historical data to look for flaws, potential inaccuracies and red flags. Then help integrate the new acquisition with the minimum of stress, loss of key personnel and effective systems integration.

  • Develop strategic plans that are practical, realistic, and actually implemented.

Effective planning and implementation will make a massive impact on the transition of value and is an often overlooked step for new sellers and buyers alike.

Business Coaching for Entrepreneurs at all stage of growth

Entrepreneur Coaching

Nick helped us take our business from a generalist, take-anyone-who-walks-in-the-door design shop to a targeted, niche-oriented company with a clear, multi-year plan for our business development and growth.
— Leif Miltenberger, Business Director, Hired Guns Creative

Supporting Growth, Financial Management, Skills and Strategy

Almost all of my clients have great technical skills, but are still either learning how to run their own business or are entering new territory as they’ve grown and need an impartial sounding board for ideas, a mentor or coach to develop new skills.

Coaching clients come from very varied business backgrounds: tourism, hospitality, marine services, hair salons, mortgage brokers, app developers, branding agencies, web and graphic design, plumbers, electricians, general contractors, fitness instructors, artists, landscapers, film makers and more…

As a coach, I work alongside you to:

  • Identify areas where you need to strengthen skills

  • Build systems and processes that enhance financial control and reduce owner-dependence

  • Strengthen decision-making across operations and finance

  • Develop confidence in your business skills over and above your technical comfort zone

You don’t need someone to tell you what you already know. You need an experienced coach who understands how businesses actually work, and isn’t afraid to challenge you to find alternative ideas and established ways of doing things.

CFO Services

Fractional Chief Financial Officer

Nick was a commercially aware, astute and very supportive team player who was a key part of our senior management team though a very successful period.
— Jason Danciger, CEO Hana Group

Senior financial leadership, without the full-time overhead

Many coaching relationships naturally evolve into fractional CFO support.

I act as a senior financial partner to:

  • Improve the quality and usefulness of financial information

  • Translate numbers into insight and action

  • Support funding conversations with banks and investors

  • Help owners understand what really drives value in their business

You get experienced CFO-level thinking, scaled to the size and reality of your business.

Experience You Can Lean On

Experience matters — especially when the decisions in front of you affect your livelihood, your future, and the value of the business you’ve spent years building.

Most of my clients don’t need motivation or generic advice. They need perspective. Someone who has seen what works, what fails, and what actually makes a difference when businesses grow, stall, change hands, or prepare for exit.

I bring that perspective from having spent decades inside businesses of all sizes — as an advisor, a senior executive, and a business owner myself. That mix matters, because it keeps the advice practical, commercial, and grounded in reality.

I’m a Chartered Accountant with over 35 years of experience across engineering, finance, operations, and entrepreneurship.

My background includes:

  • Training with Top 4 accounting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers in London

  • Senior finance leadership in high-growth private and public companies

  • Helping three $100M+ businesses successfully exit (including a London Stock Exchange listing)

  • Acting as Interim and Fractional CFO for fast-growing companies

  • Working across multiple industries including: media, telecoms, hospitality, construction, tourism, marine, and technology

  • Starting and running my own yacht charter business in British Columbia

I’ve sat on both sides of the table — advisor and owner — which means my advice is grounded in reality, not theory.

Contact Us

Interested in working together? Fill out some info and we will be in touch shortly. We can’t wait to hear from you!