As businesses fight to stay ahead of the game in the Brexit battle, leaders of one Welsh company may have found the secret recipe to making the uncertainty around Brexit a success for their business.

WATERS, a creative and innovative marketing agency based in Swansea, has been accepted onto the Business Wales Accelerated Growth Programme (AGP), which offers individual support to high growth pre-revenue and SME businesses.

A growing agency borne from an entrepreneurial start-up, WATERS, based in Swansea, is known for its creative approach to solving real business challenges for brands and organisations across the UK. The AGP is targeted at high growth businesses that want to enter their next growth phase and have the potential and determination to get there – something that WATERS has focused heavily on,as part of the next step in its business growth strategy.

As part of the AGP, expert business mentors from across multiple industries, under the guidance of relationship manager, Carmel Gahan,will be assigned to each business enrolled on the programme. Each mentor will assist and advise their allocated business by really getting to understand the business and identify their key growth constraints. Specialist growth coaches can then be introduced to address those specific constraints, sharing their extensive commercial expertise.

WATERS is currently receiving mentoring and support fromone such coach, Barry Turner, director of Agile Programmes, which was created to accelerate revenue growth from cloud, managed and telecom services. Turner worked at Cisco Systems and Mitel in a variety of sales, marketing and business development roles. Turner is one of many coaches, who will be working alongside WATERS to provide mentorship and advice.

Turner commented:

“Working with WATERS has allowed me to work with two fantastic female business leaders. Rachael Wheatley and Rhian East are highly driven, dedicated and committed to driving WATERS forward, with the end goal being to increase business growth over the next 12 months, despite the Brexit outcome.

“I introduced the team to my ‘10 question model’, which has allowed them to streamline goals and focus on the next steps they need to take, in order to fulfil their business goals.

“The model involves following a variety of steps, including looking at target customers; the product/service offering; and what makes the business unique compared to competitors. I can already see the progression WATERS has made, and I have no doubt that this progression will continue to allow WATERS to meet its goals in due course.”

Rachael Wheatley, founder and co-director of WATERS, commented:

“Rhian and I are extremely passionate about continually moving WATERS forward and the Accelerated Growth Programme will help us to do this. Although we are satisfied with the business’ current positioning, we are determined to never stand still – we always want to learn, improve and develop.

“In business, it’s easy to get carried away with ultimate business goals and, therefore,try to achieve these as quickly as possible. However, with Barry’s mentoring, we are taking it one step at a time, ensuring we are covering all bases at a pace we are all comfortable with. This will hopefully lead us to achieve the goals we have set successfully, while ensuring we are thorough and not rushing the process.

“We look forward to seeing what direction this programme can take us in and how we can prosper during these uncertain times.”

Waters’ AGP relationship manager, Carmel Gahan, comments on the support the programme can provide to businesses:

“The AGP allows for a range of business coaches to assist businesses on their journey to meeting and exceeding aims and goals. My role is to ensure the coaches we allocate to businesses enrolled on the programme can provide advice from their specific area of expertise – allowing each business to gain a variety of perspectives.

“My role is to ‘kick the tyres’ during the programme, so businesses get what they really need to prosper.”