Where Does Your Business Have the ‘Right to Win’?

Growth brings opportunity, but not every opportunity is right for every business. As companies become more established, the pressure to diversify, enter new markets and expand their offering can be difficult to resist. Yet sustainable growth depends on understanding where a business has a genuine competitive advantage, what makes it distinctive and where its expertise is best applied. Knowing where you have the ‘Right to Win’ is as much about making choices as pursuing ambition.

I learned this through building my own businesses. Made redundant from a senior construction consultancy role in 2008 following the global financial crisis, I set up a business development consultancy out of necessity. To raise its profile, I began organising industry events, but within a year, it became clear that the events had greater potential than the consultancy itself. What started as a marketing tool grew into a business delivering around 80 events a year across the UK. Looking back, the opportunity lay in recognising a market need and building on capabilities we already had.

Understanding where you have the advantage —

Being capable of delivering a service is not the same as having a competitive advantage in delivering it. The Right to Win means understanding what customers value, why they choose you over competitors and what makes your proposition difficult to replicate. That advantage might come from specialist expertise, established relationships, a distinctive operating model or a reputation built over many years.

I saw this clearly when COVID brought the events industry to an abrupt halt. Forced to move online almost overnight, we maintained revenue through virtual events, but the disruption also prompted me to reconsider what the market needed and where our experience could create something new.

That thinking led to UKREiiF, the UK’s Real Estate Investment and Infrastructure Forum. I recognised an opportunity for a more accessible UK-based alternative to international events such as MIPIM in Cannes, better suited to the needs and expectations of the domestic market.

Within three years, UKREiiF grew from just under 4,000 attendees to around 13,000, generating more than £60 million in local economic benefit for Leeds. Since 2022, it has helped unlock more than £2 billion in projects and investment through connections, introductions and event sessions.

Its success reinforced an important lesson: growth is most sustainable when it builds on what a business genuinely does well, rather than simply following the promise of another revenue stream.

Protecting your DNA while growing —

As a business expands, it needs to understand which elements of its identity should remain consistent. Brand DNA goes beyond a name or logo; it encompasses the expertise, values, reputation and customer relationships that make a business distinctive.

This is particularly important for groups operating several specialist brands. Sharing resources can create efficiencies, but it does not mean every brand should offer the same services or pursue the same markets. Sometimes, the group’s strength lies in allowing individual businesses to retain their specialist identities and deepen their expertise.

Expanding into unrelated services may generate revenue, but it can also blur a brand’s market position. Leaders should ask whether an opportunity builds on existing capabilities, offers customers a meaningful advantage and gives the business a credible route to competing successfully.

These questions matter particularly for businesses preparing for a sale or capital event. Investors and potential acquirers look beyond headline growth to assess what differentiates a business, how defensible its position is and whether its success can be sustained. A clear proposition and credible expansion strategy can be more compelling than a broad portfolio of disconnected activities.

Learning what to focus on next —

I sold UKREiiF in 2024, after years of building the business. The experience gave me time to reflect on what had driven its success: recognising a genuine market need, understanding where our strengths lay and resisting the temptation to pursue every opportunity.

Those lessons continue to shape my next venture, The Entrepreneur Festival, taking place in Leeds in June 2027. Having built and sold a business, I understand the value of practical advice from people who have faced similar decisions. The experience reinforced how important it is for entrepreneurs to recognise when their existing skills are enough and when they need different expertise to move forward.

Knowing when to say no —

One of the hardest decisions for a business leader is turning down an opportunity. Every new initiative demands investment, time and management attention that could otherwise be spent strengthening the core business. Strategic focus is not a lack of ambition; it is about directing ambition towards the opportunities where a business is best placed to succeed.

My approach has always been grounded in commercial fundamentals – building steadily, maintaining control of cash and hiring people who are better than me in their respective fields. These principles helped shape my journey from redundancy to building and selling UKREiiF, and they remain relevant as I develop a new venture.

Ultimately, the Right to Win is about making informed decisions on where to invest, which opportunities to pursue and what makes an organisation distinctive. For businesses pursuing significant growth or preparing for a future capital event, understanding that distinction can be one of their most important strategic advantages.

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