You don’t have to do business alone
Get co-funded support from trusted and leading Business Advisors to guide you on your journey
Whether you’re a start-up or an established company, owning a business is a bit like being in a pool and swimming. Sometimes you’ve got energy and you’re swimming along well. Other times you can find yourself in a rip!
As Business Advisors, we get in the pool and swim alongside you, so you stay afloat and reach your business goals, as fast as possible.
Welcome to The Engine
The Engine was founded by successful Entrepreneur and Business Advisor, Catherine Cooke.
Catherine built her first company from the ground up, to multiple companies with a staff number of 90. She almost lost everything when another business venture was derailed by circumstances out of her control.
It’s safe to say she understands growing pains and adversity well and has seen what happens when a business goes well … and not so well.
Catherine has been a business advisor for the last seven years, with an extensive track record in helping businesses grow. She was the Business Advisor for the Business Chamber of Commerce covering business problems nationwide in 2015.
Passionate about seeing businesses thrive, Catherine has pulled together a team of very talented Business Advisors. Advisors who have walked in your shoes as business owners and built the kind of company you want to build or grow – many times.
Together this smart team has helped hundreds of businesses grow and supported many through the COVID turmoil.
Thrive for the long-term with The Engine’s DPAM approach to business growth
At the heart of all of our programmes is a holistic, four-step approach to understanding your business and what it will take to make it grow sustainably.
Diagnose
We make an in-depth, structured assessment analysing the current position of your business. Together we explore your needs and help you set quantifiable goals for future growth
Present
After analysing all research, we formulate and present solutions and opportunities, including time frames for review.
Analyse
Once we have agreed on a strategy, a thorough analysis is conducted to give feedback on the business. In order to maximise results, changes can be made to suit the needs of the business.
Monitor
At the end of each quarter we review your progress against the set goals and formulate new strategies. This ensures any changes in your business or environment are always covered in the current plan.
We are a leading provider for business advisory
We’ve helped many businesses like yours
Introduced an awareness to wellness in to organisations, strengthening culture. Enabled work/life balance for company owners and their team.
Coached businesses on understanding the numbers and the importance of cash flow in order to make informed decisions in the business.
Assisted businesses with restructures for growth.
Facilitated dispute and potential dispute agreements with clients for leases, employment issues, transaction issues, franchise and more. Mitigated potential risk through proper governance.
Coached to avoid disputes through building better business practices & disciplines.
Assisted businesses out of the risk areas with financiers.
YOU MAY BE wondering how
We’ve helped with every aspect of their business
Assisted business re-structures – financial & people.
Together with the client built their value proposition through a robust marketing strategy that not only increases the value proposition but also builds pipelines for the sales funnel.
Coached businesses on recruitment, onboarding and using correct HR paperwork.
Mapped out better customer journeys for retention and attraction.
Assisted Succession Planning for business continuance & exit.
Provided challenge and support so that clients can scale.
Get funded support through the Regional Business Partner Network Programme
How we can help you grow
The Engine is one of the leading business advisory services under the Regional Business Partner Network Programme.
The Regional Business Partner Network Programme was initially set-up to support businesses with capability coaching and this grew massively with businesses affected by COVID-19.
Businesses can get funding to access approved service providers ( for which The Engine leads this space) in the areas they need help.
The Engine has 4 main programmes that are co-funded through this initiative these include:
ENTREPRENEUR INCUBATOR
This is a 6 to 12-month tailored programme for start-ups. We will coach you one-on-one, twice a month for 2-3 hours per session. This will help you build skills, capabilities and provide the support required to help build your start-up into a sustainable business.
The goal is to develop key skills to build and scale your start-up, understand the essentials of effective pitching, how to connect with industry experts and investors and build strong relationships to help you thrive through a healthy work-life balance.
The programme will cover:
- – business planning
- – business systems
- – finance
- – governance
- – managing resources
- – marketing
ENTREPRENEUR SUCCESS
This is a 6 to 12-month tailored programme for established businesses. We work with you one-on-one, twice monthly for 2-3 hours to build your management capability skills. This will give your business the capacity to grow and transition to the next level of success.
The programme will cover:
– business planning
– improving business processes
– practising good governance
– implementing effective marketing and enhancing customer engagement and satisfaction.
– It will also teach you the ins and outs of people management, financial management, sales management, personal development and wellbeing.
BUSINESS CONTINUANCE AND RECOVERY
The Engine’s COVID-19 Business Continuance, Wellness and Recovery Programme works with you one-on-one for 3 hours weekly. We will work to enhance business-as-usual capability during shut-down, look at your long-term financial performance and organisational wellness and resilience.
Our objective is to return your business to normal service delivery as quickly as possible from the impact of COVID-19.
This programme will enable you to gain the skills to identify mission-critical capability needs for business wellness and continuity.
The programme will cover:
- – business planning
- – business sustainability
- – business systems
- – capital raising
- – governance
- – lean manufacturing/business operations
- – managing resources
- – marketing
SMART SUSTAINABLE MARKETING POST COVID-19
This one-on-one advisory service is suitable for businesses needing advice on how to digitise or improve digital reach. You will also get advice on how to communicate with existing clients and reach potential clients.
We focus on advising you where you can improve your marketing strategies, messaging and external marketing options, like SEO, Social, Google, inventory, database and segmentation, demographics, etc…
Together we will roadmap a marketing strategy to pivot and reposition your business in marketing, communication and sales.
The Regional Business Partner Network may fund up to *$5000 of professional engagement (approximately 15-20 hours) for The Engine to help you. This is for businesses that meet a set of clear criteria and apply through the BUSINESS SUPPORT application process.
We can guide you through this process and let you know if your company qualifies.
What our clients say about working with us
Lesley Dobson, It’s Organic Darling
We invested in products destined for airports and airlines and we know what happened there. In came Catherine. She just knows everyone, she doesn’t procrastinate and her background in business has been hugely helpful.
Darrell Smith, Landsmiths
We’ve accomplished quite a few things through collaboration with other businesses. Catherine has introduced me to many businesses. The whole business has grown and we’ve cemented in some really good stuff.
We are really appreciative of the support & guidance Catherine gave us during our time working with her as our Business Advisor. Not just from a business perspective, but also on a personal level as she genuinely looked out for us as individuals – not just business owners.
The Customer Survey which was conducted was an awesome process to go through, one that we would never have attempted to do on our own and it was great to get feedback from our customers on what we were doing well, and what we could improve on.
Catherine’s experience in customer engagement has helped us to take our social media presence to a new level, and we’ve had great feedback on our monthly newsletters that Catherine initiated and got off the ground for us.
Catherine has a wide range of contacts across many different industries which helped us review different facets of our business including finance and marketing.
Thank you for your help Catherine, we now feel much more confident in the direction we are heading and more confident to tackle things on our own now.
These three clients are some of the 100’s and 100’s of businesses that have received funding for The Engine Business Advisors to work with them and to help their businesses grow.
Work with us
Business can be lonely, but you don’t have to go it alone.
Bonus
When you sign up to one of our programmes you’ll also get free access to The Engine’s paid Essentials Membership for the duration valued at $862.50.
This membership will give you access to our member-only online resources, networking events and a community of like-minded business owners.
You’ll also get access to our exclusive club rates with discounts at a number of popular retail stores and 11 cents a litre off gas – everytime you fill up. Your staff will also get access to these discounts. *credit criteria applies for the fuel access
You don’t have to do business alone
Get co-funded support from trusted and leading Business Advisors to guide you on your journey, enquire below