The 8 Superpowers Accelerator is a twelve-week business growth programme for established businesses whose growth has stalled.
Marina works alongside you and your leadership team as a Strategic Growth COO. Together you decide where growth comes from, build the plan, and create an operating system your team runs for the future.
45 minutes with Marina. If the Accelerator isn't the right fit, she'll tell you.
Organisations Marina has worked with include Heaford, Ley Rubber, Eco Providers, Readynez, UXForms, Poundbury Wealth Management, Bettys & Taylors Group, Yorkshire Tea, the Caterham F1 Team, MBNA, Lloyds Bank and the Co-op.
Selected Organisations Marina Has Worked With
35+
Years Working Inside Businesses
100+
Companies Advised
£1.8m–£295m
The Range Of Businesses The Method Has Worked In
Before Week 1
Marina reviews everything before you meet.
Weeks 1–3
What is really holding growth back.
Weeks 4–6
The growth engine you need to build.
Weeks 7–9
Whether the organisation can deliver it.
Weeks 10–12
How it runs after Marina has gone.
You keep: your Growth Operating System, fourteen sections, built from your own decisions.
Usually because the business has outgrown the way it runs. The structure, commercial model and ways of working that built it were designed for a smaller business. They got you here. They won’t take you to the next stage.
“We’re busy, but I’m not sure we’re actually going anywhere.”
“Everything still comes back to me.”
“My team’s good. They’re just not pulling in the same direction.”
“We have a strategy. It doesn’t show up in what gets done each week.”
“There are too many priorities, and none of them is fully resourced.”
“What worked three years ago has stopped working.”
Fixing them one at a time doesn’t hold, because each is a symptom of the same thing. The Accelerator changes how the business runs, with the leadership team that runs it, and leaves that in writing so it stays changed.
Proof, Before Promises
Different sectors, different sizes. In each one, the visible symptom was not where the constraint actually sat.
£1.8M · 31 people
A precision engineering firm whose core product had been overtaken. The problem read as sales; it was actually a product and positioning problem nobody inside could see.
New Product Line Defined, Built and Taken to Market.
£18M+ · energy sector
Demand wasn’t the constraint. The business could win work faster than it could deliver it, and the gap was structural rather than a hiring problem.
20% Growth, 3x Execution Capability, and a Successful Acquisition.
£14M · education sector
A profitable international training business that needed capital to move to the next stage, and a story that made the case for it on the numbers rather than the ambition.
Growth Plan Rebuilt, Funding Secured.
Raised in seven days to keep a Formula One team on the grid.
Bettys & Taylors of Harrogate (Yorkshire Tea), an organisation of 1,500+ people.
100+ businesses, from £1.8M engineering firms to worldwide brands.
A Strategic Growth COO is a business growth consultant who works alongside the CEO and leadership team for a fixed period to decide where growth will come from and change how the business runs to get there. Marina analyses the business with you, challenges assumptions, gets decisions made in the room, and builds the operating system with you.
Marina works alongside you. She isn't your COO, a manager of your staff, or an outsourced sales team. That's why the change stays once the twelve weeks end.
One agreed answer, a short list of growth bets, and a written list of what stops. Until the leadership team agrees on this, everything after it gets argued again.
The commercial model, positioning and partnerships the growth bets need, then who owns each one and what has to change in how work gets done.
A scorecard, a 90-day rhythm and named owners, run by your leadership team without the CEO deciding everything, and without Marina in the room.
Why the order matters. Most CEOs want to start with the third move, because it's the one they feel every day. It doesn't hold on its own. You can't hand a decision to someone while the business hasn't decided what it's for.
Five 90-minute workshops with your leadership team and seven 60-minute strategy sessions, live on Zoom, 14+ hours with Marina. Every week ends with something decided: a priority, an owner, a number, or a change made.
The first session opens with what she's already seen and wants to test.
The CEO · 30–40 minutes
The Growth Gap Report, a short CEO snapshot, and the documents you already use.
Each leader · 3 minutes
The same nine questions as the CEO, answered privately.
Marina
A full review of all of it before you meet.
| Week | Phase | Format | Focus | What it adds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Diagnose | Workshop | Growth diagnostic and kick-off | Reboot Baseline |
| 2 | Diagnose | Session | Where growth can realistically come from | Growth Opportunity Map |
| 3 | Diagnose | Workshop | Strategic direction: what you'll do, and what you'll stop | Strategic Growth Bets |
| 4 | Design | Session | How the business makes more, and better, money | Commercial Growth Model |
| 5 | Design | Session | Where you're positioned, and who you need to be close to | Strategic Proximity Map |
| 6 | Design | Workshop | Partnerships, and the growth engine as one picture | Partnership Pipeline |
| 7 | Execute | Session | Who owns each growth bet, and who decides what | Growth Leadership Map |
| 8 | Execute | Workshop | What's slowing the organisation down | Execution Improvement Portfolio |
| 9 | Execute | Session | Purpose as enterprise value | Purpose & Enterprise Value |
| 10 | Embed | Session | Read the whole system together, find what's missing | Operating System, draft 1 |
| 11 | Embed | Session | The numbers that matter, and the rhythm that runs them | Scorecard and 90-day plan |
| 12 | Embed | Workshop | What changed, the next 90 days, and handover | Reboot Review |
The 8 Superpowers Growth Operating System™: one document in fourteen sections, built across the twelve weeks from your own decisions. A strategy says where the business wants to go. This says how it will run to get there.
Reboot Baseline · where you started
Strategic Ambition · where you're going
Growth Constraints · what held it back
Strategic Growth Bets · where growth comes from
Commercial Growth Model · the economics
Strategic Positioning · where you'll win
Proximity & Opportunity · who to be close to
Partnership Pipeline · who speeds it up
Growth Leadership Map · who owns what
Execution Improvement · what changes
Purpose & Enterprise Value · what it creates
Executive Growth Scorecard · how it's measured
90-Day Growth Rhythm · how it carries on
Reboot Review · what changed
For the decisions that can't wait for the next session. A space for your company only, and Marina answers in it personally.
The CEO retakes the Growth Gap Report and each leader retakes their nine questions. Both sit next to Week 1: how the scores moved, and whether the team now sees the business the same way.
Most engagements end with a deck nobody opens again. The Accelerator runs on a platform built for it. Everything your leadership team decides is written into the operating system as you go, and stays there after Marina has gone.
The CEO and each leader answer the same nine questions privately. Week 1 opens on where the CEO rates the business higher than the team does, and where the team doesn't agree with itself. That second one is usually where the real conversation is.
When a week needs your data, your team answers a short form and a finished document appears in seconds, with your figures already in it. Nobody writes it up afterwards, so every session is spent on decisions.
One link for the whole team, filling up week by week. Snapshots at Week 10 and Week 12.
Every commitment with a name and a date. Anything without one is flagged.
Baseline, target and current for the numbers that matter, each with an owner.
Marina reviews everything your team has submitted before you meet.
The deliverables are auto-generated. The expertise comes from Marina.
A 45-minute conversation with Marina about where your business is, and what the twelve weeks would focus on.
The 8 Superpowers Method™ is Marina Nicholas's way of looking at a business as one connected system, through eight lenses. In the Accelerator, each lens becomes a question your leadership team answers.
Which problem are customers really paying you to solve?
What keeps stalling, and why does it keep coming back?
Why do customers choose you, and will they next year?
Who does the business need to be closer to?
Who owns what, and where do decisions really get made?
Who could take you further, faster, than you'd get alone?
What has to run differently for the business to scale?
What does the business create beyond profit, and what is that worth to a buyer?
See how The 8 Superpowers Method™ is adopted by 5,000+ universities →
A coach helps the CEO think, a consultancy hands over recommendations, and a hired COO runs operations. The Accelerator sits between them: Marina works with the whole leadership team for twelve weeks, decisions are made in the room, and the team keeps an operating system it runs without her.
| Option | Who does the work | Who's involved | What you're left with | Best when |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Business coach | You, with a thinking partner | Usually the CEO alone | Clearer thinking, your own notes | You want support for yourself, not a change in how the business runs. |
| CEO peer group (e.g. Vistage, TAB) | You, with input from other CEOs | The CEO, monthly | Perspective from peers | You want an ongoing sounding board. |
| Management consultancy | The consultants | Their team, your sign-off | A report and recommendations | You need analysis you don't have time to do. |
| Interim or fractional COO | The COO, inside your business | Reports into the CEO | Operations run while they're there | You need someone to run operations day to day. |
| The Growth Intensive (4 weeks) | You, with Marina | The CEO | A plan for one or two contained problems, and 11 tools | The problem is specific and you want it fixed fast. |
| The 8 Superpowers Accelerator (12 weeks) | Your leadership team, with Marina | CEO and leadership team | A 14-section operating system your team runs | Growth has stalled across strategy, team and process at once. |
It's built for established businesses with a leadership team in place, where growth has stalled or the next stage needs a different way of working.
Marina Nicholas is a UK business growth consultant and adviser, and the creator of the 8 Superpowers Method™. She has spent 35+ years working inside businesses and has advised more than 100 companies, from £1.8m to £295m in revenue. She brings an outside view to the things a leadership team can't always see from inside, and the experience to get them decided.
Her method is taught at Cranfield School of Management and featured in 5,000+ universities. Author of 8 Superpowers of Successful Entrepreneurs and 8 Superpowers of Purpose-Led Leaders.
Marina's story →35+
Years working alongside leaders, MDs, CEOs and leadership teams.
100+
Companies advised, from £1.8M engineering firms to a £295M food group.
1,000+
C-suite executives and leaders coached and mentored.
£20M+
Raised by businesses she has advised, from seed rounds to rescue funding.
Working session
Equestrian Surfaces
Leadership session
Eco Providers, on LinkedIn.
Heaford, on LinkedIn.
The investment is set out in a written proposal after a first conversation, so it reflects your business and your leadership team. It's billed monthly by invoice across the three months, so it goes through your usual process.
Book a conversation with MarinaAfter the first month, you can stop at the end of any month. You pay for the months you've had, and nothing after.
There's no guarantee, and that's deliberate. A guarantee asks you to trust a promise about twelve weeks from now. The monthly exit asks you to judge the work you've already seen, every month, with a real choice at the end of it.
The investment is set out in a written proposal after a first conversation. It's billed monthly by invoice across the three months, and after the first month you can stop at the end of any month.
Monthly across the twelve weeks, by invoice, so it goes through your usual process. After the first month you can stop at the end of any month and pay nothing further.
For the MD or CEO, about two to three hours: the session with Marina (60–90 minutes), around 30–45 minutes of preparation, and time moving agreed actions forward. Onboarding takes 30–40 minutes. There is no coursework.
The MD or CEO leads it. Before Week 1, each member of the leadership team answers a short private questionnaire, and they join the sessions where their area is being decided. Nobody else needs to attend every week.
Week 1 opens on what Marina has already found in your business, so there's no slow start. By Week 3 your leadership team has agreed where growth will come from and what stops. At Week 12 you retake the same questions you answered before Week 1, so you can see what moved.
A coach helps you think. Marina works as your Strategic Growth COO: she analyses the business with you, challenges assumptions, gets decisions made with your leadership team, and builds the operating system with you. The aim is a business that runs differently at Week 12.
No. A fractional or interim COO runs operations for you while they're there. Marina works alongside you and your leadership team to decide where growth comes from and change how the business runs, then hands that over. When the twelve weeks end, your team runs it.
Established businesses with a leadership team in place, where growth has stalled or the next stage needs a different way of working. Most are typically between £5m and £500m in revenue.
The Accelerator already uses it: the platform automates the writing-up and record-keeping, so every session is spent on decisions. What AI can't do is spot the assumptions your leadership team doesn't know it's making, hold a difficult conversation until it reaches a decision, or make anyone accountable for what was agreed. That part is Marina's.
No. Phase 0 gives Marina what she needs to understand your business before Week 1. The Growth Gap Report and the four-week Growth Intensive are other ways to work with her, not steps before this one.
Yes. Sessions are live on Zoom, so the Accelerator works wherever your leadership team is. Marina is based in the UK, and invoices are in pounds sterling.
A 45-minute conversation with Marina. If the Accelerator is the right fit, you'll receive a written proposal setting out the scope, the investment and your start date. Enrolment isn't automatic.
45 minutes with Marina. Bring the problem you'd most like solved. If the Accelerator is the right fit, you'll get a written proposal. If it isn't, she'll say so.