What we do
Harnessing creativity to help solve problems and power growth
At SolveStrategy, working with businesses in the UK and Portugal, we provide customised consulting solutions designed specifically for existing and prospective micro and small businesses, helping you view your business or project from a different perspective and accelerate your progress. We demystify strategy and suggest practical solutions.
We are driven by the nature of and goals of individuals and organisations we work with. We don’t work with everyone, regardless of size and budget, we focus on the causes and projects we are passionate about or where we can add the most value.
Free consultation
Let’s learn about you and what you are trying to achieve.
Services
Developing your ideas
We can work with you and your team (if applicable) to develop and test your business ideas.
identifying your objectives
Exploring key questions such as who the business serves and its purpose.
devising strategy
Craft actionable plans designed to achieve your goals.
Case Study
Case Study: Finding Focus for a Wellness Startup in the Algarve
The Challenge
A wellness startup based in the Algarve, Portugal had developed genuinely innovative products — but limited resources meant every decision carried weight. The founder had the vision and the offering, but with so much to do and so little capacity to do it, she wasn’t sure where to direct her energy for the greatest impact.
Our Approach
We ran a series of focused workshops with the founder to answer two foundational questions before anything else: what is this business really for, and who is it really for?
Together, we worked through:
- The core purpose and value of the business — what made it matter, beyond the product itself
- A detailed customer persona — clarifying exactly who the ideal customer was and what they needed
The Outcome
With a clear picture of her ideal customer, the founder was able to identify potential partner businesses positioned to reach that same audience. This opened up referral relationships and more efficient routes to new customers — without requiring additional marketing spend the business didn’t have.
Rather than spreading limited resources across many directions, the founder now had a focused, defensible answer to “where do I put my energy next.”
Like this founder, you might have the right product and the wrong roadmap.
Want a clearer picture of your ideal customer and where your energy is best spent? Book a free consultation
Case Study: Bringing Agile Thinking to Small Business Strategy
The Challenge
Small businesses are often so absorbed in day-to-day operations that stepping back to think strategically feels like a luxury they can’t afford. Yet without that perspective, important decisions get delayed, energy gets misdirected, and growth stalls.
We brought together a group of small business owners to explore how agile techniques — more commonly associated with tech startups and large organisations — could be made practical and accessible for smaller enterprises. The goal was as much about the room as the content: we wanted to see what happened when diverse businesses shared ideas, challenged each other’s thinking, and approached strategy together rather than in isolation.
Our Approach
We opened the workshop by grounding everyone in a core strategic principle that often gets overlooked: strategy is not about enabling you to do what you want to do, or even what you could do — it is about helping you focus on what you should do, and making the difficult decisions that genuine progress requires. This framing set the tone for everything that followed.
From there we moved through a structured but hands-on programme:
Lean methodology — we introduced the key principles of lean thinking and how they apply to early-stage and growing businesses, then brought the theory to life by completing a lean canvas based on one of the businesses in the room. This gave attendees an immediate, concrete example of how lean thinking reshapes the way you look at your own business model.
The five key strategic questions — we worked through these questions as a group, applying them directly to the case study business. Rather than abstract discussion, attendees engaged with real strategic choices and trade-offs, which generated lively debate and fresh perspectives across the group.
Design thinking — we introduced the five stages of design thinking (empathise, define, ideate, prototype, test) and ran bite-sized exercises across several of these stages. This included use of the Six Thinking Hats framework, which encouraged participants to approach problems from multiple perspectives — a particularly valuable exercise in a mixed-business group where different industries brought genuinely different instincts.
AI and strategy — we closed with a discussion about the role of AI in supporting strategy development and implementation. The key message here was one of sequencing: AI is most valuable after the fundamental questions of priority and positioning have been addressed, not as a shortcut around them.
The Outcome
The workshop succeeded on two levels. Individually, attendees left with practical frameworks they could apply immediately to their own businesses. Collectively, the mix of industries and perspectives in the room generated insights and ideas that no single business would have arrived at alone — exactly the kind of cross-pollination that makes group learning valuable.
The feedback was clear: participants wanted more. Every business in attendance expressed an interest in taking part in similar workshops in the future.
Interested in bringing your business — or a group of businesses — into a workshop like this? Book a free consultation to find out what’s possible. Book a free consultation
