“WE WANTED TO PROVIDE AN EXPERIENCE WHERE YOU COULD GET TO MEET THESE REALLY INSPIRATIONAL PEOPLE AS WELL.”

“So what we wanted to do is provide an experience where not only was it an exhibition, but you could get to meet these really inspirational people as well.”

“There’s nothing worse than when you’re sitting in a conference and the speaker comes on, and the speaker goes off, and there’s no real personal experience, you can’t really ask them questions, you don’t feel like you’ve got that connection. “We wanted to create something where we could have workshops and interactive breakout sessions, and where there would be time for the speaker to talk to those individuals in business. So, that’s what we did.”

In the beginning it was called the Elite Business National Conference and Exhibition, with workshops, seminars, a conference, and various different types of networking sessions on two different floors in the Truman Brewery.

“It was a bit of a maze, a massive event, I remember the amount of marketing through print press, because everything was about print at that time,” says English. “And it has gone from that, through a roller coaster of twists and turns trying to keep up with the digital transformation of the marketplace, to what it is now, which is entirely different.

“There’s no exhibition nowadays, it’s somewhere that people can go to connect with like-minded individuals, and the way we run the production now is very much that they’re there in front of you, and you can network and talk to them afterwards, which is what we wanted all along.”

The biggest transformation happened three years ago, just before lockdown, when live streaming of the event was introduced.

“The reason we did the exhibition in the first place is because we didn’t want to limit anyone from coming along to enjoy the experience. And you can only do that by ensuring you have a venue large enough to cater, and over two or three days. But, now that we’ve transitioned the event and added the livestream, we can have those audiences, but without the exhibition side of it. Technology enables us to do everything we originally set out to do.”

Live stream viewings have doubled in the last three years, says English.

“That’s down to a lot of the partners that we work with and our sponsors as well. We choose specific partnerships and sponsors that want to get involved and really immerse themselves in the Elite Business Live experience and get it out to the marketplace as much as possible.”

This year’s event will be breaking out of London for the first time, setting up at five different events, with one hour programmes, over five different sessions.

Today’s format is muchchanged from its original concept and much of that is because of the way the business met the challenge of Covid head-on, as it decimated the live event business, when it became a pandemic.

With venues, speakers and a whole range of other logistics and infrastructure booked for its 2020 event, the cost of cancellation was potential ruinous, so English managed to pivot to an online-only format, which has been developing ever since.

“I had to do damage control with what was going on,” he explains. “I pretty much spoke to every single person that was coming to the event myself personally, to talk to them to say we want to keep you safe. Regardless of what happens, that’s the most important thing.

“And I thought to myself ‘how am I still going to give these guys this experience?’. So that’s why we went down the livestream route.

“We invested more money into the event to transition it to be a studio format. So if people didn’t feel comfortable to come in, they could watch the event at home. And we had to get all that done and speak to all the people in less than a week.

“Others might have just cancelled, but we did it. I would have just tried to move the dates if I could have but we were in a position where we had to go ahead whether we wanted to or not. So we had to go on a mass digital transformation there and then. And it was one of the hardest things I think we’ve ever had to do.”

Which brings us to this year, when EBL is breaking out of London for the first time with satellite versions of the event.

“We wanted to give others the opportunity to experience it. We work with some incredible partners in the SME community and we spoke to them, and picked specific shows to highlight really prominent topics at the moment. That’s why we chose the venues that we have, because we wanted our topics to fit in with them and their events. We want to show the rest of Britain what we’re all about.”

The continuity comes in the content, where the organiser insists on providing the audience with genuine insight and advice. The much-vaunted ‘take homes’ that people seek from attending seminars.