Think Enterprise March 2017

Think Enterprise Publication | March Edition

READ INSIDE

SPOTLIGHT ON ...

IOEE FELLOW PAUL BOROSS

ANNOUNCING IOEE

ENTERPRISE ACADEMY SAMEE PROJECT

SMALL BUSINESS POLICY A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE?

Vol. 6

MAGAZINE March Edition Vol. 6

CONTAC T US 53 Coniscliffe Road Darlington DL3 7EH 0845 467 4928 newsletter@ioee.uk ioee.uk

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SARAH TROUTEN, IOEE CHIEF EXECUTIVE Welcome to this month’s edition and a very warm welcome to Spring (literally, as the sun is currently shining!). As the daffodils start blooming and blossom hits the trees, I hope you’re feeling energised and ready to work on your entrepreneurial pursuits with a new lease of life. Let’s make the most of the lighter nights and warmer days to inject some enterprise into everything we’re doing.

I’m delighted to welcome three new Academies to IOEE this month, two of which are featured in this issue and one who you’ll be hearing about next month. The Samee Project which does great work with social entrepreneurs and GGT Solutions, based in London who came to IOEE looking for professional validation for a superb start up programme they’d developed in house.

Thank you to those who took the time to input into our Enterprise Educators Survey. We’ll be publishing our findings next month and beginning the exciting work of planning and scoping the professional programme based upon your contribution – watch this space!

This month we also shine the spotlight on a number of our members, from student to academic as well as two Fellows following very different yet very enterprising paths.

We’ve also been busy further developing IOEE Campus to ensure we’re doing all we can to support you, whatever stage of business you’re at. April will see the launch of our first accredited online learning offer providing a unique opportunity to undertake enterprise and entrepreneurial learning in your own time, at your own pace. This is something you’ve told us time and time again is important to you as business owners. The first course is our Professional Award in Enterprise Mentoring, with many more to follow.

As ever my message is that we’re here to help you achieve your enterprise goals, so please get in touch with your thoughts and ideas on how we can make your institute even better.

Oh, and Happy Easter everyone!

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Content 08 IOEE Academy status for ambitious social enterprise!

3/16/2017

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10 IOEE Academy provides great enterprise solutions

12 Accredited Distance Learning Launches with our Acclaimed Award in Enterprise Mentoring https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/15ad6ec4926884cd?projector=1

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14 Small Business Policy A Different Perspective?

15 Gain recognition for your excellence in enteprise and entrepreneurship

16 Spotlight On ...

Anna Howard

18 A jewel of a start-up

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20 Spotlight On ...

Paul Boross

22 Spotlight On...

Paul French

24 Our first year in business

26 Star start-up enjoys mentoring support

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Call for participation Join us this May to shape the future of people development in small business Thursday 4 May 2017 Northern Design Centre, NewcastleGateshead, UK Free registration IOEE members and newsletter readers are invited to participate in an event that will shape the research agenda around people development within small businesses across the globe.

On Thursday 4 May 2017, the IOEE in a consortium partnership with Northumbria University and the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ISBE), will be hosting a one-off event at the Northern Design Centre in NewcastleGateshead. Created to bring together policy makers, key academic researchers and business owners, the event represents the opportunity to explore the most pertinent and important issues surrounding the employability and management of graduates particularly within small businesses.

Northumbria University will lead the project, which it is hoped will have a significant impact in shaping future policy and practice in the area. This unique event will see people from a wide array of stakeholder groups come together to scope out defining research questions and practical matters, and to create lasting links between communities.

The voices of three specific stakeholder groups will be heard at the forum; higher education institutions as the educators of the future, employers as wealth-creators of the future, and students / graduates as employees and entrepreneurs of the future. All these groups will be invited to have their say, sharing their perspectives on the talent management issues that will arise and develop as the next few decades unfold.

This is an open forum event and the IOEE is encouraging its members to contribute to the project’s aims where they can. Registration is free. Following the event, there will be an evening drinks reception with a high profile keynote speaker and the opportunity to network amongst fellow IOEE colleagues.

If you’d like to get involved, get in touch via info@ioee.uk

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IOEE Academy status for ambitious social enterprise!

Sam Everard is the woman behind the Samee Project, a unique, Bournemouthbased social enterprise that secured its IOEE Academy status in February.

The Samee Projects helps individuals from disenfranchised backgrounds on the road to self-employment or employment. We chatted to Sam about her own journey, which has taken her from wedding industry entrepreneur to successful social enterprise founder.

found the organisation had developed its approach. She recalls: “The Prince’s Trust asked me to become a Young Ambassador for them, which involved mentoring young people with entrepreneurial ambitions. When I went to the Prince’s Trust myself you rocked up with a business plan, discussed your ideas over a few meetings and they offered you a loan. Nowadays they run a four-day business course and a Dragon’s Den-style event so it’s really a very different and positive experience.”

Sam Everard left school aged 16 and began her career with De Vere Hotel Group where she worked as Senior Receptionist, a role that spanned both reception duties and events coordination. When she moved to Bournemouth and became a Front Office Manager, Sam particularly enjoyed working on the lavish weddings held in the hotel but this wasn’t her first brush with the wedding industry as her mum is a wedding caterer and her grandfather was a head chef. These elements combined led Sam and husband Mark to decide to make their own name in the wedding industry, initially offering a consultation service to couples. Still in her early 20s but with a growing body of entrepreneurial experience, Sam accessed advice and a grant of £2000 from the Prince’s Trust. She says: “Our business, Roses & Garters, started off as a wedding coordination service and from there we started selling tiaras and veils. Then we developed into bridal, and from that into distribution. I’m very much someone who looks at how things are being done and comes up with a better way! I always want to change things to make them right.”

Having witnessed Sam’s success with her wedding business, a few years on the Prince’s Trust invited her to work with them voluntarily, supporting other young people to set up their businesses, as someone who had recently done the same herself. Although only a few short years had elapsed, Sam 8 | Think Enterprise

At the same time, Sam was invited to undertake paid work for WSX Enterprise, an organisation that supports people from all walks of life and of all ages who have barriers to working: “My work as an Enterprise Advisor with WSX was about making sure people had a business plan and cash flow projection in place. So, anything to do with business start-up, from sourcing funding to getting the word out.”

All this experience working directly with young people and those hoping to improve their chances of employment, along with her hands-on experience of running a start-up business and the voluntary mentoring work she’d done for the Prince’s Trust triggered a completely new direction in Sam’s career path. While Roses & Garters continued to run under the watchful eye of husband Mark, Sam focussed on establishing the Samee Project.

She describes finding the inspiration for her social enterprise: “When I was mentoring for the Prince’s Trust and working on an EU-funded project for WSX, I was inspired to set up the Samee Project. I decided that there had to be a route-to-employment / self-employment project out there that didn’t have barriers so it wouldn’t matter if you were a certain age or what postcode you lived in; there should be no barriers to support. I set up the Samee Project to ensure that everyone had an opportunity.”

Sam started her social enterprise to bridge the gap between

Samantha Everard pictured in the centre less advantaged members of society and enterprise support organisations like those she’d worked for previously.

“It concerned me that some of the guys I had been trying to do business plans with didn’t have control of their own lives.

I’d say ‘oh, we need to do a cash flow forecast’ but in fact what they really needed to do was a personal survival budget, to work out how much money they needed each day to live.”

Many of the people Sam works with through the Samee Project receive benefits and their capacity to work varies from day-to-day, meaning flexibility and understanding must be built into the way she and her colleagues support them: “Because of the way they work and how they’re feeling about themselves, it’s important to consider time commitments carefully, thinking about how we can work a new business plan around each person, rather than the other way around. Some have mental health disabilities, some have physical disabilities and some have long term illnesses like fibromyalgia or arthritis.

We work with a wide range of people too, our youngest at the moment is 15 and the oldest person we’ve helped was 62.”

To get things off the ground, Sam applied for funding for the Samee Project via Unltd, a National Lottery organisation. She says: “I explained to them that this wasn’t about creating a Business Link or Prince’s Trust style project. It’s about helping people before they get to that stage to think about whether self-employment is right for them, how many hours they can work and how it will affect their lives.”

UnLtd were very enthusiastic about Sam’s idea and in February 2016 awarded her a start-up grant of £2,950. With this initial funding secured, in December 2016 the social enterprise became a registered charity and has also secured various grant funding from organisations including the Postcode Lottery, the National

Lottery Award for All and OneStop. Additionally, the Samee Project has a trading arm meaning that some agencies and local schools pay for the support Sam and her team provide to their clients and students. Sam strongly believes that self-employment and entrepreneurial endeavour should be taught in all schools. She says: “I think we should be taking pupils right back to basics and getting them to think ‘right, I’m going to leave school and I want to be a beautician or a bricklayer, I’m going to do an apprenticeship and on the other side of that I’ll be self-employed.’ While they’re in school is the time to give them those self-employment skills and get them thinking about what a tax return is, how to do receipts and invoices, mentally preparing them for self-employment.”

As well as delivering group sessions to young people in educational settings, the Samee Project works with older clients one-to-one.

Now that the enterprise has secured its IOEE Academy status, it will also be able to offer learners a formal qualification. Sam says: “The IOEE Academy status lets our learners come out with something at the end that proves to everyone that they’re really committed to building themselves a better future. The organisations we’ve spoken to about this element of our offer have been jumping up and down with excitement – it’s exactly what they want.”

A natural entrepreneur and creative thinker, Sam truly enjoys selfemployment but it’s clear that there’s another source of motivation behind the long hours and hard work she’s put into the Samee Project: “The whole reason for the Samee Project is that I don’t like people failing and being knocked back. The focus of what I do and the passion behind it is to find out what makes those people tick and encourage them to start growing and looking at themselves more positively.”

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IOEE Academy provides great enterprise Solutions

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Husband and wife team Lennox and Georgina Thomas run GGT Solutions, a London-based IOEE Academy that specialises in enterprise training and consultancy. We interviewed Lennox about the business, its services and why becoming an IOEE Academy was a significant step.

Lennox Thomas’ professional background lies in the recruitment sector and before setting out with GGT Solutions he worked for two of the UK’s largest recruitment companies, advising them at board level. Georgina’s background is within the private equities and venture capital sectors. She has worked with two of the top investment houses within business support roles. Her day-to-day role at GGT Solutions is very much operational, whilst Lennox focuses primarily on business development, client engagement and sales.

Both are also involved in the hands-on delivery of specific projects

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and enterprise programmes. Launched in 2008, GGT Solutions employs a core staff of 12, and enlists the support of several expert freelance agents in delivering its services. Lennox says: “When Georgina and I got together we decided we’d rather work for ourselves and we could see how our previous experiences running other people’s businesses gave us a good grounding for running our own business.”

One of Lennox’s past roles, with recruitment organisation Blue Arrow, had been concerned with training, supporting and developing teams operating across a substantial branch network.

Today, training also forms one of two main parts of GGT Solutions’ offer, the other being enterprise consultancy, as the entrepreneur explains:

“We have the training side of the business, which is geared towards career development. Then we also have the consultancy side.

Through that we support organisations to develop and improve the way that they work.”

The consultancy work GGT Solutions delivers for other organisations is often focussed on boosting employability. For example, Lennox and his team undertake projects with social housing providers, as well as central and local government organisations, running training programmes on their behalf and consulting with them in the development of bespoke programmes tailored to their specific client bases. Additionally, GGT Solutions runs its own internal training programmes on behalf of external organisations.

Its flagship initiative is the Annual Enterprise Programme, which is run on behalf of A2Dominion, a social housing enterprise that has 36,000 properties located across London and the South East. The programme, which Lennox and Georgina designed and now deliver together, invites A2Dominion residents to flex their entrepreneurial muscles. Interested parties living in A2Dominion properties then apply to the organisation for a place on the programme. Once the housing association has contacted the interested resident, it selects the most suitable candidates for the Enterprise Programme. This year, a total of 17 individuals were given places on the scheme, which sees the group come together every other Saturday for a period of six months to develop their business ideas, knowledge and skills. As experienced entrepreneurs Lennox and Georgina feel there is real benefit in delivering the programme themselves: “We support them to develop and validate their initial business ideas, which are all quite unique. For example, last year we had one young lady who is currently running a tutoring business, another pair who are working together to start an events management company, and a woman developing cosmetics products – it is very diverse and the ideas are very original.

“Housing associations like A2Dominion have recognised that being a social enterprise is about more than just providing a roof over residents’ heads. It’s about social cohesion, community, and it’s about supporting people to develop and promoting self-reliance.”

Initiatives like GGT Solutions’ Annual Enterprise Programme are run to generate a social return on investment and create opportunities for A2Dominion residents to become future pillars of the communities they live in as employers and, ultimately, as investors themselves.

The programme is now in its fourth year and the sheer variety of

business ideas to pass through GGT Solutions’ training rooms has impressed Lennox: “The housing association has huge reach so we’re seeing some very diverse entrepreneurial thinking. In turn, we’re responding with ambitious programme content.”

As well as helping participants write commercial business plans and giving them all the essential business skills they need to sustain their start-ups, the scheme culminates with a Dragons’ Den style showdown and ultimately offers financial support to the ‘winning’ participant each year. This award is delivered in the form of seed funding to start their business. However, there is tremendous value in every GGT Solutions programme for all of the participants.

“Each person who completes one of our programmes leaves with a completed, commercial business plan that can be presented to a bank, an investor or any potential stakeholder in their business.

Very few businesses drop off any of our programmes. Right now, enterprise is at the core of the government’s agenda and it’s good for communities, for individuals, and for businesses themselves.”

Career development and carer advice is the other major focus of GGT Solutions’ services. Lennox, Georgina and their team are enthusiastic about highlighting the value of entrepreneurial endeavour as a career option in its own right.

“We see close to 7,000 people a year on some sort of career journey and many of those people explore the option of enterprise or becoming a business owner. Really, we want to encourage people to get involved in entrepreneurial activity, whether that’s as an entrepreneur or an intrapreneur within an employer’s business.”

Last year, GGT Solutions applied to became an IOEE Academy and in August secured the coveted status. Lennox explains why this was important to Georgina and himself: “We deliver a wide range of services, everything from supporting people on a one-to-one basis and pop-up enterprise programmes that last two to three days, to the long-term initiatives. For this reason, we felt accreditation was important. Our content is always really high quality but we felt becoming a rubber-stamped IOEE Academy would give us that additional gravitas, higher visibility and greater credibility.”

To find out more about GGT Solutions, you can visit www.ggtsolutions.co.uk/

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Accredited Distance Learning Launches with our Acclaimed Award in Enterprise Mentoring

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Following the successful launch of the IOEE Campus and based on requests from members we have now widened the offer to include accredited distance learning courses. The first of these, our Professional Award in Enterprise Mentoring, is available now with a discounted rate for members.

Our Award in Enterprise Mentoring programme is perfect if you’re thinking about offering mentoring support but not sure how to go about it or perhaps you’ve been mentoring for some time and would like confirmation that you’re doing it the right way in addition to having professional validation of your skills and learning.

The rewards of mentoring We understand that enterprise mentoring may not be part of your ‘day job’ but we’re sure you recognise how rewarding it is to share your knowledge, skills and experience with others. We also know how important it is for you to be confident in this role. We feel certain that this programme will help you to become more aware of what it takes to be a brilliant enterprise mentor. Research proves that businesses that seek support, particularly during start up and their first months of trading, are most likely to survive and succeed.

It’s often a lonely place to be and that is where a mentor can help.

A true mentoring relationship is a mutually beneficial learning experience in which mentor and mentee can learn from each other.

Developing as a mentor The programme has been designed as a journey of self-discovery where you will be encouraged to: • •

understand your role as an enterprise mentor reflect on and develop your current skills and knowledge and

•

recognise how they can be used in your enterprise mentoring role reflect on issues/motivations facing different groups, and how you might adjust your approach to meet their needs.

This course is full of information and practical activities for you to use in your role as mentor. It also includes signposts to useful websites and other sources of information and resources, where you can find help for your mentee and ideas and inspiration for yourself.

The online learning includes the following modules; • • • • • •

The background to mentoring The skills and tools required by a mentor Understanding the legal and ethical requirements Competing demands faced by an entrepreneur Financial aspects of running a business Marketing, sales and customer service

Distance and online learning The easy to use online system has been designed to guide you through the programme over a series of 6 weekly modules (although you may take more or less time if you wish) and includes video content, text and assessment activities.

The course materials include a written workbook, online assessment and tutor marked assignments provided in PDF format.

The programme launches on the 3rd April and the first 5 lucky IOEE members will receive a 50% discount – so register quickly!

Head over to http://ioee.uk/get-mentoring-professional-awardenterprise-mentoring/ to register and start learning!

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WRITTEN BY LEIGH SEAR

Small Business Policy – A Different Perspective?

Dr Richard Beresford

In the late 1970s, David Birch – an economist at MIT in America, proposed that small businesses were the most important source of job creation in the US economy1. The research undertaken by David Birch highlighted that 66 per cent of all net new jobs in the United States during 1969-1976 were created by businesses with less 20 employees and 81.5 per cent were created by businesses with less than 100 employees.

His work had a profound impact not only on the research community and their interest in small business development but also amongst politicians and policy makers. In the UK, for example, Margaret Thatcher drew upon the work of David Birch to shape a discourse around developing an enterprise culture and building a stronger economy through individuals starting their own businesses. In turn, the Conservative governments of the 1980s and 1990s introduced a range of policies to encourage people to start and grow their own business.

As a result, in the UK, the Conservative Party is often associated with being the party of the small business owner-manager and entrepreneur. This was evident in the reaction to the announcement within the recent Budget about increasing national insurance contributions for the self-employed. However, a different perspective on small business policy is offered by the late Richard Beresford2 in an article that unpacks the relationship between the Labour Party and small businesses.

Drawing upon a range of secondary sources, Richard outlines a number of interesting issues including: •

• •

There is a complex relationship between the Labour Party and small business which goes beyond the typical stereotypes within the Labour movement of small businesses seen as profit seeking ventures which exploit staff and other resources for their own gain The Labour Party was the first party to make reference to small businesses within a manifesto – back in 1906!

There was recognition of the issues related to the regulatory burden and small businesses by the Labour government of

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• • •

the 1930s, as well as issues related to small business access to finance in the 1970s. Both of these challenges have since become central tenets of policies introduced by the Conservative Party when in Government There are important differences between the notion of ‘enterprise’ and small business development within recent Labour Party policies There has been a recognition in Labour Party policies of the need to support the learning and skills development of staff in small businesses, as well as the development of the business Policies to support the development of small business need to be part of wider policies focused on creating sustainable economic development at a local and regional level.

In addition, Richard suggests that the impact of policies on the geography of enterprise within the United Kingdom has been somewhat limited, with rates of new firm formation and business growth in traditional industrial areas still lagging behind national averages. This is a particularly interesting observation in light of the Brexit decision and future access to European sources of funding such as ERDF and ESF. As with Richard’s other work, this article on the relationship between the Labour Party and small business sheds lights on a topic that has been under-researched to date as well as raising a number of issues which help us reflect on the role for policy in supporting the development of small businesses.

The full article can be accessed here.

Leigh Sear CEO, SFEDI Solutions

For further information on the research of David Birch see https:// www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/1116/careers-small-businessesunemployment-hunting-for-gazelles.html 2 https://campus.ioee.uk/richard-beresford-a-tribute/

1

Gain recognition for your excellence in enterprise and entrepreneurship Are you an entrepreneurial Higher Education Institution?

Then join our network...

Join our growing network of leading Higher Education Establishments who have demonstrated; •

A culture of entrepreneurship

•

Innovative approaches to curriculum development

•

Impact through enterprise education

Working with IOEE provides a wealth of opportunities and benefits including; Recognition of excellence in enterprise and entrepreneurship research and teaching Collaboration on national and international projects Staff development opportunities Validation of enterprise modules Student membership Academic membership Collaborative research opportunities

Times Higher Entrepreneurial University of the Year 2016

Times Higher Entrepreneurial University of the Year 2014

Shortlisted for Times Higher Excellence in Entrepreneurship and the Business School 2016

Entrepreneurship is part of the core strategy for the University of Worcester and, as such, we are developing a world class environment for students, staff and local entrepreneurs. IOEE Centre of Excellence recognition that we have demonstrated our commitment to enterprise and also working with our local partners.”

David Bozward Strategic Lead in Entrepreneurship, University of Worcester The Business School at London South Bank University is delighted to have been recognised as a Centre of Excellence by the Institute of Enterprise and Entrepreneurs. The accreditation is recognition that the School is a learning organisation where and enterprise culture is positively encouraged and supported.”

Professor Mike Molan Dean of the School of Business, London South Bank University

Spotlight On ...

Anna Howard

London South Bank University (LSBU) is an IOEE Centre of Excellence, and their staff and students are doing exceptional work in the field of enterprise in education.

We’re running a series of case studies to let you know about LSBU’s projects and people, and this month we met Anna Howard, LSBU’s Associate Professor of Enterprise and Education, who is committed to creating opportunities for students from all disciplines to learn invaluable business skills that will prepare them for the working world.

At LSBU, enterprise in education is not exclusively for business-related courses, but is now an integral part of all degree programmes.

The School of Business recently rewrote its

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undergraduate curriculum to integrate the teaching of entrepreneurial skills into all first year disciplines, and the university is gaining recognition for its pioneering approach to enterprise. LSBU won the Times Higher Award for Entrepreneurial University of the Year, with judges recognising the breadth of enterprising activity and depth of employer engagement, as well as LSBU’s pivotal role in both the community and academic endeavours. Anna says: “There’s a renaissance of entrepreneurship in education happening at the moment. The way we work has shifted and you no longer just start a job after university and work your way up the ladder for 25 years. People are much more likely to have a ‘portfolio career’. Employers are looking for a lot more from graduates, and

you’re required to wear a lot of different hats, so we need to develop these business skills alongside academic skills. It’s our job to ensure students are equipped for graduation and realworld opportunities.”

Anna has had a ‘portfolio career’ of sorts herself. She graduated from LSBU with a First Class Honours degree in Accounting and Finance in 2007, and went on to complete the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants qualification (ACCA) in 2009. She worked for a fashion designer and in private practice before being contacted by one of her university lecturers, asking if she would like to teach one night a week. She found teaching students so rewarding that it led her to her role today.

“I love teaching. Last year I ran a financial accounting module and over 350 students enrolled. I get a great deal of satisfaction from watching students grow and develop, and knowing that LSBU is helping to set them up for the rest of their lives.”

There are a lot of different ways for LSBU’s students to learn these entrepreneurial skills: “The Student Enterprise team is fantastic. They have a number of off-the-shelf classes that are available to anyone on any course. These classes could be looking at innovation, creativity, negotiation, presentation, new business ideas – and they can be picked up and put anywhere.”

“We also have a tenant community, so there are 70 small businesses embedded within LSBU. Some of these are student businesses, but most are independent companies that rent office space and buy into our give-back culture.

This means that they’ll be involved with the students’ education in various ways, giving students the chance to benefit from first-hand knowledge and experience.”

LSBU runs several start-up and business accelerator programmes for students and graduates who want to road-test a new business idea, or get support in developing an existing one.

Its Spark programme allows students to test the viability of a potential product or service through workshops and mentoring, as well as giving them office space and access to networks

and legal support. Anna says: “We’re looking at ways that the Spark programme can be integrated into the curriculum. To meet the criteria it needs to be available on all undergraduate courses. At the moment, it’s more appropriate for some courses than others, but we’re working towards making this possible soon.”

The Graduate Entrepreneur Scheme (GES) is an esteemed 12-month programme open to LSBU graduates who are in the early stages of running their own business and are ready to grow: “The GES is open to anyone who has graduated from LSBU in the last five years, but it is incredibly competitive. We’ve supported 23 graduates over the last three years, and watched them take their businesses to the next level.”

Last month, LSBU’s Business School students took part in the finals of the prestigious annual NIBS (Network of International Business Schools) Worldwide Case Competition, which was held in Finland this year, and took home a bronze medal: “This competition is great for showcasing creativity and enterprise skills. It gets the students to work in a truly interdisciplinary fashion, to think both strategically and operationally, to appreciate business culture, mitigate risk and evaluate complex financial data. In short, they need to have entrepreneurial flair. Winning bronze is an outstanding achievement.”

As the links between the IOEE and LSBU continue to strengthen, Anna reflects on why this connection is so important: “Being an IOEE Centre of Excellence gives us that benchmark - that what we’re doing and how we’re doing it is significant - but this is just the beginning. The IOEE’s connection and support is invaluable, and will enable us to grow and develop even further. There are lots of ‘big’ things you can do in life more than once, but few people are fortunate enough to have more than one opportunity to go to university. It’s our responsibility to make university a life-changing experience for our students, and set them up for a successful future.”

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A jewel of a start-up

Danielle Sexton, Aurora Creations.

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Danielle Sexton, 26, runs Aurora Creations, a wedding planning and crystal bouquet business servicing the North West of England.

She began her journey to business success at the Wedding Planners Guild, an IOEE Academy that gave her both business knowhow and industry insights.

Since starting her career as a florist’s apprentice aged just 18, Danielle Sexton has always had a connection to the wedding industry. Now, with the help of Yvonne Bennett, who runs the Wedding Planner’s Guild UK, she has taken the ambitious step of starting her own wedding business – Aurora Creations. So how did this new career direction come about? Danielle explains: “I’d gotten my floristry qualifications, I’d done competitions and I was thinking about my future. I was considering teaching floristry and I’d thought about wedding planning in the past but I wasn’t sure about what I wanted to do next. When I met Yvonne at a wedding fair I loved what I heard and signed up to the course that evening.”

The young learner had enrolled on the IOEE Academy’s Award and Certificate in Wedding Planning, which is a comprehensive course that covers both the practical skills associated with wedding planning and the demands of business ownership. Danielle said: “The Wedding Planners Guild UK learning programme was quite intensive and it was split into two parts. The first part was all about the weddings themselves, how they work and what you need to be a good planner. The second half was about how to build your own business.

“Each half last six weeks – we’d do three days of intense training and then have six weeks to complete an assignment.”

This carefully designed training package prepared Danielle for every aspect of running her new business, as she recalls: “On the wedding planning side of things it’s all about different cultures, trends, styles, and how to be a professional – what you need to do from monitoring budgets to when different foods are in season. The programme doesn’t miss one detail and the little things sometimes surprised me.”

offer, as Danielle explains: “Instead of having traditional flowers, a crystal bouquet is made from brooches, beads and recycled jewellery. Nobody else in the North-West hires out crystal bouquets. Usually brides need to buy them. Aurora gives them the opportunity to have what they want on their big day without going over budget. They’re something a bit different and quirky.

“You need a bit of entrepreneurial flair to be a successful wedding planner. I’m always looking at competitors out there and thinking ‘what could I do that’s different?’ to try to attract more custom.”

While she builds her business independently, Danielle also has a wedding coordinator’s job at Thornton Manor, which is a popular Cheshire wedding venue. She says: “They offer quite a mixture of different cultures at Thornton Manor because within the estate there are four separate venues from marquees to the stately home itself. And, because we can cater for lots of different wedding sizes the venue is very popular.”

Armed with her Wedding Planner’s Guild UK qualifications and building her industry experience all the time, Danielle is on-route to a very promising entrepreneurial future, so what are the characteristics she thinks are vital to being a good wedding planner?

“I definitely think you’ve got to have some sort of creative flair to be able to give brides inspiration because lots of them will come to you for that. You also need an open mind and you need to stay motivated. Nobody does it on a whim, you’ve really got to be committed to your business and have a passion for weddings to do it.”

To learn more about the Wedding Planners Guild UK, where Danielle learnt her trade, visit www.weddingplannersguilduk.com.

To find out more about Aurora Creations itself, you can visit www.auroracreations.co.uk.

Meanwhile, the business side of the training Yvonne Bennett has developed is applicable to running almost any type of business.

It gives learners all the knowhow they need around building a business, creating a strong business plan and sticking to it. One of the key learning areas for Danielle was thinking about competitors and how to make sure her business stood out in a crowded market.

The answer was crystal bouquets, which she hires out to brides in lieu of traditional fresh floral bouquets. These beautiful concoctions are crafted from beads and costume jewellery, bright gems and other pretty pieces. The bouquets lend Aurora Creations a unique

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Spotlight On ...

Paul Boross Paul Boross is also known as The Pitch Doctor; a company he founded to help corporate companies win business through ‘the art and science of persuasion’. He has worked with major organisations such as the BBC, Google, The Financial Times and MTV, and has released several books on motivational psychology. This month we met Paul to discuss how his entrepreneurial spirit has navigated his career, and how ‘influencing with integrity’ is the most important tool in securing business.

Based in London, The Pitch Doctor is Paul Boross, and he has a clear mission and message: “To help people and companies become more successful by improving the quality and impact of their communications.”

Assisting Paul on his mission is an experienced team of trainers and executive coaches, hand-picked by him for their enthusiasm, energy and balance of skills. Between them, The Pitch Doctor assesses a client’s symptoms, makes a diagnosis, and issues a prescription.

Paul has a wide range of clients, from Barclays bank to the NHS, and travels all over the world to deliver his bespoke service: “I work on a consultancy basis across a huge variety of different industries and organisations. My clients are PR and advertising executives, digital technology players, CEOs, boards of directors, sales teams - it doesn’t matter who you are or what your business is, you have to be able to pitch, present and persuade. Essentially, you need to know exactly how to get people on board with your ideas. The Pitch Doctor teaches you how to do that. You might have a life-changing idea, but if you can’t convince other people of this, then you have no business at all.”

Paul’s personal career path has been as diverse as his professional portfolio. He originally studied psychology, but showbusiness came calling before he put it into practice, and he toured the world playing guitar in several bands, as well as being a regular headline act at London’s prestigious The Comedy Store: “Showbusiness may seem vastly different to what I do now, but it honed my skills in pitching and public speaking. The Pitch Doctor is the result of fusing both sides of my experience together – psychology and performance. People rarely encapsulate the two things, and this is what makes The Pitch Doctor so unique.”

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These past endeavours also assist Paul in demonstrating his entrepreneurial spirit and building up strong relationships with his clients: “Whatever the job, I’ve always started companies and made them work, and this gives me credibility. I firmly believe that to understand entrepreneurship, you have to have done it.”

The Pitch Doctor’s prescription could be one-to-one work with an individual, giving a talk to an organisation, or running an open ‘clinic’. Paul says: “The Pitch Doctor is not an off-the-shelf service, it’s always tailored to the clients’ specific needs. With some companies, I spend a day there each month and operate as a drop-in clinic, where employees can book time with me about a pitch. Some people want to discuss body language. Other people want to overcome nerves for an important speech. It’s always different, and that’s one of the things I enjoy most about it.”

For those people who feel they are lacking in confidence, Paul says that it is possible to learn how to channel it: “I can teach confidence to anyone. Even people who feel like they don’t have any at all – because everyone is actually confident in some area of their lives. It’s about extracting that confidence from one place and mapping it to somewhere else.”

Since 2005, Paul has regularly featured on Sky’s TV documentary series, School of Hard Knocks (SOHK). The programme follows the work of the SOHK charity, using challenging activities to teach young people important skills and values that will help them when taking the initial steps into the working world. Paul is the team psychologist and motivational coach, and the experience has made him even

Paul Boross, The Pitch Doctor more passionate about teaching young people about pitching, to enable them to carve out successful careers. Paul says: “Pitching is sadly neglected in school education. The curriculum doesn’t include public speaking, presentation, or job interview techniques - and these skills are essential for the working world.

It’s evident when I work with corporate giants. You see big players - people who’ve been to the top universities, who have Masters and PhDs, and who are running global enterprises – but for all their qualifications, the thing they lack is being able to pitch, present and persuade. The advent of social media and digital technology also means that young people often think that they’ve networked simply by sending an email – but there’s no substitute for face-toface interaction.”

Through his work on SOHK, Paul became involved with the IOEE, and he has now been an IOEE Fellow for three years. He relishes the opportunity to be able to use his experience to make a difference in

the industry of enterprise and entrepreneurship: “Last year I attended an IOEE event in London where we put together a proposal that advised the government on what we needed in the field of enterprise. Being a part of the IOEE means that I am able to meet with other entrepreneurs and pool all of our experience together to make a real difference.”

Paul says that his belief in The Pitch Doctor is what drives him, and as the company has just gone into its 14th year, he is still as passionate as when it began: “It’s my business, but it’s also much more than that. I’m incredibly passionate about what I do. At the end of the day, I give people an insight into their professional lives that can change their personal lives – and their families’ lives – and I think that is an extraordinary thing to be able to do.”

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Spotlight On ...

Paul French

Paul French is an Executive Producer at Southpoint Films and a business mentor for local universities and the New Enterprise Allowance Scheme, as well as an IOEE Fellow. This month we shone the spotlight on him to find out how his mentoring career saw him transition into film production, and how forwardthinking is the key to success.

it lacked something, and I didn’t enjoy that corporate office environment. I’d always made films as a hobby, so it felt natural to transition into making corporate films.”

Paul French, 64, began his career in accountancy and surveying, rising through the ranks of the corporate world; an experience that showed him that he wanted to change direction.

“The videos taught people how to do something specific for their company, such as product installation or how to carry out a cosmetic treatment; whatever was needed for the company to be in-line with corporate law.”

“By 2007 I was the CEO of a multinational security company that specialised in lock manufacturing, but after a few years I felt

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After an exit from his former company, Paul started making educational and training videos, predominantly for the security and beauty sectors on a freelance basis:

This gave Paul the film-making foundations that would eventually lead him to Southpoint Films,

but the transition was as much personal as it was professional: “It was the right move for me. For the first time I’d found that work-life balance.”

Years earlier, while working at the security company, Paul had become the Chairman of the local Federation of Small Businesses and Chairman of the New Forest Business Partnership, which gave him the initial spark of inspiration to become a business mentor. He says: “I was seeing new business start-ups, where people were making the same mistakes again and again, and I wanted to help them succeed. I knew my skillset was valuable, so I volunteered to mentor business graduates through the local universities, and for the Job Centre’s New Enterprise Allowance Scheme.”

For Paul, although one-to-one sessions take place, he embraces group mentoring sessions to encourage a community of collaboration and support, rather than competition, between the mentees, and to help people to feel comfortable networking.

He says that the mentees are also united by their business’ needs, regardless of their field: “I’ve worked with aspiring and existing entrepreneurs from a wide range of industries and professions; gardeners, carpenters, restauranteurs, web designers, architects - you name it. It doesn’t matter what your business is, you all need the same business tools and skills in order to succeed.”

“The stumbling blocks are almost always the same – a lack of preparation and making assumptions rather than working with facts.

But if you don’t know something, you don’t know it – that’s why you need other people’s experience and knowledge, so you can ask questions. It’s richly rewarding for me to see my mentees succeed, and being an IOEE Fellow means that I can spread my knowledge and experience even further.”

In 2013 Paul was introduced to a notable mentee, Rowan Johnson, a Southampton Solent University graduate with a First Class degree in Television & Video Production - and the founder

of Southpoint Films Ltd. Paul mentored Rowan for a year, by which point Southpoint Films had grown to a stage where it needed to take on an additional member of staff to support the increasing workload. It had become clear that the company needed help from somebody with a broader depth of business experience. Paul says: “Rowan needed somebody that had my expertise to help his company grow, and I needed someone with Rowan’s technical knowledge and creativity to help mine do the same. Two years ago we merged my freelance production company and Southpoint Films.”

Based just outside of Southampton, Southpoint Films has offices and a green screen studio, and they are still growing. They have a number of freelancers on their books for big projects, and took on one of their regulars, Danny Caldwell, as their full-time Video Editor last year: “Putting our skillsets together made sense.

Between the three of us, we know that we’re able to satisfy our client’s requirements. This really sets us apart, so we can offer a more comprehensive experience for our customers, rather than being just a binary filmmaker. Where Southpoint Films’ service begins and ends is completely up to the client. Some people come to us with detailed briefs and scripts, whereas others will want us to work with them from the very beginning. It’s completely tailored to their needs.”

Southpoint Films has also spent the last 12 months investing and developing Vimsy, a Video Management System that enables people to manage, distribute and make money from their videos, and Paul says that this constant evolution is what sets successful businesses apart: “Technology is changing so fast, and it’s constantly altering the way you manage your business on a day-to-day basis. The speed young people go is phenomenal. They’ll pick up a new iPad and run with it, whereas it will take me forever, but you’ve still got to do it. There’s no place for saying ‘well, I’ve always done it like this’ in business - you have to be flexible and adapt and move forward, or you’ll just get left behind.”

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Our first year in business Husband and wife, Richard and Clare Talbot-Jones run Talbot Jones Risk Solutions, based in Felling, Gateshead. In a series of five blogs, Clare has covered highlights from her entrepreneurial journey including the first steps to starting Talbot Jones Risk Solutions with her husband. This month we hear from Richard, an IOEE Fellow, who is giving his own reflection on their first year in business.

Now, after a full trading year I can look back at our mid-year review of the lessons we’ve learned, reflect on what we’ve achieved in the interim and share some of experiences and findings.

Milestones we need to reach to complete the objectives: 1. Achieving enough commission and fee income to support me and my wife, Clare (in the form of an annual target, each year for 4 years).

2. Generating a certain number of leads per month 3. Gaining specific numbers of followers on social media and website hits per month

I’ve been helping start-up businesses with insurance and risk management for 10 years now, and I’ve seen businesses succeed, and fail. This gave me a helpful overview of good practices that helps a business to flourish.

How to reach the milestones: This is the business plan: 1. What are we going to sell, and to whom?

2. Where and how will we sell our services?

Before entering the insurance profession I’d spent about 5 years in the Army. One thing the Army is very good at and keen on is planning. As the saying goes: Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Poor Performance – the 6 Ps.

A key element of a business plan is market research, and so we asked ourselves the following questions: • What competition would there be?

• Was the marketplace already saturated?

• Could we differentiate ourselves sufficiently to succeed?

After 8 years in the insurance industry working as a broker and with a lack of opportunity for advancement in the local market, it seemed a good time to roll the dice and launch my own firm.

I’m therefore absolutely convinced that to succeed, a business needs an objective and a plan. They don’t need to be super-detailed, but without them a business won’t know where it’s going, or why.

Before you can make a plan, you need an objective, asking “What do I want from the business?” or “Why am I starting this business?”.

The answer will be unique to each organisation. The objective gives you something to plan to achieve. An objective also dictates what you will regard as success for business.

In order to illustrate this, I won’t tell you the “right way” to do this, the “Army way”, or a management book way. My own process is simply this: • Identify objective(s) • Determine milestones/Critical success factors • Work out how to get there • Analyse feasibility Our objectives for Talbot Jones Risk Solutions: 1. Achieve Work/Life balance 2. Achieve financial freedom 24 | Think Enterprise

Feasibility: To test the feasibility of the plan we worked out what we ideally wanted financially. We knew our likely average income per policy arranged, so if we knew how much we wanted to earn we could work backwards. For example: If we wanted an income of £50,000, we would need to arrange 500 policies in a year. This means we would need to do about 1,500 quotations – taking an industry average conversion rate for sales.

To get the opportunity to quote for 1,500 policies we would need to have about 3,000 opportunities.

Now, break that down into monthly or weekly workloads: Over 100 quotes per month, 25 a week, 5 a day. Using industry standards that means 10 opportunities to quote per day (but where from?).

Will this work? Do we need to do less quotes, but higher value ones?

Can we automate anything or make processes efficient enough to achieve these kinds of results?

Written by Richard Talbot-Jones

We can then work the other way – what seems feasible per day, per week or per month. And where does that then leave us in terms of income?

So, considering all these different variables, we came up with a plan.

Having completed our first trading year, we’re now in a position to assess our performance against the plan. How accurate was the plan? Did some of it need discarding or changing?

In this assessment, I would work from the detail up to the objective: Did we get the social media followers we wanted? We did on Twitter; Facebook and LinkedIn, not so much. Did this have much of an impact? Yes, despite being small, our Facebook following has created a lot of commercial opportunities. Our larger Twitter following has done the same. Although our company LinkedIn profile is puny and doesn’t receive much interaction, my personal account has been invaluable in maintaining links and continuing relationships with clients who have seen I’ve set up on my own and are keen to come aboard.

Did we get the website hits we wanted? Yes we did, some months way over what we thought likely. It’s difficult say whether these hits resulted in direct enquiries, in the sense we had very few emails to the address on our webpages. We also haven’t made much headway in terms of SEO as we are up against some giants. However, we did get a fair few phone calls as a result of website visits, so it must have worked a bit! Where it has proved most useful is in building awareness of our brand and letting people get to know us and trust us. After a year in business we’re starting to find that people know of us before they meet us- they’ve seen out tweets and read our blogs and it puts us on the front foot when we meet new people.

Did we get enough leads per month? No, not as many as we had thought we would need. But whilst fewer in number, the quality was very good, mostly thanks to Clare’s natural networking ability, so our conversion rate is much higher than the industry average. Our leads invariably lead to quotes and uptake of quotes is high.

Did we achieve enough commission and fee income? We were within about 7% of what we had planned to get, which I was really quite happy with. It meant that we pretty much got what we wanted, and we are on track to achieve the financial milestones in Year 2.

Have we achieved financial freedom yet? Ask me again in 2020!

But we are comfortable, we survived the first year and finished on a really positive note. We’re stuck into Year 2, considerably exceeding last year’s performance each month and not spending money on the significant set up costs we incurred in Year 1.

Have we achieved a satisfactory work/life balance? Again, it’s a work in progress. However, I feel more relaxed and comfortable than I ever did working for someone else. Although I don’t ever get a full day off work, I can see my kids at sports day or nativity plays without using holidays or making up the time. I have a muscle condition which impacts my mobility and so I need to swim a lot and have physio regularly – I can more easily fit this into my working day now that I know I don’t have the same time constraints. Work still needs doing, but there is a different motivation now, and a different pattern of work. Is our family more or less happy? More. Definitely.

One year on from our launch we haven’t achieved our objectives yet. We’ve worked hard to achieve our milestones, and we’ve done well to stay on target. Realistically, as we have a four year plan, I expected that we would make progress towards the milestones and achieve them at different points throughout the four year period. Hopefully we’ll reap the benefits of having both objectives and a plan. I don’t want to go to work for the sake of it: I have a purpose for working and a plan to realise that purpose. Of course, the plan may need amending as we go- as the saying goes: no plan survives contact with the enemy. So far our plan has only needed small tweaks and has provided a lot of direction, reassurance and challenge. And so, we keep pressing on!

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Star start-up enjoys

mentoring support North Star Payroll, which has been up and running for around 18 months, is a Leeds-based start-up run by entrepreneur Liz McCarthy. On her journey to entrepreneurial success Liz enlisted the support of IOEE business mentor Dave Moore. We caught up with Liz to find out how the mentoring process worked for her.

During the early days of setting up North Star Payroll, Liz McCarthy’s quest for an enterprise mentor began with a simple Google search. Although the new entrepreneur knew she wanted some expert, experienced mentoring support, she wasn’t sure where to find it. She remembers:

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“I searched ‘business mentoring’ because I felt a bit lost setting up on my own and thought there might be some help available. Eventually, I came across Paul Harper, one of the IOEE’s mentoring team.”

Paul was fast to respond, setting Liz up with a dedicated volunteer mentor from our enterprise mentor scheme.

At that point in her career Liz wasn’t completely new to the world of self-employment, having left primary school teaching to set up as an independent bookkeeper in 2013, around two years before starting her payroll business. She told us how North Star Payroll came to be: “As part of my bookkeeping training I took a payroll course

and, as well as preferring that area of work I felt I had a knack for it. I decided to set up a company providing just payroll services in part because auto-enrolment (the new pension legislation) was coming in, meaning that many more employers were going to have to deal with this specialist area of payroll management. The new rules mean most small businesses must offer workplace pensions. This presented a real gap in the market because it had never happened before.”

Like many other successful entrepreneurs, Liz had worked in several diverse roles before setting out on her path to self-employment. The 43-year-old enjoyed a successful career working in banks and other financial institutions before retraining in primary education with maths and working as a primary school teacher for six years. Next came her stint as a bookkeeper, during which time Liz realised that her talents were best suited to the payroll side of things. She says: “While general bookkeeping can be quite messy and you have to wait for people to get information to you, with payroll everything has to be done by specific dates – there is no option. That appeals to me, I like the idea of getting a job done and things being structured and organised.”

Liz’s mentor, Dave Moore, works in commercial banking at Lloyds Bank, dealing with high value business clients on a daily basis. The pair kicked things off with coffee and, as she recalls, Liz felt slight trepidation before they met: “I thought ‘this guy’s going to expect me to have a business plan’ but I didn’t have one, the business had just developed naturally. So, I quickly put together this business plan to show him. He glanced at it and put it to one side! Then he asked lots of really sensible questions about business areas I hadn’t even thought about. Dave helped me think beyond the practicalities to what I really wanted to get out of North Star Payroll. He helped me realise that you can’t plan a business until you know exactly what your desired outcomes are.”

Liz and Dave initially met on a flexible basis, around once a month, using the time together to chat through various business issues. Once the business was through its first few months of trading, the pair met less frequently but still regularly touched base. Dave’s mentoring enabled Liz to trust her instincts and know when to stray from the rigid advice of business books, particularly when it came to winning new business. She says: “Marketing was a funny one for me because I’d read all the books and been trying to work out how and where

to best advertise the business. Dave and I talked about how I would get new clients and he advised me not to pay for advertising. And he was right. Instead, Dave persuaded me to network, suggesting an appropriate sales training course which we attended together, and encouraging me to join certain networking groups. Practically all my business has come through word-of-mouth and networking contacts, so he was absolutely right.”

For Liz, the real value of the mentoring lay in Dave’s ability to shine a light on her thinking and dare to question the reasons behind her decision-making. She says: “Although it can be a bit uncomfortable, it was invaluable to have someone willing to question me. Friends and family can be supportive but nobody wants to question your decisions. Sometimes, with Dave, I would squirm a bit because he’d ask me why I’d done something and I wouldn’t always know. He held a mirror up to what I was doing, which was very useful, but he was so nice with it that I felt I could be very open and honest with him and tell him about my worries and uncertainties. He helped give me the confidence to trust my own instincts, to believe that I know what’s best for my business. I would definitely recommend getting a mentor to anyone just setting up a business.”

Just a year and a half after setting up, Liz has already grown North Star Payroll to the point where she’s had to enlist outside support in the form of two self-employed workers. All three of the team work on-site at the business’s new premises in Leeds. Asked what the future holds for her and the business, Liz says: “I’m looking to take someone else on and to make my own role a little more ‘hands-off’ because right now I still do a lot of the payroll processing myself. I’d like to be at the next level where I have other people doing that so I can focus on running and growing the business. Delegating the day-to-day running of North Star is my next step, to allow me to concentrate on maintaining our steady growth.”

And what about sharing her new enterprise experience by becoming a mentor herself – is that something the payroll expert might explore? It certainly seems it could be a possibility: “Yes, I’d definitely consider enterprise mentoring as something I would do myself in the future, once I’ve really established North Star Payroll and made it a success.”

Click here to find out more about North Star Payroll.

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