Your online personal brand is a key tool in your networking arsenal. Your social media profiles are not only your opportunity to show off your relevant qualifications, projects, experience, and achievements, but also to make new connections.

Your social media profiles act as your landing pages for employers and connections, for people you meet at events, or by chance, to find out more about you and to build a more permanent contact you can regularly communicate with. Consistency is critical for every social media platform. It is easier for people to find you if you present a uniform image or style for all your accounts. Of course, this isn’t necessarily true for profiles that are not public nor intended for professional connections.

So, which social media sites do we think you should pay particular attention to for professional networking?

LinkedIn

This is your first and likely one of your most important social networking platforms for building a professional network and real life connections. Your LinkedIn helps you build relationships with people in your industries or working your dream job. Forging these connections and making an impact can lead to amazing opportunities.

Try to make meaningful and intentional connections through this most popular social networking site. It can be very tempting to build a large network quickly on social media by connecting with any and everybody.

It is highly unlikely that everyone you connect with on LinkedIn will become a regular contact for you but, you should try to keep your connections within the industries you are or want to work in. If you are sending an invite to connect, take the time to personalise the message you can send alongside it, especially if you haven’t met or talk to the person before. To people who are especially well-known or who receive multiple connection requests per day, a personalised message could stand out amongst the masses and secure you that coveted industry connection.

So, let’s say your request to connect has been accepted. How are you going to make people pay attention to you? How are you going to become memorable to your growing network on this platform and other social networking websites?

Be consistent with your social media posts. You don’t necessarily need to constantly create posts and graphics for your profile, but sharing your thoughts on articles and engaging with other people’s posts will keep your name in your network’s timelines.

Facebook

This is your chance to join relevant groups of people on the largest social networking site in the world who either already work in your dream job or also aspire to build careers in similar industries. If you are trying to re-direct your current career path and enter an entirely new market, Facebook groups are a great way to start your search and gain knowledge about your new interest.

Opportunities are constantly being shared by Facebook users and can be a great social network service platform to ask questions and gain advice on your area of interest. You can grow your social media presence through your interactions and the use of the social networking tools there.

Clubhouse

The app that took off during the COVID-19 pandemic as a space to host worldwide events and discussions. The platform is used purely for virtual talking, no sharing media or even texts between members of a room, making it a unique social media site. Currently you can only active a Clubhouse account with an invite from another active user but once your profile is up and running, you can join rooms hosted by celebrities, coaches, journalists, experts, and by people you are already connected to or want to meet.

Join and engage in themed or industry events that are relevant to your career journey or you brand. Be bold and ask to be a speaker if you know you have something valuable to contribute to the presentation or discussion. Collaborate with others and be a co-host for an event and then when you are ready, host your own event for your network to attend.

You could have the chance to make an impression on someone you admired.

Creating a professional network takes time. However, using social media for networking is an excellent place to start curating a high-quality range of connections that can help you advance your career, business and understanding or your particular sector.  

Growing your own profile on any online social network, while individual to you, should be part of an overall social media marketing strategy aimed at boosting awareness and presence of both you and any company you represent. Networking online can bring you job opportunities, but also opportunities for business growth through reaching a broader audience.

You may also be interested in: Making social media networking business friendly

The post Utilising Social Media Platforms as a Networking Tool appeared first on Real Business.

Recruitment has been the number one challenge for many businesses across the UK in 2022. Real Business sat down with Mike Harper from Smart1 Recruitment to discuss how he and his wife are working to make a difference in the world of recruitment by going the extra mile for both their candidates and their clients.

Let’s talk about the birth of Smart1 Recruitment and how you started your business.

I had been involved in recruitment for over ten years, in two major high-street agencies, and my wife, Cathy, had been running her own business for twenty years. We wanted to start a new business together and believed we could bring a fresh approach to the recruitment industry by prioritising quality over quantity and promoting ethical candidate care. We wanted to be the best local provider, acting as partners to our clients and job advisors to our candidates, focusing on good service rather than high sales. Combining our skills in Recruitment, Human Resources, and Business Management to start Smart1 Recruitment made a lot of sense for us at the time and we wanted to bring some new practises to the industry.

How has forgoing a large-scale sales strategy helped your business and how do you think this method has set your business apart?

In our very early days, it was crucial to our business development that we did conduct those initial sales calls, reached out to our contacts, and got in touch with potential clients with whom we wanted to work, and expanded our network. You can’t run a business without relying on sales strategy, especially when you are still new and trying to get your name out there. However, as soon as we had the customer base and repertoire behind us, solidifying our reputation, we moved away from the sales calls and focused on growing organically through word-of-mouth recommendations, which is the greatest way of getting repeat business and shows that we are providing a high-quality service.

What do you look for when matching candidates to your client’s roles?

Believe it or not, many people will apply for a vacancy, but they live miles away from the location. If they have a very good skill set, we will consider them but with the price of petrol, we must discourage some candidates because it probably wouldn’t balance out well for them. So, we look at their location, skillset, work history, and personality: we want to place people in an environment that will suit them, and we want to know they’ll build good working relationships within the companies that work with us.

Recruitment continues to be a big issue for a lot of industries. Do you think that the skills gap and the staff shortages across the UK are beginning to stabilise or have new challenges begun with the uptake of flexible and hybrid working?

The adoption of flexible and hybrid working structures has absolutely catapulted over the last two and half years, so that’s been a challenge. Most of the clients with whom we work need our recruits to be in the office to be able to manage them. We work with a lot of temporary staff, so they need that hands-on support. I think it brings additional levels of work when screening candidates for certain positions and flexible or hybrid working doesn’t apply to the ‘blue collar’ trade and industrial work for which we recruit. The skillset shortage is massive, so we are facing the issue of having fewer people overall, who need more training to fit into the roles for which we are scouting.

What does the market look like from the jobseeker’s perspective, as much of the conversation seems to focus on the high amount of competition for coveted roles or whether companies will support remote working post-pandemic?

I think the last two and a half years have shown people how many hours they were working. Furlough and stay-at-home schemes have encouraged people to cut down on the number of cars they had, they saved on public transports costs, they saved time from commuting, and had more hours to spend with family. There has definitely been a shift in the attitudes toward work, but some industries aren’t going to be able to meet those changes because of their nature, like construction, for example. However, I’ve never seen so many adverts for jobs. There are countless opportunities for workers available at the moment, so even if there is significant competition, there will be another role open to you. If you aren’t happy in a job or if they are moving back to in-office full time and that no longer works for you personally, you can find something new very quickly right now.

What have been your most memorable achievements or your proudest moments since starting Smart1 Recruitment?

Our team work exceptionally hard to go above and beyond for people. We’ve given people cars that they needed to get to jobs, we’ve combed through CVs for people struggling with reading and writing, and we’ve connected people to housing contacts to move them into appropriate accommodation. We have had fantastic financial success, but what matters the most is seeing how far we have gone to help someone who just needed someone to back them up. We reward our regular monthly temps with financial bonuses to recognise their hard work and to motivate them. That additional income can and does make a big difference. Supporting our candidates is the best part of what we do.

What are you most looking forward to across the next six months?

We have a brilliant team behind us, so Cathy and I are at the stage where we can take a step back and have some much-needed time off. I don’t think we have had a proper holiday, where we haven’t still been involved with work somehow, in eight years. We’ve worked hard to create a business that we are confident can be self-sufficient while we spend some time relaxing.

What advice would you give to new or young entrepreneurs that are starting their business journey?

Cathy was the driving force behind Smart1. I was admittedly nervous to start our own business because there were so many unknowns, but it has been the best thing we’ve ever done. It has changed our lives. However, make sure you do your research. You need to have a solid plan and a variety of different skills to launch a successful business. Luckily, Cathy and I have complemented each other very well, having very different skill sets, and together have been able to cover a lot of bases. Be confident. It takes a lot of commitment and sacrifice but if you are ready to give it your all, anything can happen. I really take my hat off to anyone who is giving it a go.

The post Smart1 Recruitment: Going the Extra Mile with Mike Harper appeared first on Real Business.

Sarah Austin had a nearly fifteen-year-long career in corporate event management, including a highly respected position in an FTSE 100 company. Now, she’s the proud Founder of Sarah Austin Events, the company that celebrates the fantastic, innovative work of companies across the UK with the British Business Excellence Awards.

After having a baby in 2019, Austin found her career disrupted by the pandemic, and an extended period of leave from work meant she was returning to a workplace, and a wider world, that felt very different. Choosing to follow a new direction in life, she left her full-time role and was initially intimidated by the amount of freedom she had when finding the next step in her career.

“I had a lot of doubts and some immediate regret about leaving my corporate career. I had worked so hard for so many years and I wasn’t ready to leave the events industry behind completely. With the loving support of my partner, who runs his own business, I decided there was never as good a time to start my own business. I think it was only a week after leaving my previous role that I had registered with Companies House. It is an amazing feeling, that moment of self-acceptance when you realise you are on this brilliant journey, and you are not looking back.”

It was a risk to launch her own events business in 2020 when all public events were illegal. She found an immense amount of support within the industry, as the camaraderie between businesses that were determined to survive and uplift one another blossomed. As many events went digital, Austin and her peers found themselves quickly having to pivot and innovate.

“Most of my previous experience was not in virtual events or conferences, so it was a huge learning opportunity as we all effectively re-trained to become something akin to TV producers. In some ways, I quite liked the challenge and the way the industry worked hard to re-invent itself and pull through the pandemic.”

Sarah Austin Events’ crown jewel is the British Business Excellence Awards. Launched in partnership with Lloyds Bank, the BBEA sets out to find the best and most innovative businesses across the UK, recognising the achievements of SMEs that are making great strides in sustainability, diversity, and equality. The BBEA enjoys acknowledging the most resilient business owners and those who are making a strong impact in their wider community.

“The BBEA is a co-creation of mine, in partnership with Lloyds Bank, who I have worked with for many years. I wanted to shake up the type of awards businesses were receiving, awards that truly reflected modern business life, and the attributes of an entrepreneur that should be acknowledged and celebrated. When I became a business owner myself, I decided it was the perfect opportunity to build an awards program that truly suited UK SMEs and I was thrilled when Lloyds Bank agreed to support the new venture, and equally happy that they continue to do so.”

“I created the program from scratch, and I felt this huge sense of freedom, to be creative, to build categories that accurately represent different aspects of business. The British Business Excellence Awards was my work baby, and I could not have done it without the incredible support of Lloyds Bank, and so many others.”

Creating a brand-new awards program during a global pandemic isn’t at the top of everyone’s to-do list, but Austin embraced the challenge. The key to keeping the program and her business thriving was to be fluid and flexible in her decision-making. Austin’s end-to-end management style means she offers her clients an inclusive package, handling the event marketing and press alongside the planning and execution of the event itself. This gave her the chance to have more influence over how the event was presented to potential attendees and she could advise her clients on the careful messaging around postponed or future events.

“Luckily for our event, the British Business Excellence Awards is a year-long program. We officially open our categories for nominations in March-April and the official event isn’t held until November, which put us far past the national restrictions lifting date in July last year. We then keep producing content and press for all the finalists and the winners right up until the start of the new year, so businesses benefit massively from our extensive, ongoing marketing, bringing them exposure that they truly deserve.”

While Austin believes she is still in the early stages of her business herself, her advice to new or aspiring entrepreneurs is simple and timeless. Trust your gut, build a reliable network that uplifts and supports you, and make sure to find a balance between work, family, and taking care of yourself.

If you think your business has achieved brilliant successes or reached new levels of innovation, check out this year’s categories and enter the British Business Excellence Awards. Entries closed on July 1st, 2022. Find out more here.

The post Celebrating British Excellence with Sarah Austin appeared first on Real Business.

We are exploring the world of parenting technology with business owner and entrepreneur, Margaret Zablocka. The rise of super-apps and digital tools that support the modern family has created a whole genre of family-centric apps that aim to serve working parents and blended, multi-carer family structures.

Real Business interviewed Zablocka on her market-leading app, Onoco, which blends AI technology and child development research to help families establish healthy routines.

Let’s dive in.

From my understanding, the inspiration for Onoco was your own parenting experience and frustration with existing parenting apps; what was the moment that made you decide you were going to design and build your own?

“There wasn’t necessarily this “eureka” moment. I was frustrated because I couldn’t find a solution that would work for my family. Baby tracking apps are a fairly established category but most of them aren’t designed for collaboration or family sharing. Many of the top products available didn’t have a great design or had an outdated user experience that I thought could and should be updated. I had to use multiple platforms and apps to track the various aspects of my family’s life, which was over-complicated and reduced the amount of time I could simply spend with my daughter, without having to catch up on the day and log her routine. When she started nursery, I found out about the EYFS framework, which is used by all nurseries and childcare practitioners in the UK. It’s such a big resource for knowledge on early child development, created by experts and published by the Ministry of Education, but parents who choose not to send their child to nursery don’t always find out about this critical resource.”

“The framework provides information on routines, milestones, and education that could be a massive asset for any parent, but I couldn’t find materials online that helped breakdown this huge amount of information in a way that was accessible or easy to implement. I had ten years of experience in different tech businesses, building complex digital products, so I decided to combine my professional experience with my passions. Onoco became the solution I was looking for. We incorporated a lot of the information from EYFS into Onoco, focusing specifically on providing families the resources  to plan schedules and build healthy routines while their children are young, alongside our tracking tools.”

You mention you had to use a variety of applications to manage your family routine and track your child’s development. Do you think people are looking for tech that consolidates their needs into as few apps as possible?

“I think consumers are tired of having so many apps that only serve a single purpose. We only use a small percentage of them regularly, so I do think the future belongs to super-apps, a trend we are already seeing in fintech. I struggled to sync all of the relevant, necessary information across the different platforms I was using; there was always some data lost in the intersection of planning, logistics, health, development, and learning, so I could see a huge space in the market for an app that incorporated all of these elements of parenting on to a single dashboard.”

What were the initial challenges in creating Onoco? You launched into a saturated market, so how did Onoco stand out amongst other, well-established parenting apps?

“I founded Onoco two months before lockdown started in 2020, so our first viable product was developed by a fully remote team. Building our technology required a lot of time, research, and hard work, but I had a huge amount of faith in my team, so I never doubted that we would build a brilliant platform. I think overcoming those initial challenges in collaboration and overcoming technical issues created a strong foundation for success.”

“On standing out, something I was regularly seeing in my research were questions on parent forums about what apps would allow parents to host two profiles, for both parents, or more for family members. Many of our competitors were designed around a single primary caregiver function, with more profiles being an additional feature that required a subscription. The family landscape has changed significantly, with the new standard of both parents working and the introduction of additional caregivers. Having a platform that everyone can access with health, diet, and routine information right there helps to prevent miscommunication and makes organisation more efficient – meaning everyone can enjoy their time together without the stress of passing written notes or half-remembered events from the day. I think people adopted the app into their lifestyles quickly because we made it possible to have multiple carer profiles on the basic version of the app as standard.”

“Another initial challenge after creating the actual platform was communicating to our target market that we were more than a baby tracking app. We launched into a changing landscape with the rise of hybrid working; it was probably released at the perfect moment because people were on the hunt for collaborative solutions that suited the sudden changes in working structures. We very quickly rose in the App Store thanks to positive reviews and started trending in Google Play, which drove significant organic traffic to our page. I think it was a matter of fulfilling our users’ needs and launching at just the right time that allowed us to break into the market successfully.”

The most unique feature of Onoco is the innovative AI technology that your team has developed during the early stages of the app. Could you expand more on how your data and algorithm help parents process their child’s learning and development?

“Our AI Nap Assistant and Routine Management feature is unique to Onoco, developed with the data from our early adopters. To start, we collected more than 700,000 naps logged from our early users that were then used for training our machine learning algorithm to be able to reliably suggest an optimal sleep schedule for young children. Our driver behind this is that, when you are a new parent, the advice on setting a sleep schedule is subjective and confusing and rarely takes individual circumstances or behaviours into account. Our hope for this feature is, therefore, to give parents more concrete advice and structure based on their child’s unique data, removing some of the guesswork and allowing both baby and parents to achieve better sleep health.”

What success or moment in the Onoco journey so far has made you most proud?

“We were named as one of the best apps for new mamas in 2022 at the beginning of the year alongside some of the most popular parenting apps, so that was an exciting start for us. We have been reviewed and recommended by some massive names in the online parent space, and the support from blogs, publications, and influencers – not to mention our users – has been overwhelming. We’re so proud of how much our Onoco families are enjoying and benefitting from the platform.”

“The other standout moment for us was securing our first round of investment from Jenson Funding Partners at the end of 2021, which demonstrated the value proposition we’re offering. Interestingly, 18% of businesses funded by Jenson have a female founder, which is far more than the 2.3% of VC funding that women in the wider market received, so that in itself was encouraging. Crucially, Jeffrey and the team really understood our vision to support all families and caregivers, regardless of their structure. On top of the Jenson backing, we’ve just closed our Seedrs crowdfunding campaign, which saw us raise in total a £325,000 – surpassing our £250,000 target. The response has really been incredible!”

What advice would you pass on to a young or new entrepreneur?

“Cherish the journey, and remember that it isn’t only about the end goal. Start-ups move very, very quickly; there will be high-pressure moments, and there will be amazing memories, so it’s important to cherish the smaller successes along the way.”

The post Super Apps are the Way Forward for Modern Parents: Interviewing the Creator of Onoco appeared first on Real Business.

Real Business recently sat down with Gary Rose, part-business owner, and Operations Director at Planet Leasing, to discuss how and why offering outstanding customer service has allowed his business to stand out in the market.

What was your motivation to establish Planet Leasing and start a business within the vehicle leasing industry?

In March 2007, we started the business in the depths of the financial recession. It wasn’t the reason we started the business, but it did not put us off starting a new business because we knew if we could launch, survive, and grow at such a low point in the world economy, then you know it’s a business and service that people are looking for.

Since 1989, I have been self-employed, running my own successful cleaning business that operated in both domestic and commercial spaces. I had quite the breadth of knowledge and experience running a business and managing a team so when my childhood friend and now business partner, Darren Nash, proposed the idea of Planet Leasing to me, I was very interested in taking on the new challenge. Darren had been highly involved in the car industry, within the retail sphere, for over ten years at that point. He had expert knowledge of cars, sales, and customer service, and he saw a great opportunity in setting up an independent vehicle leasing company. It was a risk to make that jump by himself, so he had asked me to partner with him, and bring my business acumen to the table.

What is an aspect of your business you are particularly focused on?

Our priority is delivering legendary customer service. There are a lot of challenges for a business like ours right now, specifically the massive supply chain issues and the rising cost of living. I describe Planet Leasing as the Waitrose of the broker world: we are not the cheapest, but we offer fantastic customer service, value for money, and everything we do is given high-quality care and attention. Building our business with customer service at the forefront has paid off for us, especially right now, as we deal with significant delays on vehicle orders. Products might not be arriving for many more weeks or months. We know how to manage our customers’ expectations, their frustration, and their anxiety about the situation. Our method for handling issues is to be proactive, reaching out to customers with updates and letting them know what is happening. Customers deserve that level of reassurance and acknowledgment.

What do you think is the main challenge in building that level of customer service?

Well, we are seeing it happen across the UK right now. Recruitment is quite the buzz word. Customer service starts with the quality and abilities of your staff. We have a very strong team of smart, experienced professionals that help us deliver the customer service we want and expect. Retaining employees during a period of highly competitive recruitment is a struggle for many companies. We lead with ‘family first’ values, we truly get to know the people we work with, and we invest in them as hardworking individuals who have lives outside of the workplace. As a result, we have a good retention rate.

Is there any element of running a vehicle leasing company that you found frustrating or difficult to manage?

I think the majority of my industry finds the audits and licenses quite frustrating to deal with. If you are involved in lending or any kind of consumer credit, you need a license and you are very heavily audited by the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority). Every lending institution, including banks or brokers like ourselves, must undergo this audit in order to maintain the license. It keeps the market regulated and prevents customers from being sold products or services that don’t suit them or their circumstances. Customers should be treated fairly; you should be informed of all the advantages and disadvantages before you lease a vehicle or take out a loan. Within our industry, quite a few of our competitors view it negatively, ad an expensive inconvenience because the FCA can and will find a business that isn’t meeting the standards. However, Planet Leasing has always welcomed the process because it assures us and our customers of our quality.

You have mentioned before that many of your competitors style themselves as lifestyle brands. How would you distinguish your business from those competitors?

Other companies in the industry have adopted the strategy of presenting a certain lifestyle goal and that their service or products will help their customers live that lifestyle. But you have to present an example of that lifestyle to your customers for them to understand and desire it. Often, the business owners end up spending a lot of their income sustaining a lifestyle and an image; money they could be re-investing in their business. I have seen a few businesses like this hit a period of financial instability and unfortunately not had a strong foundation to fall back on. We are very much the opposite. We work to fortify ourselves and the business, financially speaking, and allow ourselves the flexibility for growth when we look towards the future. We look at business sustainability and profitability from an incredibly practical point of view.

You have already expanded the brand into Planet Escapes? Would you like to talk about that branch of the business?

That’s quite exciting! Planet Escapes is a trading style of Planet Leasing that rents out motorhomes to holidaymakers. We had purchased a motorhome with the intention of using it with our families and renting it out rather than leaving it empty. We decided quite quickly that we didn’t want other people using it, but we did identify a gap in the rental market in Essex for small motorhomes. Due to the nature of the business, we already had relationships with manufacturers like BMW and Mercedes, so we decided to take the chance and purchased a fleet of six motorhomes. We’re doing very well, we probably launched at the right time considering the impact of COVID-19 and people looking for holiday alternatives. Our motorhomes are fully booked, and we are looking at expanding the fleet.

So, you first purchased the motorhome for family fun, and it has organically flourished into a new part of the business. How important is it for you to find time to spend with your family?

It is really important for business owners to have that work-life balance. I want to provide for my family, but I do not want to miss out on spending time with them. This business is much more self-sufficient, so it has become more of a personal priority to take time away, to let myself relax, and be with my loved ones. It’s one of the many advantages of being your own boss.

Finally, what would be your top three tips for young or new entrepreneurs?

One of my tips is to be very aware of your own motivations and hold yourself accountable. No one is around to push you to get up, get into the office, get tasks finished, and work hard for your goals. You need to establish your own rules and be disciplined.

Secondly, building a business is not a journey that follows a straight line. There will be obstacles that you need to anticipate and negotiate. Do your best to be flexible and learn to pivot. Finally, let yourself take breaks. Balance is key.

The post Planet Leasing: Stand Out with Legendary Customer Service appeared first on Real Business.

Real Business chats with cheesegeek Founder and successful Dragons’ Den candidate, Edward Hancock, about making the leap from finance to food and his experience on the popular BBC show. Hancock launched cheesegeek in 2017, an online subscription service for the best cheese selection to suit any occasion or cheese lover’s tastes.

What was the inspiration for cheesegeek and what was the moment that led to you diving into the food industry?

I suppose the seed was sown when I was eleven. My family went to a fine dining restaurant in France, it was my first experience with fine dining and the cheese trolley was wheeled over and it just blew my mind. The different colours, shapes, sizes, and smells alongside the expertise of the man serving was an experience that stuck with me. Ever since then, I’ve become a cheese over desserts kind of guy.

I felt that there was no innovation in cheese. When you look at coffee, gin, flowers, or beer, all of these industries are exploding with innovation and new brands that are becoming iconic with consumers in a short time frame. Despite the fact cheese is bigger than a lot of those industries, there isn’t the same kind of marketing or consumer brand focus, so a lot of people are simply reaching for supermarket products.

Two moments inspired me to go for it with cheesegeek. I encountered a stressed man in the cheese section of a deli shop who was hosting a dinner party that weekend. One of the attendees was supposedly a big cheese expert, so he was panicking about the cheese selection and wine pairing. I couldn’t resist jumping in to help him. I ended up putting his whole cheeseboard together. He had asked if I was in the cheese industry and couldn’t believe it when I said I was just passionate about good cheeses. Then, I was at a wine tasting, with lovely wines but alongside the drinks, they were serving awful cheese and it turned out it was from the Co-Op next door, and I was aghast that no one was putting the thought into the cheese accompaniment. Over the following months, I got in touch with my best friend’s wife, a talented graphic designer, and asked if she could bring my idea and brand to life. And that was how we got started.

What were the initial challenges in establishing cheesegeek, with cheese being especially perishable?

I’ve always said if I ever start another business, I would choose something easier to handle than cheese, but you can’t help what you love. When we initially started the business, my idea was to deliver cheese through the letterbox, so we spent considerable time and invested money in developing letterbox-friendly boxes. We quickly realised that you couldn’t insulate the cheese properly, you have the get the product into very small pieces, so it wasn’t traveling well and as it turns out, letterboxes aren’t all the same size.

We could have been stubborn and tried to make it work but we knew we needed to adapt, give up the dream of sending people cheese through their letterbox, and just focus on sending people great cheese. The size of our subscription boxes became less of a problem due to the pandemic as now people tend to be hybrid and being at home to collect or recover the parcels is less of a problem. In the beginning, however, it was a huge challenge because no one insulated their boxes, very few couriers had temperature control and online cheese selections were a sideshow to physical stores. Just as our first Christmas rolled around, Royal Mail failed on a huge amount of our deliveries, and then in our second year, we had to change our courier a week before Christmas because they were letting us down. It can be frustrating, to put so much into a product but the one part of the chain we had no control over was causing us significant problems. Our customer service was critical at that point because the issues with customers were unavoidable.

We had a lot of teething problems because our business is inherently more intensive in terms of cutting, wrapping, and dispatching cheese. We can’t outsource to a warehouse, we can’t have the product sitting on a shelf waiting to be dispatched whenever an order comes in so by the nature of the business, we are more specialised and we’ve had to build the business up operationally alongside the marketing, branding, and financing.

So, how does the cheesegeek platform work to source the products from independent vendors and suppliers?

We source directly from our British artisan cheesemakers, and we have direct relationships with the majority of them, so they understand what we offer in terms of profiling them and their products and communicating their stories to our customers. We can’t chat with our customers as we would with a physical store, so we do our best to make our communications channels as rich with information as possible. It’s challenging to communicate the value of artisanal products and the personalities behind them online.

We’ve had to overcome this through our packaging and the information we can send inside our subscription boxes. When you receive your cheesy package, you also have an insert that tells you what order you should eat your cheese, tasting notes, and what to pair with the selection to help our customers have the full experience. We always want to talk about the story of the craftsmanship and the skill behind the cheeses and the way they vary from batch to batch, from season to season.

Let’s talk about Dragons’ Den. Congratulations on your success with Steven Bartlett! How was that experience, being on the show and pitching your business to such industry heavyweights?

It was intense. It takes a lot of preparation, a lot of due diligence, and time. When you’re in the early stages of a business, you need to weigh up the pros and cons because of the level of commitment. The show is as true as it’s presented. They do have to cut a lot down because we were in the meeting with the Dragons for nearly two hours so viewers don’t get to see the extent of the conversations, questions, and negotiations so naturally, quite a lot is lost in translation but it is transparent about the process; there is no briefing, you do not meet the Dragons beforehand, securing their support is genuinely down to you and your business. I think people are most surprised to find out that there are no retakes and that viewers are true ‘flies on the wall’ to the experience.

We had a great outcome. I think we were very close to securing all five Dragons but going into the process, we knew as a business that Steven Bartlett was the best fit for us, so we are pleased to have him on board. It was a fantastic experience and ultimately, we came away with a great investor and advisor.

Do you think it has changed the trajectory or nature of your business goals?

It certainly hasn’t changed our goals. I think any other business that has been on the show would agree with me when I say that the business leader and their team remain the driving force behind the company. We weren’t necessarily looking to completely transform our business; we were looking for advice and the connections that open doors for greater opportunities. With that in mind, I think the effect of having Steven on board will be more gradual and more long-term rather than a huge overnight change. In terms of his ability to link our marketing team with his facilities and methods will be a huge benefit to our personnel and will lead to more effective marketing, how we communicate on social media, and building a culture around our brand.

I was interested in how you built your sales platform and your data strategy around customer feedback and reviews. How important do you think this has been in terms of developing technology that allows a more personalised experience for your customers?

It has been critical for facilitating our growth and standing out in the market. We put the work in from the beginning to build our tech out in a way that would suit us far into the future. It was more challenging to build a technology company alongside building a cheesemonger, but we wanted to ensure we would be able to provide the ultimate customer experience and subscription system for our customers without needing to completely overhaul and rebuild after a few years of trading. We were determined to get it right from the beginning. One of the genuinely transferrable skills from my life in finance was developing algorithms. The only difference was building ‘algos’ to allocate cheese, rather than looking for patterns and trends in market data. I used this knowledge to create what we call Cassie, which stands for ‘Cheese Allocation System’, as it picks the right cheese for each customer. It’s a genuinely unique piece of tech that has been integral for allowing our consumers to tailor and manage their subscriptions, so they can rate the cheese on our app, and we can use that feedback to improve their selections, helping us to send out hundreds of thousands of subscriptions that are all unique to every single subscriber.

Would you say that all entrepreneurs should be thinking about the future of their business while in the start-up phase?

It is hard to look past the initial stages of your business and set goals that you are years away from reaching but if you don’t have a vision of where you want to get to and pay attention to how your daily micro-decisions contribute towards that, then so much of the work you’re putting in now is going to have to be undone and systems will need to be re-built, costing time and money. We’ve never made decisions without thinking about the context of where we need to be as a business, and what the bigger picture is, and I think it is a worthwhile extra layer of time, effort, and energy, in the beginning, to make your job easier down the line.

What surprised you the most when you moved from finance to the food industry?

I spent a career getting into the mindset of people who work in finance, and I found many individuals were incredibly like-minded so there’s a narrow range of personalities to work with whether you are talking to an investor or a broker. Then I moved into food and off the bat, I was talking to such a vast collection of personalities and industries, from farmers to SEO agencies. The biggest adjustment for me was moving from dealing with a very narrow profile of people that were predictable to working with the widest spectrum of personality types I’ve ever come across.

One big part of the cheese industry that surprises me to this day, and surprises everyone I tell, is that you can order cheese for Christmas in August and the cheesemaker will create that product for you, then come the second week of December, if you realise you haven’t taken as many orders as you thought, you can just cancel that order. You paid no deposit, and you might have damaged that supply relationship, there is nothing to ensure that you will fulfill that purchase agreement. There is so much diligence, so many contractual agreements involved with almost every other industry, especially finance, that it was shocking to me that so much of the food industry, especially cheese, was based on good faith. I’m looking forward to seeing more contemporary practices entering the industry to safeguard small businesses and suppliers.

The post Conquering Dragons’ Den with cheesegeek Founder, Edward Hancock appeared first on Real Business.

From promising new enterprise to working with Lacoste, Versace, and Goldsmiths, one of the UK’s leading quality jewellers to name a few, Marie Grove Walton has achieved significant success with her PR and marketing agency, Grove Communication.

Walton launched Grove Communication in 2013 together with her Associate Director Eilidh Macdonald, hungry for a new challenge after a fulfilling career in the industry. Working as a marketing director at the time, she was ready for new experiences and eager for the flexibility of running her own business. Grove Communication was founded to bridge the gap between building brand awareness and translating marketing efforts into tangible sales. She decided that merging marketing and sales disciplines in their overall approach to creating effective strategies for their clients would be the right solution to these industry-wide challenges and feedback from her customers has made it clear, that it was the right choice.

Walton has built an incredible team behind the Grove Communication name but remains highly involved in all aspects of her business.

“What makes us unique is that we are a very hands-on director-led business. We are heavily involved and invested in the day-to-day strategy and management of each clients’ account. This ensures we are providing a consistent, high-quality service. The result is long-lasting client relationships with whom we very much work as an extension of their teams and growing businesses.”

Based in the heart of London, Grove Communication specialises in creating strategies for lifestyle, fashion, and luxury brands. With a retail-focused background, the company is highly skilled and incredibly knowledgeable in creating sales-driven initiatives that incorporate the main elements of digital and traditional marketing: PR coverage in relevant publications, social media content creation and account management, influencer collaborations, building and maintaining brand strategies, product launches, retail showcases and installations, and event management. The company’s fully integrated structure offers its clients a single point-of-call service for all of their marketing needs, allowing for advanced brand management and campaign consistency.

As we emerge from the COVID-19 lockdowns, Walton and her team are seeing bigger investments from businesses into their marketing campaigns and collateral as markets slowly start to pick up momentum, especially the retail industry. The Grove Communication team is looking forward to their upcoming projects and getting back into full swing over the next 12 months, as London begins to see a return of businesses and its workforce.

“Post-COVID, many brands are looking to ramp up their activity and focus on growth, but recruitment is a huge challenge due to Brexit and so many people leaving London during the pandemic. I’m excited about the buzz of getting back to work, back to living our lives to the fullest. Brands who invest as much as they can in their marketing right now are set to win in this recovery period.”

Eyes on the prize, the entrepreneur who secured clients like Karl Lagerfeld and Radley London is not thinking small for the future. With goals to establish offices globally, work on worldwide campaigns, and drive brand equity, the next few years for Grove Communication look to be particularly thrilling.

As a data-driven team, Walton takes huge pride in the company’s ability to continue hitting and raising the monthly KPIs for every brand they work with. The positive results and client feedback continues to drive the business forward, with Walton leading from the front in every facet of her company.

The post “Inspire your team to excellence”: Interview with Marie Grove Walton appeared first on Real Business.

Did you know it is Stress Awareness Month? Stress can be incredibly challenging for people to cope with, especially in high pressure, fast paced work environments. It can cause long term illness, massively impact an individual’s productivity, and impact their performance and wellbeing in the workplace.

Work can be one of the most common, most significant  contributors to a person’s stress levels, so we’re considering if employers should provide tools for helping their workforce manage their mental health and how they could implement strategies to help tackle the issue. Legally speaking, all employers have a duty of care towards their staff. Employers must ensure the working environment is safe for all employees, there are procedures in place to prevent and protect staff from discrimination, and that reviews on best practises are carried out regularly.

When it comes to offering and establishing further support and taking additional steps to helping staff with stress or mental health problems, there are many options available. One of the first, basic steps a business can take is to open communication between the workforce and management teams, where employees can communicate if and how they might be struggling. Plans can then be created to offer employees reasonable adjustments to support them. This could range from offering them flexible work opportunities to considering a re-distribution of responsibilities.

Opening up the opportunity to communicate about ongoing issues and tackle any stigma surrounding mental health will help employees feel supported enough to raise issues in the future and to ask for help when they need to. Monthly wellbeing check ins between team members and managers are a good practise to implement to provide ongoing point-of-contacts and keep up to date with each employee. It also gives managers a chance to give feedback, acknowledge individual successes, and appreciate the progress someone might have made.

Investing in workplace education programs could arm a workforce with the knowledge, skills, and good practises that help them to identify when they or a coworker might be struggling and what solutions or actions they could follow to address any problems. There are many options available to businesses looking to introduce elements of mental health and wellbeing education into their best practises; either seeking out a third-party organisation to create and monitor the program or building a bespoke system within the company.

An intuitive, discreet method for supporting employee mental health is to provide direct access to mental health services at any time, with as few questions and limitations as possible. This could be done by offering funding or financial assistance for employees seeking private healthcare or by introducing an onsite mental health professional for staff to contact for help. Partnering with an organisation to provide online and in-person access to a range of therapies and councillors is also a good option.

While maintaining and caring about team members’ mental health and wellbeing should be a priority from an empathetic point of view, it is critical when looking to ensure the smooth operation if any business. Poor employee mental health will lead to poor professional performance, especially in any public or client facing roles. This will ultimately have an impact on the performance of the business and could risk potential and critical profits.

In the age of the ‘Great Resignation’, it is important to keep your knowledgeable and skilled employees within your company structure, even if their performance may have dipped because of stress. Offering tangible support will make employees feel acknowledged and appreciated, two elements of employment that are crucial to retaining important team members.

In conclusion, it is important to provide employees with the support they might need to manage and protect their mental health. This can range from having empathetic, communicative HR processes to introducing free or funded access to professional mental health services. It is all about finding the right solution for your team.

The post Should Employers Provide Workers Access to Mental Health Services? appeared first on Real Business.

With 44% of millennials freelancing in the past year and 36% of Gen Z workers freelancing since the outbreak of COVID-19, the gig economy in the UK is growing more than ever. Many freelancers specialise in creative services that require access to certain digital tools and equipment. We’ve put together a few recommendations on platforms you could use to make your freelancer projects run smoothly.

Let’s start with the business basics.

QuickBooks

The all-in-one platform that gives you HMRC-approved tools to manage your business finances, helping you to keep your professional expenses separate from your personal purchases. The app helps users track receipts, payments, and expenses at any time, on the go, helping freelancers and business owners keep organised digitally. The system calculates VAT automatically and prepares all the information and data you need for Self-Assessment, hopefully making the tax processes much less complicated. It also integrates third-party payment sites like PayPal. With its simple plan for self-employed individuals starting at £8 per month, plus VAT, the service is a very affordable solution for managing your finances as a freelancer.

PayPal

The secure payment system allows you to create customisable invoices with your personal branding, track your payment, receive payments through personalised links for additional peace of mind, and email payment requests easily to your clients. A huge benefit to using PayPal is the additional security and the pay-as-you-use system. There are no set, timely fees, you simply pay a fee when you receive payments, so you are never paying for the system when you are not using it.

SumUp

These portal card readers can be found everywhere, and they are very popular amongst small businesses and freelancers. Similar to PayPal, there is no fixed cost to use SumUp’s portal card readers. You purchase the machine, download the accompanying app for free, and pay a fee per transaction. This is a fantastic asset for freelancers attending trade shows, selling physical products, or to offer clients an alternative payment option.

SimplyBook.Me

Appointments and consultations can be complicated to organise; this GDPR compliant appointment scheduling software allows customers to book with you through your online platforms independently, saving you time and organising your schedule in a way that suits you and your clients. It makes booking consultations with you very simple and efficient for new customers, easing the customer journey. There is a free version of the software but it is limited to 50 booking per month, so if it works for you, moving on to the basic plan might be a good option.

Zoom

The likelihood is that you already have this program downloaded and you are already an expert. Just in case you haven’t yet stepped into the world of Zoom, here’s a few reasons why it can optimise your workflow. You can book video meetings into your timeline seamlessly, without needing to account for travel time.

Ready to talk about the fun stuff?

Unsplash

A bank of over a million free photography and images that can be used without worrying about copyright issues. These images are perfect for creating mood boards, pitch material, brand kits, and websites. Creating an account is free and easy, allowing you to save the images you like into different collection to keep your different projects organised.

New Old Stock

Collating beautiful vintage images in easy to download packs, this is a super affordable option for obtaining photographs and visuals that suit a very specific, old-fashion feel. The packs are very affordable and once you have made the one-time purchase, the collections are updated for free as the creators add new photographs.

Lightroom

One of the apps that comes part of Adobe’s Photography Package, Lightroom is an intuitive mobile and desktop program that can store and edit your photographs flawlessly. Create and save presets to make your photograph edits quick and easy. This is especially useful as you can upload presets used by your clients to keep their imagery and platforms cohesive as you work together. The Photography Package is priced at £9.98 per month and include 20GB of storage.

OpenDoodles

A free set of illustrations that you can copy, edit, or redraw for whatever purpose you need, without worrying about copyright. These illustrations are great to use in mock-ups for clients, as placeholders for future images, or to convince clients to invest in their own set of illustrations. The creator of Open Doodles believes in the idea of Open Design, sharing skills, best practises, and basic design theories to improve the artistic community and promote collaboration

Google Fonts

Perhaps a more traditional resource but one that is solid and reliable. The extensive database of fonts and font families provides hundreds of typography options for freelancers to use within mock-ups or commercial projects. Fonts are free to download and most of the licensing agreements allow the fonts to be used in a wide range of projects. However, it is always wise to check the licenses individually once you are at the stage of wanting to publish your work.

ColorLisa

Just for a bit of fun – if you are struggling to put together a classic or unique colour scheme for a client’s branding, take some inspiration from the greats. ColorLisa is a palette picker that allows you to find the colours used in the artwork of the world’s most beloved artists and use them to create stunning, timeless designs or typography.

Canva

You must have heard about this international powerhouse? Canva is an easy-to-use design program that allows everyone, of all ability levels, to create professional and versatile designs, documents, presentations, and social media visuals. This platform is particularly popular with freelancers, independent creators, and small businesses, with its massive catalogue of templates, photographs, illustrations, fonts, and the ability to cover a wide range of mediums, from branded office supplies to video editing. You can use Canva for free, but you have more limited access to the available templates. Canva Pro allows five users on one account, and you can either pay £10.99 per month or purchase annual access at £99.99.

Procreate

This is a fantastic option for designers, artists, and illustrators that specialise in digital drawings but don’t want to shell out for the full Adobe suite. Intuitive and affordable, it is very easy to add extensions and create your own tools within the program. Procreate is an app, available only from the Apple App Store. A downside to this program is that you can only use it on an iPhone or iPad, and it is best used alongside an Apple Pen. So, the app itself is only a one-time purchase of £9.99 but if you do not already have all the necessary equipment, it’s much more of an investment.

Grammarly

Freelancers can’t always be experts in everything, but you are often expected to be. Sometimes, mistakes slip under the radar, especially when it comes to spelling and grammar. Grammarly is a great program to have installed, ready to catch all the potential, little errors that you might have missed. It can review your emails, documents, blog posts, contracts, social copy, and even your messages on collaboration platforms like Teams or Slack. Similarly to Canva, you can use a free option for the basics or upgrade to a premium version that offers additional advice on tone, inclusivity of your language, fluency, and thesaurus suggestions for £110 for a year’s subscription.

Squarespace

Squarespace offers various templates and designs that make building a website much easier. With options to integrate e-commerce and social media platforms, the site has built-in SEO tools and insights to help you better understand your customer journey. Marketing automations and customer segmentations are great ways to tailor how your website automatically interacts with visitors. Squarespace makes it easy to send out email campaigns and share your knowledge across blog posts, keeping your brand awareness high as you regularly make direct contact with interested individuals. With a range of price packages, there is an affordable option for whatever your needs might be.

Hootsuite

A great planning and scheduling platform that allows you to schedule your social media posts to multiple sites from one dashboard. Hootsuite lets you plan and schedule posts in advance and all at once, so you don’t have to constantly worry about creating new content and being on social media. You can respond to audience interactions easily from one inbox, making it simple to engage with your potential customers. The data and insight collection dashboard makes it easy to see what is working for your socials and what isn’t. Hootsuite offer a 30-day free trial to see if it works for you, but the plans then start at around £40 per month if you choose an annual plan.

LastPass

We’ve given you a lot of resources and a lot of different platforms to help optimise your freelance work life. Now, you need to keep track of the login details for every single one. LastPass is a very helpful browser extension that securely stores all your passwords to every account, helping you login instantly, even if you’ve already forgotten. Best of all, it’s free!

The post The Best Tools for Creative Freelancers appeared first on Real Business.

As 4.6 million viewers tuned in to catch the launch episode of the most recent series of The Apprentice, the long-running business competition show can still garner interest from the British public, despite many critics suggesting it has run its course.

While The Apprentice enjoyed its best premiere since 2017, viewers are more aware of the show’s unrealistic challenges and false presentation of entrepreneurialism. The show’s challenges not only expect contestants to create business concepts, branding, marketing campaigns, and investment pitches in a matter of hours, it perpetuates the notion that a business is based on the ‘one brilliant idea’ from ‘one brilliant person’. Each contestant is representing themselves as a person with a fantastic business plan or as the genius behind a very successful brand. The thought might have been theirs only to begin with, but businesses are very rarely built by only one person.

It takes a team of people, all with different talents, knowledge, and expertise to build a business from a plan on a piece of paper to a fully incorporated, profitable business with scalability opportunities. Alan Sugar’s business competition program not only places entrepreneurs into business situations that are unrelated to their own business journey and experiences but can sometimes fire them for reasons viewers can’t understand. The winner receives the ultimate prize of a potentially life changing investment in their business idea but are contestants truly there for the investment in the first place? The show is excellent exposure for them as individuals but we only learn about a few of the actual businesses and in the contemporary world of business, there are many investment alternatives that provide incredible support for start-ups or growing SMEs that do not require the same public spectacle.

“There is a common perception that an entrepreneur is an individual who has a lightbulb moment and then sets about turning that idea into a business reality. This perception is created and reinforced by the media who understandably love larger than life characters such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson through to the government which seems to focus on disruptive technology businesses whilst fast growing companies in other sectors receive much less attention. The reality is that many great businesses owe their success to a team of risk takers who share a strong vision and complementary skill sets, rather than just one individual. As a private equity investor, this team balance is the most important ingredient we look for in any business we back. Furthermore, starting a business isn’t the only way to earn the entrepreneur status – a team risking its own capital to fund a management buy-out is every bit as entrepreneurial as that individual with the lightbulb moment.” Claire Madden, Managing Partner at Connection Capital

Business owners like Steven Bartlett, Ben Francis, and Grace Beverley inspire generations of entrepreneurs but there is a growing emphasis on the fact that these individuals didn’t reach their incredible achievements alone; each of them have relied on talented, reliable team members working together towards a shared goal.

The post Is The Apprentice Spreading Unrealistic Ideas About Running Your Own Business? appeared first on Real Business.