Stronger Foundations

Accessing support to take your business to the next stage

Setting up or expanding your business alone can be like trying to find your way without a map. It’s easy to disappear down the wrong road, and difficult to know when you are on the right one. Without an expert guide to step in and show you the right direction, you can end up back where you started.

Orla O’Leary is the founder of Companies Hub and has spent the last 12 years talking to business owners and operators looking for business advice. Frequently she discovered that the problems stemmed from either a lack of strong foundations when setting up the business, or a lack of reliable expert advice. Companies Hub, a new resource in the BITA member support hubs, aims to fix both issues.

A familiar face to many of our members, Orla has been attending BITA events since 2018. She is the chair of the Southwest Chapter, and because of her business experience, has a keen insight into the struggles that business owners face.

“I was doing a lot of consulting work in 2020, and although my clients were in many different industries, I was coming up against the same challenges – what I would call a lack of fundamentals.” Says Orla. “I realised that there was a massive gap in available training, and that I could help businesses set solid foundations, without which, growth would be extremely difficult.”

There are many courses that claim to provide people with all they need to run a business, ranging from free, to thousands of pounds. But at the lower end of the scale, they are generic courses run for large groups, so they are unlikely to provide the required support.

Companies Hub is a training course that harnesses the knowledge of peer to-peer learning, with input and feedback from experts, and a friendly guide to help keep people on track. The Companies Hub will help businesses with their fundamentals and set them up with strong foundations for growth. It also costs only £1,500 + VAT for the yearlong course.

The Hub is aimed at five main groups:

• New businesses

• Established business that need a push

• Succession planning: training the person taking over

• Exit strategy: separating yourself from your business

• Fast-tracking staff into management

Participants sign up for the course and join a group of between 10 and 15 people. Participants will be from different industries and at different stages in their business, but from around the same area. They will meet face to face at the start of the course for a day where they meet course experts, network, and establish where their knowledge gaps are.

Following the workshop, the participants will then meet online weekly with different experts to address concerns ranging from managing stress, to the finer points of business accounting.

“There are a few USPs to Companies Hub, firstly the groups are small –between 10 and 15 people, maximum. This means that the groups are small enough to tailor advice to their specific circumstances, but still large enough that they can benefit from peer-to-peer mentoring.” Explains Orla.

“This creates a close-knit community that can connect the pieces, making sure that your business runs efficiently and importunately, that you are enjoying it! There will be a wide range of expertise on offer including HR, finance, sales, marketing, legal and wellbeing: important whether sole trader or massive business.

“Participating in a course from Companies Hub will enable businesspeople to embed good practice from top down.”

Many of the experts feeding into this community will be familiar to BITA members, and Orla has been careful to make sure that there are a range of experts on offer in each area. It’s crucial that people connect well with their mentors, in both knowledge, price and personality. This range of options is another Companies Hub USP.

After 12 months, participants will have finished a business course that is tailored to them and their needs, networked with experts in a wide variety of fields and have gained from peer-to-peer networking from those in their group.

The Companies Hub flips the idea of the conventional style business programme on its head. We do not buy into a “One shoe fits all” ethos. At The Companies Hub no two programmes are the same as each programme is built around the participants ensuring they get the advice they need to grow their business with solid foundations supported by genuine experts. If you are interested in joining Companies Hub as an expert, participant or both, please contact Orla who will be very happy to discuss in more detail: Orla1818@gmail.com