Real Entrepreneurs Magazine issue 2

MAGAZINE REAL ENTREPRENEURS

QUESTIONING COMFORT

THE NUMBER ONE KILLER OF AMBITION

A few things to think about…

Who is your most valuable client?

How many clients like that do you want?

How many potential clients would you need to convert one of these?

What’s the value for you to have 9 of these potential clients sat around one table?

Not got the time to organise an opportunity like this?

ROUND TABLE

LUNCH OR EXECUTIVE DINNER DEBATE

A direct opportunity to pitch yourself organically to potential clients within a two-hour discussion

● Raise your profile

● Engage your target audience

● Establish yourself as a thought leader

● Create new opportunities to do business info@crossproductions.co.uk

Proven to be a successful relationship marketing strategy

MAGAZINE REAL ENTREPRENEURS

You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with… we’ve all heard this saying. So why are we not stepping into the room with successful, driven entrepreneurs?

Real Entrepreneurs’ Magazine was created to provide a central point of knowledge sharing. We talk directly to some of the East Midlands’ most dynamic leaders about their journey to success, what success means to them and how they actually achieved it. There are huge benefits that come with knowledge sharing. It allows us to become more agile and adaptable. It can often help develop more effective and streamlined procedures and processes. It’s that development of skills and competencies that increase value and sustain a competitive advantage.

Wesley Hughes is on the cover of this issue. In his featured article, he talks to us about overcoming challenges, motivating his staff, and being prepared to take risks.

We are also very proud to bring you the East Midlands Top 500 Companies listing as compiled by Leicester Castle Business School, De Montfort University, University of Derby, and Nottingham Trent University. Within these pages, we share the highest new entrant, the highest climber, industry analyses, and, of course, the number one company in the region.

Enjoy the read, we hope you take something from the issue. Please do share your thoughts with us!

Until next issue,

JennyCross

COVER STORY: QUESTIONING COMFORT TAKING RISKS THAT PAY OFF FOR THE SAKE OF AMBITION

OPINION: JORDAN BROMPTON MYENERGI AND GEORGE OLIVER 1284

BECOMING THE NUMBER ONE FOR REBATE SOLUTIONS

IT’S A FINE LIFE

A DIGITAL ENTREPRENEUR BY TRADE

HOSPITALITY: IT’S ALL IN THE SERVICE

HARD WORK, HUMILITY AND LEARNING THROUGH MISTAKES

INTEGRITY IS EVERYTHING IN BUSINESS

OPINION: JAIMON THOMAS KAYAL AND LAURA CLARKE CHILWELL PRODUCTS LTD

REAL ENTREPRENEURS

MAGAZINE is the trade mark of Cross Productions and used under license by Jennifer Cross. All rights reserved. No reproduction, copying or otherwise without permission.

Disclaimer – Real Entrepreneurs Magazine and Cross Productions Ltd are fully protected by copyright; no part of this magazine may be reproduced or reprinted without the complete and expressed permission of the publisher. The greatest care has been taken to ensure accuracy, however there can be no liability accepted by the publisher for errors and omissions. We can under no circumstance be held responsible for any materials, matter or photographical copy submitted for publication or not within the website or magazine. We cannot be held responsible or liable for any breaches of copyright from adverts, materials or photography or any other such material supplied by a third party. The views and opinions expressed within our publications are not necessarily those of the publisher or indeed Real Entrepreneurs Magazine or any featured parties.

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NOTHING KILLS AMBITION LIKE COMFORT

WHEN ESTABLISHING A NEW BUSINESS, CERTAIN THINGS NEED TO GO YOUR WAY – THE OPPORTUNITY, THE TIMING, THE MARKET… IF ONE THING GOES WRONG, IT CAN DERAIL YOUR WHOLE ENTERPRISE, YET THE BEST ENTREPRENEURS CAN PERSEVERE THROUGH THESE CHALLENGES, AND COME OUT STRONGER. WESLEY HUGHES TOLD US THE STORY OF UTILITIES MADE SIMPLE

he security of a regular income and a certain standard of living can make it very difficult to leave a job, but entrepreneurial spirit is about seeing beyond the risk of failure, and asking yourself the question, “but what if I succeed?”

In 2016, Wesley Hughes was working as an analyst for British Gas. His department was in the process of being cut down from 160 people to 20 – acknowledging the sizeable layoff, and realising his job might not be safe for long, even if he survived the initial cut, he volunteered for redundancy.

“I’d always wanted to work for myself eventually,” said Wes. “I’d been with BG for 13 years in various roles, so it felt like this may be the right time to try something else.”

As both Wes and his future business partner, Ashley Barratt, were going through the redundancy exercise at the same time, a conversation in the pub one night led to the idea to form what would become Utilities Made Simple.

“I’d applied for another job at BG that I ended up not taking as we couldn’t agree on salary, but as part of the application process, I’d seen some data on how many utilities contract jobs were available to independent brokers. At the time, British Gas was promoting their broker channel, selling large numbers of contracts to people like us now. I could see it would be worth pursuing, especially with the experience we had, understanding of the

industry and understanding of the market.

“We cashed our shares in, set up the business, and brought in three staff and three trainees to cold-call people and gather leads. We started generating revenue pretty quickly –after two to three months we had people calling us for prices. I was working my day job all day, and developing the business at night and on weekends. Not much time for sleep!”

But then the unexpected happened: Wes’s redundancy was denied.

“It turns out I had an IT skill set that no-one else in the department had, so British Gas wanted to keep me on. This was unexpected to say the least, and put me in a tricky position. I’d already set the business up on the assumption I’d be getting the redundancy pay. I’d already cashed in my shares, so I had a decision to make.”

Over the next couple of weeks, Wes spent time thinking about the best way forward. Eventually, he decided to take the plunge.

“I resigned. Various factors go through your head when making that decision. I’ve got a mortgage, a wife, a daughter, cars to pay for, etc, all of which you want to keep providing for, but it felt like a now or never situation.

Nothing kills ambition like comfort, with the desire to maintain a lifestyle making it harder to take a risk.

“Fortunately, the business had already started making money, so by the time I came on board full-time, I was actually able to take a salary straight away.”

Words by Tom Young

UP TO THE CHALLENGE

Utilities Made Simple was up and running and quickly started generating enough revenue to expand. A sales team was added – a process made easier as several people made redundant from British Gas had approached the company to ask for jobs.

Things were looking good and one night, Wes was having dinner in the office. Anyone with a busy lifestyle who chooses to take a night off might’ve made the joke, ‘I’m going out for dinner – don’t call me unless the building’s on fire’. If you do, you don’t generally expect to get a call…

“We were in the middle of a meal, and one of the girls from the office called me. ‘Wes, the building’s on fire.’ Now I’m a bit of a joker, so I assumed she was winding me up. ‘Oh yeah, very funny,’ I said. ‘What do you really need?’ She just said, ‘no, really – the building’s on fire’.”

The fire had started in the neighbouring building, and was spreading to the Utilities Made Simple offices. As he saw the fire raging from the street outside, he realised he had another problem.

“It suddenly dawned on me that all of our customer data, contracts, and financial records

were backed up, but on a physical drive – we weren’t on the cloud yet. That one drive had the whole business on it. Now the room where that drive was kept wasn’t actually on fire, so before I knew it, I was in a full-on argument with the fire brigade, insisting that they let me go in there to get it. Obviously, they didn’t want me to, but in the end, I just went in and got it.

“When I came back out, they kicked me off the premises and had the police come and talk to me, but in my eyes, I’d saved the business. Now, everything’s backed up on the cloud – the fire made that a very easy lesson to learn.”

For most people, a fire at their business premises would be the standout worst thing that would happen to it in any given year, but incredibly, not for Wes.

“We got burgled! Once the fire was out, we couldn’t go back in for a while. The actual office hadn’t been affected too much, but because of the structural damage we weren’t allowed in. As a result, all of the business’s property was still in there – laptops, printers, all the expensive stuff. It all got stolen! We were insured, but it was like starting from scratch.

“We moved to a temporary office in Leicester city centre for 20 months while we looked for somewhere else, and we went back and forth with the insurers for months while they determined how the fire had started – thankfully, not our fault. Our landlord temporarily moved us out to his own warehouse in Glenfield, and we started looking for a new space. It looked like we were on the up again. That was February 2020…”

When I came back out, they kicked me off the premises and had the police come and talk to me, but in my eyes, I’d saved the business

BOUNCING BACK

“We’d been in the warehouse for six weeks when Covid hit. The landlord’s business was classed as essential transport, so he was allowed to stay open, but in order to protect his workers, we weren’t allowed in and got kicked off site. We had a two to three week down period, where we converted to home working. We ended up doing that for four months while we searched for a new office.

“We eventually found our current space, just down the road from the old one – we’d recruited in that area, so it made sense to stay there if we could. The staff were furloughed because it was too difficult to get them going again – 40% of our clients were hospitality, so we weren’t getting any new business in. The directors were running the business, as all we could do at that point was keep our existing customers happy.”

Covid hit every business in a different way, and many similar businesses haven’t survived. With many of their clients shut down, Wes did everything he could to keep the company alive.

“For a good four or five months, we were getting clawed back more money than we were actually earning. That took all our cash flow – in our line of work, it can be difficult to recover cash quickly, as we’re signing businesses up to contracts that might not take effect for six months to a year.

“We were in the situation of thinking, ‘what do we do here? Do we carry on, or call it a day now?’ That’s when we decided to take the bounce back loan, because this was all coinciding with us agreeing the rent on the new office. If we’d still been working from home at that point, we could probably have gotten away with it, but we’d moved in during October 2021, and brought everyone back as it was around the time they were stopping furlough anyway. That was when the claw backs started coming in – that could’ve wiped us out, as so many businesses were going bust.”

PRICE SPIKES

The bounce back loan kept Utilities Made Simple in the game, and steadied the ship through to July 2021. At this point, Wes – an expert in long-range forecasting – made an observation.

“I keep an eye on the markets, and I started to spot spikes in the energy prices. They were increasing monthly, then weekly as the market was so vulnerable. We were talking to clients, offering them contracts for a set price, but by the time they’d been agreed to by the decision makers, we’d have to go back and say, ‘sorry, it’s gone up 10%’. Then they’d take the new price back for approval, and by the time they came back, it would’ve gone up another 10%.

“It was the early stages of where we are today with the fuel crisis. Prices are roughly four times what we were selling for two years ago – that’s tough for a utilities provider.”

EVERY CLOUD…

It’s not all been doom and gloom. There have been plenty of moments for Wes that have incentivised him to overcome the challenges.

“One of the best things for me is that I can see the impact on the business from the changes and decisions I make. When I was at British Gas, it’s such a big machine, and you’re one tiny cog, that you never really feel you’re making an impact. Now, I can feel my influence affecting our situation pretty much instantly; with my background in analytics, I can use the data to make decisions, and then see if what I forecasted was right. It’s so much more rewarding.”

One of the more unusual things about Wes’s business is how quickly he hired staff – many new businesses are run by the founders alone for the first few years, but Utilities Made Simple was able to bring in a team straight away. It’s another aspect Wes had enjoyed, and an outlandish bet led to another specific highlight.

“It’s been great having the staff – people need jobs, and we try to look after our team as best we can. We set them targets all the time to keep them motivated. In our second year, we set them a big sales target that should’ve been pretty unrealistic

and said, ‘if you meet this, we’ll take you all to Tenerife.’ Then they only went and did it with two weeks to spare! It was over the course of twelve months, and at the end of each month, they were still on track - we couldn’t believe it! By the end, they were coming in with sunglasses, sun hats, and sun cream just to wind us up. But they hit the goal, so we all went out to Tenerife for four days. It was incredible.

“The community atmosphere in the office went through the roof after that. People suddenly started asking for jobs, because they’d heard there was a chance of going to Tenerife. Every time someone joined, I had to keep adjusting the target… and they were still hitting it!”

Another highlight for Wes has come during the last year – he’s started networking with other businesses through events such as the Real Entrepreneurs’ Club dinners.

“It’s been great to meet all these people who you wouldn’t normally meet without having your own business. We’ve only started this in the last

seven or eight months, as previously we hadn’t really understood the benefits, but it really is good. We’ve had custom off it, but also, hearing other people’s stories of how they got to where they are, and thinking, ‘Oh, I could do that.’ It’s about listening and learning.”

KEEP IT GOING

Now, finally back on stable footing, Wes is focused on the future of the business, and further growth is on the agenda.

“We want to be the go-to company in the East Midlands for gas, electricity and water. We want to be the first port of call. We’ve got expertise that a lot of others have not got – we’re more thorough, more hands-on. We give a lot of advice – we’re not just after the sale; we give a lot of advice and support in the background. We believe we do that the best, even though that sometimes means that we get less money, but gain customer loyalty.”

It’s been an eventful six years for Utilities Made Simple, but Wes appreciates the journey he’s been on.

“There’s nothing more rewarding than working for yourself. People always think it’s dead easy, but it’s not – there’s been times where I’ve got to bed at night, thinking, ‘God, I wish that day hadn’t happened’, but it matters more because it’s yours. I’ve always wanted to do this, and it was definitely the right decision.”

Every time someone joined, I had to keep adjusting the target… and they were still hitting it!

IF YOU COULD TURN BACK TIME

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO YOURSELF?

“Every day of the myenergi journey has been an adventure. We started with nothing, apart from a few good ideas and a serious passion for change. In the few years since, we’ve grown from a team of two to staff numbers in excess of 350, we’ve opened subsidiaries in Germany, Ireland, Australia and the Netherlands, and we’ve shipped more than 350,000 products worldwide.

“But while the business has boomed, we’ve experienced so many ups and downs along the way. Being an entrepreneur and doing what you love is tough. It’s competitive, it’s challenging, it’s cruel and sometimes it feels like everything wants you to fail.

“We’ve been through the rollercoaster of Brexit, component shortages and the pandemic – all in the first five years of our journey – not to mention the premature birth of my daughter. But we’ve taken risks, overcome obstacles and learnt from our mistakes. Perseverance and a desire to be successful have seen us come out stronger than ever.

“If I could roll back time and give myself advice at the start of the journey, it would be to expect the unexpected. Things can get pretty sketchy at times, they won’t go the way you want and you’ll be pushed to your absolute limits. Having the tenacity, drive, determination, fight and passion to overcome anything thrown at you will be so important. But don’t give up and don’t lose faith. The early mornings, long nights, headaches and heartache will all be worth it. With most jobs, it’s difficult to see the impact you’re having. At myenergi, we’re making the world a better place.”

Based in Northeast Lincolnshire, myenergi was founded in 2016 and is now one of the fastest-growing tech and manufacturing businesses in the UK. With over 120,000 myenergi devices out in the world, and 30,000 myenergi homes in the UK, they are now the leading company in the space for eco-smart home management solutions.

GEORGE OLIVER Director 1284

“Invest in basic software to measure everything from launch. I suppose that many people introduce automation and new software as their business grows. I certainly did – you obviously want to keep costs low in the early days.

“But if I had brought in accounting software from the outset I would have deepened my understanding of SME finances and tax at an early stage. And I would have saved time on updating spreadsheets.

“Software doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive. A subscription to Xero or entry-level Salesforce enables clear analysis of accounts and pipelines for about £20 a month. It gives you easy insights and that makes you more efficient. Being more efficient means being more productive and getting more into the work day.

“I generally approach what I do strategically, both for myself and clients. I had a clear written vision, objective and strategy from Day One. I believe that all organisational activity (especially comms) should map against a central business plan.

“But I would also remind myself to learn from everything along the way. There’s insight to be gained from every conversation, learning to be had from every project, and information to be absorbed everywhere.

“Of course, not all of it adds value. There’s a lot of noise, especially on digital media, but we can still learn from it. By considering why we don’t relate to poor content, for example, or why someone else might, we turn something which wastes our time into something which makes us think.”

1284 is a chartered agency providing corporate communication and PR strategy across the East Midlands, working alongside innovative people and organisations across the public, private and non-profit sectors. Based in Loughborough, clients range from graduate start-ups and university spinouts through to public organisations leading regional development. Associates include newspaper editors, media executives and a doctoral research consultant.

JORDAN BROMPTON Co-Founder & CMO myenergi

GLOBAL EXPANSION IS ON THE HORIZON FOR AN INTELLIGENT REBATE MANAGEMENT SAAS BUSINESS AFTER RAISING OVER £3M OF FUNDING IN THE PAST THREE YEARS. WE WANTED TO KNOW HOW THE MOMENTOUS MILESTONE WAS REACHED AND WHAT THE COMPANY IS REACHING FOR IN THE FUTURE

BECOMING NUMBER ONE

nother successful round of funding has gained Leicestershire-based company e-bate Limited £1.3m. The amount takes the firm to a figure of more than £3m in raised funds, securing the global plans of its CEO and founder Leanne Bonner-Cooke MBE.

The funding was made up of Angel Investors and Mercia-managed, MEIF Proof of Concept & Early Stage fund, which forms part of the Midlands Engine Investment Fund, and their EIS fund.

Leanne has been seeking funding since 2019, whilst also fighting her own personal battle against breast cancer. Preventing her fears of the unknown from taking over, Leanne chose to focus on the facts as and when they came towards her. Recognising that attempting to have control over her diagnosis was a ‘waste of energy’, the entrepreneur persevered, fitting in work and leadership responsibilities around her cancer treatments, in order to secure the first round of funding.

The money, which totals more than £3m, is being used to invest in and grow her team while accelerating the development of the e-bate

platform with new functions and features, ensuring they capture market share in the enterprise B2B space. She also expects to raise further funding to aid expansion by the end of 2022.

With global customers already in America, Australia, the Nordics, UK and New Zealand, I ask what ‘going global’ looks like to Leanne. Having a product that provides a solution to a universal business problem, she plans to set up sales and marketing offices in other countries to gain exposure around the world and see her product become the number one intelligence rebate management solution.

“Quite a brave statement to make,” she confesses, “but you have to have a vision to make things happen. When Microsoft first said every home will have a computer, everyone thought that would never happen.” The thought sets her off on her fascination with technology. She adds: “When I first worked in IT in the 80s, you’d have computers the size of washing machines with 256MB of disk space. Now I have a USB stick here that’s as big as my thumbnail and it can hold 2TB. That progress in just 30 years is incredible. When technology

Words by Kerry Smith

When I first worked in IT in the 80s, you’d have computers the size of washing machines with 256MB of disk space

began landing on the desktop within companies, I was amazed at how efficient it made things. Being dyslexic, technology could spell things for me and everything took a third of the time. I just love the way it can improve business and people’s lives.”

It’s that fascination with technology paired with the entrepreneurial ability to spot an opportunity to solve a problem that led Leanne to invent e-bate, taking away the complexities around rebate management for people in businesses, and providing them with analytics that puts the right data in the right hands at the right time.

E-BATE AND THE WAY REBATES CAN BE USED EXPLAINED

Rebates are used to drive loyalty between suppliers and buyers in the B2B supply chain. They are used to drive sales growth, by offering incentives to encourage a higher value of purchase. Unlike a discount, a rebate is given after payment for the goods has been made and is generally based upon meeting some complex conditions. Once met, the supplier then pays the buyer an amount of money back. In certain industries, this can be a significant sum.

You can imagine companies that buy stock frequently could miss potential rebates here and there, which could add up to thousands of pounds over the years. A business might invest in promotional mugs priced at £1 each, but the supplier might say they can have a rebate of 20p per mug once 1000 are purchased overall. The buyer might not want 1000 at once and instead buys small batches here and there having to manually log every transaction. So, if a buyer hasn’t realised that they’d purchased 999 mugs in total, they’ve missed out on £200 (1000 x 20p) in rebate, just because they didn’t spend extra £1. The e-bate platform creates and stores the supplier agreements and logs the purchases made, notifying the buyer of when they qualify for a rebate with real-time visibility. Likewise, it allows the supplier to target the buyer to purchase more in order to reach a target.

“It’s like when you go into Boots and buy from their ‘3 for 2’ range – there’s a discount for you there and then, but Boots will then calculate what the manufacturers owe them in terms of a rebate,” Leanne clarifies.

e-bate generally replaces manual solutions such as Microsoft Excel, removing risk, introducing a full audit trail, and significantly improving decision making. In large companies, e-bate can see an improvement in rebate income of circa >5%. So, if you imagine you are claiming £30m per year, that is £1.5m that you could be leaving on the table.

SPOTTING THE REBATE SOFTWARE GAP IN THE MARKET

In 2007, Leanne founded Evolve-IT Consulting Ltd (Evolve), which she ran for over 13 years before developing the minimum viable product (MVP) of e-bate in 2018. Whilst running Evolve, her team was asked to build several bespoke rebate management solutions. Alerting her to a gap in the market, she made her enquiries and did her research in order to understand the landscape of the competition.

“We addressed the market, looking at how people in businesses were managing their rebates. It was spreadsheets! Our biggest competition was, and still is, an Excel Spreadsheet.

“Once we’d understood the pain points and challenges of working from a spreadsheet across the supply chain, we could build something valuable. We created e-bate, the intelligent rebate management software, to transform and automate the whole process, which improved efficiencies, removed silo working and created transparency. Also, data was then structured and available so that individuals across the supply chain were able to make quicker, more informed decisions.”

RE-EVALUATING AFTER A LIFE-CHANGING DIAGNOSIS

Battling breast cancer in 2019 was life-changing. Leanne had no plans to leave her original successful business venture Evolve behind when she developed e-bate, but when juggling two businesses and cancer treatment, she realised something had to give.

“What I was going through was a total shock to everyone. My husband was more emotional about it than I was. He worried about what would happen to me, while I always remained positive and dealt with one day at a time. There was no point in worrying, no point in catastrophising. I dealt with the facts as they arrived and behaving like that has modified my behaviour in business. We all have moments of fear, and we typically fear the worst when we run a business but wondering about the ‘what ifs’ wastes a lot of time. Focusing on the facts and what you can control is where your energy is better spent.

“I wanted to keep Evolve but it was a challenging time; going out looking for investment, and then suddenly term sheets were being pulled because people weren’t sure about my cancer treatment, but I had to keep going. I had two businesses and the livelihood of my staff to think about. I never felt like giving up – I’d come this far; I wasn’t going to lose it all because of cancer.”

Working each day throughout treatment, Leanne would fit work around her hospital sessions. Two weeks after surgery, she even competed in an ‘Escape from the Wild’ challenge to raise money for Hope Against Cancer, as this was, now more than ever, a charity close to her heart.

“The pressure of having two businesses was too much. Having cancer was eye-opening, and

What I was going through was a total shock to everyone. My husband was more emotional about it than I was

it made me reprioritise my work-life balance. I realised I couldn’t run both businesses and give them the dedication they needed.”

Evolve was sold in July 2020 as a Management by Objectives framework (MBO), and Leanne was given the all-clear. This allowed her to continue developing the e-bate platform as well as her team, with the focus it needed.

RE-INVESTING IN THE TEAM CONTINUOUSLY

A big believer in the correlation between employee happiness and company success, Leanne is putting part of the MEIF funding towards team development to drive the evolution of the e-bate product in line with a great culture.

“Every business is based around people. People are developing the software, people are selling it, and people are using it. People are the crux of everything we do. If you look after your people, treat them with respect, develop them, and build a good culture, the money will generally follow. If people are happy, they’ll do a good job. Productivity goes down the pan if people are resentful or unhappy at work.”

In 12 months, e-bate has almost tripled its staffing figures, going from 12 team members last year to 34 today, including a great leadership team to manage the daily operations of the business. To make sure everyone is engaged, a simple smileyface-based survey is completed by all employees to rate their week each Friday. Any unhappy faces are then dealt with immediately, rather than waiting to address them in one-to-ones and avoiding team members unnecessarily leaving the company.

Flexibility is a perk of working at e-bate too. Allowing staff to flex their hours to do other things that are important to them, like going to the gym or getting their hair done means you’ll get more out of your people, according to Leanne. “If people turn up to work ‘late’ or leave ‘early’ because of

a gym session, you are generally improving your wellbeing and productivity. For me, it’s about trust but also measuring performance on output, not attendance. If individuals are meeting their KPIs, it doesn’t matter to me when the work is happening, as long as it’s happening.”

THE FUTURE

Now with incoming funding and the fact that transformation in technology and digitisation is high on the agenda of many companies, it’s possible for e-bate to have international partnerships and interactions, meaning going global is well within reach. Leanne believes our relationship with technology will continue to grow as we digitise those areas that are lagging and as decisionmaking becomes even more essential in business.

“My real belief is that, in time, we’ll end up where technology does an awful lot for us. We’ll have 20% of the population earning the wealth and paying higher taxes to support the rest of the population. Continued innovation will allow us to be creating new things like robots to do the shopping for us. We’ll do away with shelf stackers and cashiers, autonomous vehicles, renewables, and much more – much of this technology is already being trailed. There’ll be a reduction in a collaborative workforce with GenZ and the next generations as the economy and climate change, so we need to adapt and start making that transition. This could be a challenge for Baby Boomers and Generation X; those who still crave to deal with humans and have a high level of interaction.”

With the new funding on the horizon, more international businesses will benefit from e-bate’s intelligent rebate management solution. That’s one more area digitised and automated in the world. But it still holds onto that human touch, created, and led by real people, for real people.

People are the crux of everything we do. If you look after your people, treat them with respect, develop them, and build a good culture, the money will generally follow

Let’s Work Together A Modern Co-Working Partnership

Leave it to us

Our Business Support Specialists are on hand to help businesses perform their daily tasks. We work very closely with our clients to help them prioritise and manage their time effectively.  We work with you to follow the same procedures and processes as if they were a member of your team.

If you are looking for a helping hand that shares your enthusiasm and drive to make your business thrive, then consider us for all your business administration needs.

itting pretty in a cushty director’s role at Mattioli Woods, Mark Smith quit his job after 18 years, with no plan for the future. While he valued the wealth management firm and hugely respected its founders, Mark had decided that staying in the role would have been ‘just fine’. But after the death of his brother, ‘fine’ didn’t cut it.

Conflicting emotions surfaced on the day that it was announced to the London stock market that Mark had been appointed to the Board of Directors at Mattioli Woods at the young age of 38. It fell on the same day as the funeral of his late brother, who died aged just 36.

“It was a surreal day,” Mark said. “After a period of grieving, it made me think more about what I want to do with my life and doing things I love. I didn’t want the next few years to be just fine because time might be limited.”

The next few years saw Mark re-evaluate. Describing himself as a people person, he’d previously enjoyed working for smaller businesses. Twenty people worked at Mattioli Woods when he started with the firm. His passion for people led him to develop their graduate academy and by the time he’d chosen to leave in 2018, there were more than 620 employees.

His preference for working in small businesses and his determination to live a long and fulfilled life eventually led him to create his very first business in 2018 at the age of 48.

BECOMING A BUSINESS OWNER

Having become unemployed in the November of 2018, Mark focused on family time over the festive period, but in true entrepreneurial style, he made use of his days by connecting with others to share thoughts and ideas. It was in a garden centre café that he and friend Micky Johal came up with the idea for the financial planning business Truinvest.

The next five troubling months of pitching and presenting their business plan felt like a lifetime for Mark and Micky who were holding out for an investor. They’d finally hit the jackpot with an

IT’S A FINE LIFE

‘JUST FINE’ WAS NO LONGER GOOD ENOUGH FOR THIS ENTREPRENEUR IN THE FINANCIAL SERVICES INDUSTRY AFTER A FAMILY LOSS, WHICH BECAME THE DRIVING FORCE BEHIND QUITTING HIS JOB TO START HIS OWN BUSINESS

investor who offered £9m. Mark said: “It was all very Dragon’s Den and a really difficult period for us. Five months doesn’t sound very long now but it lingered at the time. When we got that offer it was unreal and it didn’t really sink in until our investors transferred £50k for legal fees. Micky took a picture of the balance; we couldn’t believe it. That was the moment that made it all very real.”

Media attention was key to the company’s success, and this is where Mark’s passion for people and looking after others really came through. “I had a lot of press contacts from previous jobs. I always told employees to look after the young reporters and help them with stories because they’ll be the editors in the future. We were able to deliver some good stories about what we were doing, and our press contacts would publish them.”

Crystalising value for their investors, Mark and Micky went on to manage assets worth over £1bn for Truinvest clients over the next three years, seeing their investor offer to buy 100% of the business in March this year. The pair left the business on good terms and still have some limited involvement in some of its operations today.

Mark is now Chair of a fintech business which has just received funding from a venture capitalist business. He’s just agreed to work on an interim basis for a pensions company that needs help working through the next stages of its journey. And as a director and shareholder, he’s working with his co-directors at Intrusted Pensions focused on acquiring new businesses. Each of these projects was acquired through professional contacts he’s gained through the years.

His advice to other business owners: “People get hung up on percentages. Do you want to own 100% of a business that’s worth nothing, or 80% of a business that’s worth a lot? By giving some away to the right person, you can create real value.”

In escaping the feeling of being ‘just fine’ in his career, Mark has created a fine life, not as a director or business owner, but as an entrepreneur.

Words by Kerry Smith

After a period of grieving, it made me think more about what I want to do with my life and doing things I love

ENTREPRENEUR BY TRADE

LUKE TOBIN IS THE FOUNDER OF MARKETING AGENCY DIGITAL ETHOS. HE STARTED THE COMPANY IN 2016, PROVIDING FIRST CLASS SERVICES INCLUDING SEO, PPC, SOCIAL MEDIA AND PR. HE WAS LISTED AS ‘ONE TO WATCH’ ON THE LDC TOP 50 MOST AMBITIOUS BUSINESS LEADERS FOR 2021 AND WAS NAMED SERVICE INDUSTRIES ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR FOR THE MIDLANDS AT THE GREAT BRITISH ENTREPRENEUR AWARDS 2020. TOM YOUNG SPOKE TO HIM ABOUT HOW HE’S BEEN TRAINING AS AN ENTREPRENEUR FOR ALL HIS LIFE

Tom Young: Take me back to the beginning of Digital Ethos, Luke – why did you start the company?

Luke Tobin: I’ve been working in marketing for 14 years – I started out in a few marketing agencies, and I had an in-house role for an e-commerce software provider out of Germany.

I saw there was a big divide between client expectation and the agencies’ delivery. Most agencies have the best interest of the client at heart, but they also have bills to pay, and the clients know that – if they’re not onboarded correctly, or the expectations aren’t right, a mistrust can develop between the two. The client wants to ensure they’re getting what they pay for.

Most clients would try to manage the agency as if they were an employee – wanting to audit every minute spent on every job – and not seeing the agency partner as a specialist; they’re there to deliver a specific skillset that can’t be done in-house. I saw that for a long time, and thought, ‘there’s got to be a better way.’

I had a couple of contract clients I’d been doing advisory work for and used them as the basis on which to found Digital Ethos. I started running their marketing for them, working with a handful of freelancers for the first couple of years, and it was great! The clients liked that my approach was different – focused on understanding what their long-term plans were. Clients often have a clear idea of how much money they want to make and how many sales they want to do, but no strategy for how to get there. I’d reverse engineer their goal, and work with them as a partner, and then their marketing channels became the components of the growth engine that drives that. It’s more specific than just going in and saying ‘hey, we sell SEO, we

sell PPC…’, and that approach seemed to work. We went from a couple of clients to 20-25, and I was suddenly struggling to maintain them alone, so I started hiring staff in May 2018, and we scaled up from there. We’ve now got 55 employees, five locations and more than 300 clients, so it’s been a journey, that’s for sure.

That’s impressive to go from just you to 55 employees in the space of four years, especially when two of those were pandemic years… The first six months of lockdown were pretty awful for our industry as a lot of people pulled back on their spend and cancelled services with us. During the first week we lost six or seven customers in one day. But I realised I had the staff there as a resource, and I’d been smart for the couple of years before that and banked some cash, so we contacted all of our clients and said, ‘we know you’re under undue stress and unforeseen circumstances, so we’d like to offer you a two month pause on your spend with us, and we’ll sign an agreement to start up again after that.’

That two-month buffer meant we only lost about 10 clients from our whole database; the rest restarted, and some of the lost 10 returned later. As a result, after the first lockdown, we started hiring, bringing 20 people in during that first covid year. We grew 110% in 12 months.

And you’ll have gained trust and loyalty from your clients by offering that pause – you’ve lost two months of revenue, but your clients will remember what you did for them. Exactly – it’s built long-term stability.

Most clients would try to manage the agency as if they were an employee –wanting to audit every minute spent on every job

Did you study marketing?

I didn’t, actually. I studied performing arts at college. I was offered a placement to study drama at Central in London, but I’d lost the love I had for it when I was a kid. I really enjoyed being in the National Youth Theatre when I was younger, and I’d say I was a pretty good child actor, but when I became a teenager, I realised I wasn’t that good, and I didn’t have the passion for it. I deferred my place for a year and then never went back. I started working instead –different sales or recruitment jobs, just cutting my teeth and earning some money.

My background is in comedy and theatre, and I’ve noticed how many people in marketing have performing arts experience – it seems that if you understand how story works, and how to connect with others, then you’re very well suited to it. Yeah, I agree with that. You can build trust and confidence in what you’re saying too. I found that my performance experience stood me in good stead for working in sales. You become quite good at reading people, which really helps.

Absolutely, it’s so interesting to see the real-world application of it, and realise other people don’t always have these skills.

No, they definitely don’t. It’s also that ability, even when you’re not feeling that confident, to put on the confident persona and just crack on.

Speaking of cracking on, coming out of the pandemic, you’d gone through a growth period and were assessing the lay of the land – what came next?

I acquired two businesses! One in Manchester called Boxed Red, a creative and web design agency – a bit left field to what we’d been doing before; we were outsourcing a lot of our creative webwork, and I really wanted to bring that in-house so we could offer the full service. We acquired them in July 2021 and eventually merged them into Digital Ethos –that’s taken a bit of work! We also acquired a local web design company called Nine Dot Media through a fire sale as they’d gone into administration, so we acquired all their staff and clients, bringing them into Digital Ethos as well.

We also opened international markets with a new office in Hamburg, Germany – we have half a dozen German clients now. We also launched a Canadian subsidiary out of Toronto and are starting to build up a North American client base.

Sounds like there are a lot of skillsets required in all of that. It’s one thing to be a marketing expert for an agency, but to then be running your own business needing to know sales, accounting, client management, and all the other business admin –how did you find the transition going from employee to entrepreneur?

I’ve always had businesses. I had my first one when I was 17. I was doing stock management for an alcohol business that did country meads and

I found that my performance experience stood me in good stead for working in sales. You become quite good at reading people

fruit wines. The owner of that business was often contracted to run quirky events like medievalthemed weddings or period banquets, and he was looking to retire. When I was 18, he asked if I wanted to run the events and split the money with him. I had no real business acumen at the time, so I said ‘yeah, sure, I’ll do all the hard work and give you half the money!’ I was doing that every weekend for about two or three years but learned a lot about process and structure.

Then I had a modelling agency – bit bizarre as I’d never done it, but my business partner had. We had a small fleet of models doing portfolio sales on high streets across the country. We tried to get fashion shoots, which is top end, but very hard to find work. We ended up with a lot of night club promotions and high street giveaways.

It sounds like you studied ‘being an entrepreneur’, rather than finding a specialism and building from that – you trained yourself to run any business, and then found what you wanted to do.

100%. I sold The Alcohol Store. The modelling agency dwindled until it completely crashed and burned, leaving me with some debt; that was a tough lesson at that age. Next, I set up my first web design business, called Quick 2 Design – I can’t believe I used the number 2; I had no eye for design at the time! We were selling cheap websites, built out of India. That did ok and we eventually sold that for a small amount of money. After that, I went travelling around Australia and Southeast Asia for three years and ended up doing door-to-door insulation sales; I led a team of 40 backpackers, and earned nearly £80k, which I saved and used to set up a new business selling experience day packages when I got back to the UK.

This was all before I was 25, so I was just trying a lot of things. That business ultimately struggled because we started in 2010, just after the recession. I still managed to sell both it and its website. The good thing about the website was that when I had it built, I’d no idea how to market it, so I’d started teaching myself to try and understand how AdWords worked, what SEO meant, and how to use social media algorithms, which – at the time – were so easy to manipulate that we got some good traction from it.

When I sold that business, I went to a recruitment agency to find work I’d be interested in and said, ‘I really like this digital marketing thing.’ I became an internet marketing consultant for a London-based digital agency where I really learned my trade.

You’ve had a good mix of ups and downs, but you’ve clearly got the drive to put faith in yourself and pursue an idea. What does entrepreneurship mean to you? What are the advantages to running your own business over working for somebody else?

Entrepreneur is a term that gets thrown around a lot. Any business owner could call themselves an entrepreneur, but for me, it’s more about an innate feeling of wanting to go my own way and pursue my own ideas. You don’t have that freedom as an employee. I like to build things the way I think they should be done, and not have to follow someone else’s path. I think I’ve become a good leader and manager – I wasn’t naturally. When I was younger, I wanted the limelight, perhaps due to my performance background. To be a good leader, you often need to take the backseat.

That’s a real challenge, especially when you’ve started a business single-handed and done everything yourself. The skill is knowing when to let go and trust them to do it.

It is, and I still find parts of that hard. It’d often be easier for me to jump in and do a job that would only take two minutes, rather than spend 20 minutes explaining it to someone else. I have to remember that once I’ve shown them once, they can do it next time. Because we’ve scaled so quickly – going from a couple of hundred grand turnover to four million in four years – it’s meant that every year we’re doubling or tripling in size and staff. That’s how you get difficulties with staff and personnel because the processes aren’t maturing fast enough to support them.

You’re clearly someone with other ideas you could pursue, but would you prefer to build around Digital Ethos and explore side projects, or be free to develop new ideas from scratch?

It’s a great question. There’s a couple of things I’ve done to satisfy my entrepreneurial drive like the acquisitions, and I might go for another. I’d like to find an agency of a similar size, find a way to finance a buy-out, and have a look at what that could look like in the long term. I do have a clear five-year strategy of growth for this business. I want to become one of the top 10 independent agencies. We’re already in the top 50 now.

And then… I don’t know. Maybe I’ll bring in a managing director at some point, and free myself up to explore something else. I do a lot of advisory work for eco-tech companies, and I’ve also set up Tobin Capital to invest in small startup and scale-up companies. That’s going well, with several of those companies getting a nice pre-money valuation.

Those other interests feed my entrepreneurial passion, while I continue driving Digital Ethos forward, look at the international markets and grow the brand. I really want it to have international reputation and recognition as one of the best independent agencies.

It’d often be easier for me to jump in and do a job that would only take two minutes, rather than spend 20 minutes explaining it to someone else

IT’S ALL IN THE SERVICE

LEICESTER’S DIVERSE POPULATION HAS BROUGHT SOME OF THE WORLD’S FINEST CUISINE TO THE CITY. JAIMON THOMAS IS THE FOUNDER OF THE KAYAL AND HERB RESTAURANTS. WE SPOKE TO HIM ABOUT HIS DRIVE TO EXPLORE NEW IDEAS, AND WHY GREAT SERVICE IS AT THE HEART OF WHAT HE DOES

Jaimon Thomas has worked in hospitality around the world. A farmer’s son, originally from Kerala, South India, he has a degree in Hotel Management and an MBA. He spent two years working as a Maître D’ on cruise liners and as a manager in India, followed by three more years in the USA. He moved to the UK in 2002, where he began working for a consultant who designed hotels and other hospitality outlets.

Away from work, he’s a passionate family man, and crazy about vintage cars and motorcycles, even completing rides from Kerala to Delhi (1,596 miles) on his Royal Enfield. Growing up in South India, it was his family who inspired him. He’s also a spiritual, God-fearing man – a practicing Christian, he attends Sunday mass without compromise.

“Most of my family were entrepreneurs. My father was a farmer but had a business on the side, and our other relatives always had businesses on the go – I knew I wanted to own my own business because of them.”

Sure enough, Jaimon knew what he wanted to do.

The idea was for a restaurant, inspired by his mum and their native Kerala. Jaimon’s wife, Jisha, is a registered nurse practitioner and her job meant that they’d settled in Leicester, which

came with an added blessing.

“I realised there were many Indian restaurants in Leicester, but that meant the population would be able to recognise the difference between Keralan cuisine and other Indian food.”

Kayal was born. Serving Kerala Backwater Cuisine, Kayal is now a well-established feature of Leicester’s culinary scene. The restaurant has been featured in Len & Ainsley’s Big Food Adventure on BBC One, been visited by Paul Hollywood and The Hairy Bikers, and even won Best Venue at the 2007 Leicester Comedy Festival.

“Everything I do is authentic, exceptional, and unique – the concept, design and quality must differ from anyone else. I truly believe in good business ethics, providing customer satisfaction, and equal opportunity to my team. I’ve always believed in ‘Atithi Devo Bhava’, which means ‘Guest is God’ in Sanskrit.”

This service-first approach has been very successful. Kayal has been franchised to three other locations, and a vegan fine dining version – Herb – has opened across the road from the original restaurant. Jaimon has also opened the Merchant of Venice Café and his newest concept, Donald Watson’s Vegan Bar, which serves a menu of exclusively vegan drinks. The restaurateur wants this to be a prestigious venue for UK vegans.

“It’s important to follow the times. Britain has always led the way on new trends. Veganism started in the UK, but there weren’t many places to get great vegan food. That’s why I had the idea for Herb and the bar – there was a gap in the market.”

Jaimon has a quality that is common in a lot of entrepreneurs: he’s excited about the next idea, always seeing the potential for new and unique places for people to explore.

“The idea, creation, and implementation are exciting to me – I get a kick out of following that; It’s part of my lifestyle. I wouldn’t suit a 9-5 job anymore. I like the freedom to explore ideas and choose what I want to do.”

This is what separates an entrepreneur from a business owner. The two terms are often used

interchangeably, but Jaimon is very clear about the difference.

“Anyone could buy or inherit a business and become the owner. An entrepreneur has ideas, the drive to make them happen, and a willingness to take risks in order to see it through.”

Despite the willingness to take risks, and so many years of experience, Jaimon still hasn’t needed to learn too many tough lessons – just one positive one.

“I’ve learned that if we focus on quality and customer service, everything else follows that. It can be a slow build, but you have to understand that the money comes later. Start with a great product or service and the money will follow.”

It’s been quite a journey so far – longer even than Kerala to Delhi – but it’s not over yet.

“I’ve got plenty on my plate as it stands, but I’m interested in other ways of expanding. I’m starting to look at franchising more of my existing ventures, rather developing new concepts. It’s continued expansion, but without everything being on my shoulders.”

Words by Tom Young

Everything I do is authentic, exceptional, and unique –the concept, design and quality must differ from anyone else

HARD WORK AND HUMILITY

THROUGH HARD WORK AND A CONTINUOUS DRIVE TO LEARN THROUGHOUT HIS CAREER, ROB BRIGHT OF BTT HAS NEVER LET ANYTHING HOLD HIM BACK. DEDICATED TO HIS SKILL WITH EXTENDED HOURS AND DETERMINATION AND A HEALTHY MIX OF HUMBLE, ROB NOW HEADS A LEADING COMMS COMPANY BY EXAMPLE

Astark impression was left upon Rob Bright who, as a young man, experienced the impact that a loyal, responsible and compassionate employer can have on a team.

After graduating from Hertfordshire University in Electronics, Rob Bright started work for an electrical contractor almost immediately.

Being inspired by his new employer’s work ethic and kindness, his head and heart were well and truly committed to hard work that influenced the way he not only operated himself but the way in which he approaches next generation talent in his own company.

Rob told me: “My first boss was very kind to me, helping with further education costs and paying me decently for the work that I did. He invested in me and believed in my abilities at that young age and that ethic to support young people who work hard hasn’t left me.”

It was the empathy and character of his first employer that led him to develop the skillset that would see him become a respected employer himself.

Working hard

Going back some time to tell Rob’s story, we asked more about how he built the foundations of his success in the earlier days of his career, which included lessons learnt from burn-out.

Headhunted by various employers over the years, Rob’s work ethic meant he worked long hours and gave his professional life a great deal

Words by Emily Miller

of effort and passion. “I like working, I always have done, but there came a time when I was working seven days a week and would be missing life moments like weddings, christenings and family holidays.”

Rarely seeing home, as one of the leading engineers in the UK, Rob was in demand, and it was during this time that he was positioned all over the UK. Travelling became a huge part of the job and when he was home, he was playing catch up. “I would come home and still couldn’t sit still – the home life jobs I had been neglecting would be stacking up so even home became a place where I wasn’t relaxing,” he explains.

This time was an extensive period of his life, he tells me. “It’s not something I regret as such, I wouldn’t be where I am today without this commitment to hard work and long hours, but I

have gotten better at letting go and switching off from work when life needs it.”

The vast experiences Rob had in leading teams, training members and making advancements in many areas of the industry meant that he became one of the most soughtafter engineers in the country and yet something wasn’t quite right. He needed more.

Breaking the ceiling

Rob finally decided to take things freelance after he’d reached the ceiling in working for major suppliers in the UK – he’d reached the top but needed something to drive him forward still.

After making the move to freelance mode, Rob felt more in control of his career and continued to thrive. “I felt I’d reached a point in working for others where it wasn’t fulfilling me

I like working, I always have done, but there came a time when I was working seven days a week and would be missing life moments

enough. I needed a new challenge, to not be limited in where I could take my experience and drive for further innovation in the field.”

Making moves

From his freelance work, Rob built up yet more experiences in what it was to be in control of his own career. His family had a business in telecommunications called BTT, which and it seemed like the right time to make another career move. He joined BTT in 2000 and took over the running of the business in 2006. The firm covers telecoms, IT systems and keeps businesses connected using advanced systems and support.

“I’d more than earnt my stripes in the industry so when it came to taking over, it wasn’t about being the son of the owner, it was about how I could take the company to the next level.”

And he did. Then some. BTT now services some of the largest companies in the UK with processes in place that enable it to be streamlining continuously, pushing and inspiring Rob to become ever more innovative and progressive.

In team he trusts

Leading a team of both experienced and young, newly qualified engineers keeps the company dynamic, and keeps Rob interested and passionate about the company’s growth.

“So many of my experiences come from how I treat our growing team. I value both the fresh blood that newly qualified engineers bring but also the experience of the older team members.

“They learn from each other. Trust is huge for me too, trusting my team to do the job to the best of their ability empowers them, I see it every day,” he adds.

For Rob this trust extends to supporting them when they make mistakes, he tells me: “We learn through our mistakes, I have always been the same and I allow for this in my team. You learn more from your mistakes rather than getting it right every time.”

This trust has also allowed for Rob to experience a different approach to his own work and helped him in his own lesson to approach a better work-life balance. “Part of letting go is being able to delegate to people who can do the job, trusting in the processes you have in place and more importantly, trusting the people you have hired to do the job.”

Believing in his team, Rob explains the importance of placing increased value on them, “I often give pay rises higher than they might

believe they deserve. Showing them that I have this confidence in them instinctively makes them want to do more.”

Golden advice

A humble attitude is paramount to Rob after so many years in the business. “I think it’s so important to be humble, to look to others for inspiration and support, to learn from.”

Through remembering his hard-working ethic and supporting his team, this entrepreneur is keen to never cease learning and pushing forward, that’s clear. Slowing down is gradually happening with talk of caravanning and holidays with his partner and family at the close of our conversation. With his work being is his true passion, it’s hard to switch off, but he doesn’t need to, not right now at least.

“I still get so much from working life, but I do get a lot from downtime too now. I don’t take the laptop on holiday anymore so that’s a real shift for me! I love to use my engineer brain tinkering with vintage cars too. I can’t see me slowing down too much any time soon though, Emily!”

We learn through our mistakes, I have always been the same and I allow for this in my team. You learn more from your mistakes rather than getting it right

Rob as a sponsor presenting an award to Jake Karia at the Real Entrepreneurs’ Awards 2022

INTEGRITY IS EVERYTHING

INTEGRITY, ADAPTABILITY AND A SENSE OF ENJOYMENT – THESE ARE THE THEMES THAT REVEALED THEMSELVES FROM A CHAT WITH ENTREPRENEUR AND COMMERCIAL LAWYER RIK PANCHOLI ONE SUNNY DAY IN MAY

Pattersons Commercial Law is a prolific firm in the corporate legal industry. Its director Rik Pancholi is well-known for his ability to spot a business opportunity and for supporting those around him. We wanted to discover what his entrepreneurial journey entailed, how it has led to such success, what the key turning points in his career were, and his advice for budding entrepreneurs.

Walk the walk

One of the first times legal professional Rik Pancholi told a client that he had a desire to become a commercial lawyer in 2008, he was met with contempt. He recalled the moment to me quite early on in a chat which felt illuminating on his character: “My client simply said that he had no idea how I was going to be any good at advising business on the laws within it if I hadn’t actually owned my own business.

“He told me that he thought if I hadn’t walked the walk and felt the pain of pitfalls in business then I couldn’t be a good corporate lawyer. That did it, I set up a business in the weeks that followed.”

took it on board and did what you did.”

Essentially, Rik had set up a ‘practice’ business, he told me: “I started an ad mag, a relatively simple set up selling advertising space which circulated quartely to 14,000 homes and businesses. The business ran successfully for three years. It taught me so much – he was right! I felt what it was like to need to chase debt, to feel the ups and downs and ins and outs of owning your own company. The experience was invaluable.”

Talk the talk

A move to Singapore meant an end to the business, but that was part and parcel of the whole thing anyway: “It wasn’t a sellable business, but I didn’t do it for that reason. Instead, I wound it down. After working as a lawyer in Singapore for a while, and for other practices here in the UK for a couple of years, the time came for me to go it alone and I set up Pattersons Commercial Law.”

Words by Emily Miller

Impressed at this, I reflected his statement back to him; “Well, I think that shows a lot about your character, Rik. It’s pretty rare that someone might take that kind of criticism for something they haven’t even started yet and swallow it down, then do something about it – do something to change that perception. It’s certainly a humble move in my view, that you would do something rather than bat it off and carry on regardless, you

Providing support for corporate transactions including elements of employment work, commercial property work, tax advice and corporate structural advice, Pattersons Commercial Law is one of the Midland’s most prolific commercial law firms and it’s always growing – even through global pandemics.

When I ask him how he thinks he got here, he replies: “Through doing business with integrity first and foremost. It’s important, a core value of mine is to be honest and to make decisions based on that. Your team in turn adopt that culture too.”

As a leader, you have many a responsibility to your team and one of those is being in control - they have to have that confidence in you

Being an influence

Talking of teams, Pattersons Commercial Law has always been about progression, both in its values and in its drive to offer vast expertise. Even through the coronavirus pandemic, the company went from strength to strength showing their resilience, flexibility and passion for growth. Rik commented: “We restructured our team which included creating a leadership team, buying another firm and expanding our reach in both services and support.”

When I ask him, “How did you do all that at a time when no one really knew what was happening?” he replied, “Through working with our team, using the resources that we had and pulling together in a way that allowed us to see opportunity. Change is inevitable in life; it’s how you adapt to it that counts.”

The team are mentioned a lot in our conversation, it’s clear that Rik thrives from surrounding himself with the right people. “My door is always open – I trust the leaders to do their job but at the same time they know that I am here to offer them guidance if they need it.”

I ask Rik how he thinks his team views him. “I think they see me handling things, they don’t really see the side of me that might become overwhelmed on the rare occassion.

“As a leader, you have many a responsibility to your team and one of those being in control – they have to have that confidence in you.”

Enjoy what you do

It’s no secret that an entrepreneur will thrive if their work is enjoyable, and you can feel that this is the case for Rik who has a way of being both approachable and light about things as well as instilling a confidence in his ability as a leader and business owner.

“It has to be enjoyable to do these things every day, to go to work and handle the pressure. If it wasn’t enjoyable for me, I wouldn’t do it!” he adds, and it’s absolutely believable.

So, how does he handle pressure? “I can switch off, enjoy life outside of work. I’ve just started upping my fitness routine, and I’m planning family holidays. I have two young children and spending time with them is of course amazing.”

Not one for resting on his laurels though, Rik enjoys the challenge of what the future might bring and he tells me: “We’re investing heavily in our employment and insolvency teams and are excited to be opening an office in Nottingham.”

This entrepreneur suggests that by doing and enjoying what you love, learning by action and doing it all with honesty and integrity, you really can’t go too far wrong.

It has to be enjoyable to do these things every day, to go to work and handle the pressure. If it wasn’t enjoyable for me, I wouldn’t do it!

IF YOU COULD TURN BACK TIME WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO YOURSELF?

Hospitality entrepreneur and franchisor

Herb, Donald Watson’s Vegan Bar, Merchant of Venice

“I would advise myself to pursue the same route that I took in my early days of entrepreneurship. I was lucky to find my passion early in life. In my mind, setting up something of value and quality was paramount. I wanted to make a difference with my work. If you love what you do, you never have to a work in your life.

“Rolling back in time, I would want to have the same mindset and attitude towards life. I hope to have a curious mind, confidence in my abilities, and a learning attitude. I have enjoyed the ride so far. An entrepreneur’s life is full of challenges. Finding solutions to these challenges has given me a lot of kick in my life and I see them as a opportunities for growth.

“The only thing I probably do differently is to keep a work-life balance. I would like to keep the sanity of my home, by not working from home or bringing workload into my personal life. There is a lot of stress and pressure that entrepreneurs take in their work life, which needs to be carefully managed and needs to not spill over to our loved ones at home.”

Jaimon Thomas is a hospitality entrepreneur. He is the founder and franchisor of Herb and Kayal restaurants, Merchant of Venice, and Donald Watson’s Vegan Bar.

LAURA CLARKE Director Chilwell Products Ltd

“Having stepped into my role at a particularly young age of 28, moving through Brexit and into a pandemic, it was a whirlwind start for sure. Navigating the company through these challenges taught me that it’s always better to do something rather than nothing at all. Usually, I like to have all the facts before making decisions. I’m a stickler for information and knowledge and always believed that knowledge is power.

“There’s been times when I’ve deliberated over decisions and potential outcomes for days and sometimes weeks. This has led to further problems through not acting on something, and in turn, causes more work down the line. Unfortunately, with both Brexit and the pandemic –particularly the latter, I had very little information or facts before making decisions. It forced my hand, but it was quite possibly one of the greatest learning curves I’ve experienced. Sometimes you must take risks.

“You won’t always get it right, but you’ll certainly learn something – every outcome has at least one positive to take from it, no matter which way the results swing. There’s no such thing as a bad decision. You can always look back and say I’m glad I did, rather than I wish I had.”

Based in Ilkeston, Derby, Chilwell Products is a familyowned scaffold parts maker. The company was set up in 1977 and is current run by Laura Clarke. Chilwell Products has recently gained media coverage for introducing a fourday working week for its employees.

JAIMON THOMAS

Kayal,

COMPANIES IN THE EAST MIDLANDS

500 TOP 2022

CELEBRATING THE BUSINESS SUCCESS OF THE EAST MIDLANDS AS A REGION, THE EAST MIDLANDS TOP 500 COMPANIES 2022 LIST SHOWCASES A STRONG, DIVERSE RANGE OF RESILIENT FIRMS. PROFESSOR DAVID RAE OF DE MONTFORT UNIVERSITY HAS COMPILED AND ANALYSED THE DATA PROVIDING AN INSIGHT INTO THE LARGEST INDUSTRIES OPERATING FROM THE EAST MIDLANDS, THE MOST INFLUENTIAL COMPANIES, AND SOME KEY CASE STUDIES

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FOREWORDS

EAST MIDLANDS CHAMBER

s we emerge from one of the most difficult periods our economy has endured for generations, we again look to our businesses to haul us back and spearhead a strong recovery.

Scott Knowles Chief Executive, East Midlands Chamber

The East Midlands, often labelled the engine room of the UK’s economy, will be at the very forefront in shaping our country’s future in a post-Brexit, post-Covid and net zero world. We are the region for making, moving and innovating – one packed with hugely important players in the manufacturing, engineering and logistics industries. Whether it’s unlocking electric aviation or discovering the drugs that treat previously uncurable conditions, our impact goes far beyond Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire.

There’s an amazing story to tell here and it is set out in vivid detail within the East Midlands Top 500 Companies Index, which showcases the huge

contribution our region makes to UK Plc, and the strength and depth of our business community. It’s a great opportunity to take stock of just how many household brands we boast, as well as many others that may not be so familiar to the average person on the street but are titans of their industries or key components in supply chains.

Many of the top positions remain stable in the fourth annual listing but there are interesting observations to be made in the climbers among these latter cohorts – the wide variety of SMEs that ultimately make our economy tick.

We are in the grip of a cost of doing business crisis, resulting from a combination of global and local headwinds. But these firms – if supported sufficiently – can drive the economy forward by upskilling our people, innovating our traditional industries and making the productivity gains required.

DE MONTFORT UNIVERSITY

Professor Heather McLaughlin Pro Vice-Chancellor Academic Dean of the Faculty of Business and Law

am pleased to introduce the third report on the East Midlands Top 500 Companies (EM Top 500) on behalf of De Montfort University. The EM Top 500 was launched successfully in 2020 and celebrates the business success of the East Midlands as a region with continuing diversity and innovation, with a number of firms which are new to the index. They contribute greatly to the economic regeneration and growth of the region.

De Montfort University is proud to work with

the region’s businesses, and to educate future generations of business and community leaders.

The Top 500 team brings together leading researchers from the Business Schools at De Montfort, Derby and Nottingham Trent Universities. We greatly appreciate all their contributions, together with the business leadership from East Midlands Chamber, the excellent online coverage through BusinessLive from Reach plc, this report in Real Entrepreneurs’ Magazine, and the valued sponsorship from Bradgate Estates Ltd.

PURPOSE OF EM TOP 500

BY PROFESSOR DAVID RAE

Words by Professor David Rae Editor

East Midlands Top 500 Companies

he aim of the East Midlands Top 500 Companies index is to highlight the largest businesses based in the region, and to track the changes in the composition and performance of this group of companies.

The index shows the range and strength of the leading businesses in the East Midlands, across the ‘Three Counties’ of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire areas covered by the East Midlands Chamber. These businesses are at the heart of the East Midlands economy and are high on the list of those most likely to drive growth and create jobs in the future. Their prosperity affects not only the workforces, supply chains and the communities around them, but ultimately everyone in the region.

The first EM Top 500 was launched in May 2020, and both the 2020 and 2021 reports were published whilst the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown were having a daily impact on all our lives as well as many of the companies featured.

At last, the East Midlands Top 500 Companies 2022 appears in a changed economic context, following a period in which the region’s businesses have continued to show great resilience in responding to the many new challenges and opportunities they face.

The Top 20 businesses are announced on Tuesday, July 5, when the live breakfast event reveals the results and what they indicate for our region, both now and in the future.

The EM Top 500 2022 is a partnership led by Professor David Rae and Linda Hickson, Head of Department of Accounting and Finance at Leicester Castle Business School, De Montfort University, with valued contributions from our research analyst Aboobacker Sidhique Salamath; and from Alex Charles (University of Derby), Dr Will Rossiter (Nottingham Trent University); East Midlands Chamber; Reach Media; and event sponsor Bradgate Estates Ltd. This year, we said farewell to Dr Rachel English and thank her for many past contributions to both the Leicestershire Top 200 and East Midlands Top 500.

And finally, you are also reading this in Real Entrepreneurs Magazine! We are very pleased to welcome Real Entrepreneurs’ Magazine and Cross Productions as a complementary media partner to Reach Media and BusinessLive. This brings the Top 500 report to a wider readership in a high-quality printed magazine for a longer period. So it’s back to business, only better.

These businesses are at the heart of the East Midlands economy and are high on the list of those most likely to drive growth

HOW IS THE TOP 500 COMPILED

AND WHO IS INCLUDED?

he EM Top 500 index lists private and public limited companies with their registered offices located in Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire. It does not include large employers who have their registered offices elsewhere; nor does it include public organisations, mutually owned, co-operatives and Educational and Health Trusts which derive most of their income from Government.

The 2022 index uses historical data from Companies House accounts filed for the period between July 2019 and June 2020. It ranks companies by their annual turnover and also includes the number of employees and the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) recorded. This is accessed via the FAME database published by Bureau van Dijk. The approach builds on and integrates the ‘Top 200’ indices for each county.

This time period includes the first three months of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown, which means that companies which have their reporting year up to June 2020 will include some results from this period. Most companies would not see a big

effect from the COVID lockdowns in this index and the full effects will be seen in the 2023 report.

Because the index is based on company accounts, it inevitably lags current company performance by around two years, since companies have up to nine months after their year-end to file their accounts. The datasets for the county-level indices were compiled first, checked, standardised and then combined into the East Midlands dataset. There are rigorous checks to eliminate duplicates, to remove companies that have become insolvent or in liquidation, and to ensure that groups of companies and subsidiaries are shown accurately.

The gap between the company year-ends and publication of the index means the information is historic rather than current, but it is not ‘out of date’. The availability of the two previous years means that comparisons over three-year timespan from 2020-22 are now possible. The index is increasingly recognised as a valuable baseline for economic recovery and the resurgence of businesses and the wider economy.

WHO IS IN THE TOP 500?

HEADLINE CHANGES FROM 2021

These 500 companies based in the East Midlands region had a combined turnover

They employed a total of 469,512 people. This employment reflects national and some international employment by these companies, beyond the East Midlands.

These represent quite small changes from the previous year. However, it is interesting that combined turnover has fallen by more than 4%, accompanied by a 3% increase in employment. This suggests, at a high level, that regional competitiveness and productivity has decreased slightly. These relatively small changes mask shifts in the composition of the companies within the index.

of:

NEW ENTRANTS COMPARED WITH 2021: 78 FIRMS

These are primarily due to companies with increases in turnover that brought them above the threshold, together with changes in corporate structure and registered office moves into the region.

This is an increase from 55 new firms in 2021, and represents a 15.6% turnover of companies which indicates a healthy level of ‘churn’ within the index, by introducing new firms.

Forty-three of these are in the 401-500 tier of the index. These include companies to watch in the future for continued growth.

This also meant that 78 firms left the index. These departures reflect companies whose turnover declined or grew less than the index, or who became insolvent, dormant or went into administration; acquisitions or sales; and registered office moves out of the region.

THE TOP 30 BUSINESSES 2022

ooking first at the Top 10 businesses in the 2022 table, it is surprising how few changes there are. The top 10 ‘brand name’ firms are little changed in their places. Pendragon, Next, Frasers Group each go by one place, whilst Barratts moves down three places to six. The top 10 still consists of retail (4) automotive manufacturing and retail (3), housebuilding (2) and manufacturing (1) companies. The companies in the 11-30 grouping reflect a wider range of business activities. Manufacturing businesses are more evident, including the food sector. Major business service and finance organisations retain high positions, as do a range of retailers. The strength of the housebuilding and construction materials sector remains evident.

THE NUMBER 1 BUSINESS: BOOTS UK LTD AND ITS RELATED COMPANIES

For the third year, Boots UK Ltd is the number one company in the East Midlands, based on its turnover of £8,711m. This year we have grouped together the other companies carrying the brand name Boots in the index which are all owned by the parent company, Walgreens Boots Alliance, in the United States. This is in line with our policy of grouping together firms which have common ultimate ownership.

BUSINESS SECTOR ANALYSIS

AND TRENDS

e analysed the 500 firms across 41 business sectors based on Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) coding. This was distilled to a framework of six aggregated groups of sectors as shown in the table. This compares the picture from the 2022 index with 2021.

TOP 500 SECTORAL BREAKDOWN

BUSINESS SECTORAL ANALYSIS

Within the sectoral analysis, there has been an increase in the complexity of company ownership structures, and the number of holding companies. These have affected the classification and the results in some of the sectors, and led to changes in the analysis from previous years. In the analysis, the number of ‘other’ sector companies has been reduced. There is a reduction in the number of engineering companies; some have moved, consolidated, or dropped out of the index. Whilst revenue has fallen proportionately, total employment in the sector has increased. There is a Manufacturing Insight section later in the report. The retail sector increased by eight companies and over 21,000 jobs, whilst turnover was static. Wholesale traders also increased significantly in companies, employment and turnover, indicating the growth of the supply-chain economy in the

region. Construction and Business Support Services sectors also increased in numbers of companies, revenues and jobs. The motor vehicle trade saw a consolidation with fewer companies but smaller reductions in turnover and employment.

The diversity in the mix of sectors is in many ways a strength of the regional economy. However, the pandemic has shown that previously healthy sectors, including aviation, travel, hospitality and retail, encountered either temporary or longerlasting shocks which had major impacts on their financial performance, but these have yet to show in this period. Sectors such as housing and most manufacturing subsectors continued to perform well, as did business services. Motor vehicle trade, as well as manufacturing, continues to be a significant sector, if declining in scale.

MANUFACTURING INSIGHT

REPORT HIGHLIGHTS:

ere in the East Midlands, we see firsthand the considerable contribution made by our manufacturing companies – the 2022 Top 500 East Midlands Business Listing identifies the manufacturing sector as employing 115,263 people, across 158 of the top 500 businesses, and generating over £20bn in revenue.

Manufacturing in 2022 was the largest of the six sectors in the region, contributing 22 per cent of the regions total revenue. With this presence comes significant responsibility. But manufacturing sector businesses are facing complex multiple challenges. These include: Recovery from COVID; soaring energy prices, fluctuations in raw materials, the need for daily risk management, the uplift in National Insurance, the lack of skilled staff, and the effects of Brexit on trading relationships. However, the sector is responding

energetically in these four interconnected ways:

First, the sector is adopting a collaborative approach, through the launch of the expanded ‘East Midlands Manufacturing Network’ supported by East Midlands Chamber. Collaboration is also in abundance at the 155-acre Derby SmartParc SEGRO food manufacturing, distribution and incubation hub.

Second, through diversification, in driving low carbon hydrogen technologies, and delivering new and advanced nuclear power as part of the Green Industrial revolution. The Midlands Engine Green Growth ‘Hydrogen Technologies Strategy’ shows the way to develop low-carbon hydrogen production capacity and accompanying employment. Rolls-Royce is developing a new Nuclear Engineering Academy alongside its plans for small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs).

Third, accelerating digital transformation, enabling both sustainability and enhanced productivity. This is seen in the announcement of £13m funding for the East Midlands Institute of Technology (IoT). Academic partners will join forces to develop the highly advanced workforce needed to lead the UK’s green and digital revolution, to support post-pandemic recovery, and its journey to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The Digital Transformation Accelerator project will also create and enhance skills to fill the digital skills gap, switch from manual to digital processes, and increasing long-term productivity and efficiency.

Finally, to grow the return on investment from sustainable business practices.

The East Midlands has the highest per capita CO2 emissions in England, a legacy from the high proportion of regional extractive and manufacturing companies. However, regional businesses are increasingly adopting proenvironmental practices. Turnover generated solely from Low Carbon and Environmental Goods and Services (LCEGS) is growing. In 2015, 15% of businesses supplied LCEGS; by 2021 this had increased to 37%. This increase is a result of new market entrants and existing companies shifting product lines towards low carbon options, rather than a rise in specialist

Alexandra Charles University of Derby, College Head of Executive Education and Enterprise Development

STUDIES BY DR FRED PATERSON, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS AND CLEAN GROWTH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF DERBY. DATA

LCEGS suppliers. Sustainable business strategies and practices deliver positive returns on sustainability investment; improve efficiency, increase resilience and reduce risks. Most important, they lower costs, drive sales and increase profits for the manufacturing companies in our region.

These four responses– collaboration, netzero diversification, digital and sustainable transformation, and return on sustainability investment – evidence our pride in our regional manufacturing companies and the enormous contribution they make locally, nationally and globally. Confronted by society’s biggest challenges, these companies continue to strengthen the UK’s industrial base, deliver sustained stable growth, transition to a net-zero economy, and build resilient workplaces and workforces for the future.

HOW DO THE TOP 500 COMPANIES SHOW SUSTAINABILITY IN THEIR REPORTING?

longside the EM Top 500, researchers at De Montfort University looked at the sustainability practices of companies in the index. Sustainability in the business context broadly refers to the management of social and environmental impacts (both negative and positive) in the production and delivery of their goods and services. Whilst the economic performance of business is often the focus, more and more consumers and investors are concerned about how companies address major societal concerns such as climate change, modern slavery, and inclusion and diversity. It is becoming increasingly clear that an important measure of business success will be the ability of companies

to demonstrate not only their contribution to the economy, but to society and the environment more widely.

To gauge what the Top 500 report about their sustainability activities and achievements, we collected information from each company’s website and annual reports. The main findings are summarised below, but the full results are published as a separate report on DMU’s East Midlands Economic Data Repository website.

HOW MANY COMPANIES PUBLICLY REPORT THEIR SUSTAINABILITY PRACTICES?

early half (45%) of the Top 500 companies mention sustainability and provide information about their social and environmental commitments and activities. This increases to 74% and 85% for the Top 100 and Top 20 companies respectively. Whilst 277 companies (55%) did not mention

Written by Dr Louise Obara De Montfort University

the term sustainability (or related terms such as corporate responsibility). On closer inspection, nearly 60% of these (165 companies in total) published information related to sustainability (e.g. on their website or in their annual financial report). This is important, as it shows that although companies do not explicitly talk about sustainability, they recognise and show concern for their impacts on society more broadly.

HOW DETAILED ARE COMPANIES’ REPORTING OF THEIR SUSTAINABILITY ACTIVITIES?

The level of detail provided by companies that mention and report their sustainability practices was generally limited. Only 18% of companies provided detailed information about their sustainability goals and contribution which increases slightly when company size is considered (i.e. 30% and 35% of the Top 100 and Top 20 respectively). However, the majority of companies reported only a limited amount of information publicly about their sustainability goals, activities and impacts.

Companies that report their sustainability activities

WHAT SUSTAINABILITY ACTIVITIES DO COMPANIES REPORT?

The five most common areas and activities companies reported in relation to sustainability:

1 the environment, e.g. actions to address climate change and improve energy efficiency;

2 the community, e.g. working with and supporting local charities;

3 people, e.g. commitments towards employees and, to a lesser degree, suppliers;

4 social/society, e.g. covering a wide range of activities including ethics, equality, inclusion, human rights, and stakeholder engagement; and, 5 governance, e.g. the corporate policies, processes, and mechanisms for the management of sustainability.

CONCLUSION

Overall, the study showed that a good proportion of the Top 500 are considering and reporting their social and environmental impacts and activities, but much more detail needs to be released to show publicly the extent of their sustainability contribution to the region in addition to their economic impacts.

Level of sustainability detail provided

MOVERS AND SHAKERS BUSINESSES TO WATCH

his section highlights companies which have moved into or climbed furthest up the index. Within this group are businesses that are growing more rapidly than the norm, including some with exceptional strategic ambition and in some cases also demonstrating innovation and leadership.

In some cases, a move into or up the index may result from registered office moves into the region and be purely administrative. This also occurs with companies moving out of the region and leaving the index. There are also some

TOP NEW ENTRANT

92 GLW FEEDS LTD

GLW Feeds is one of the largest independent, family-owned livestock and speciality feed manufacturers in the UK. Founded in 1873 by George Llewellyn White, the company remains in the control of the White family. The first 100 years in the history of Geo L White Limited saw it as a trader of coal, feeds, fertilisers and goods brought by train to the East Midlands. Based in Shepshed, the company has grown organically. It achieved a turnover of £144.7m in the period to September 30, 2019, with a net profit over £1m. Whilst turnover slipped below £100m the following year, growth has resumed in 2020-21. The business is long established as an independent animal feed supplier in the region.

mergers of previously separate companies, and changes in corporate structure, mainly of large organisations.

Within this group, there is a growing number of international businesses locating UK operating companies based in the region. There are also companies in sectors including manufacturing, healthcare, retail housing and other sectors moving into or up the index. This reflects the diversity of business activities in the region. It includes family-founded businesses in the region which have been growing for several decades and have now entered the Top 500.

Fuel, food and retail operations on filling station forecourts.

NOTEWORTHY DEBUTS

There are many new entrants further down the Top 500. Some of these are well-known, even household names, including these ones making their debut in the EM Top 500.

466 BIRDS (DERBY) LIMITED

The renowned bakery manufacturing retail and café business in the region remains in the control of the Bird family, and turnover grew to over £26m in 2019.

486 NOTTINGHAM FOREST FOOTBALL CLUB LIMITED

The celebrated football club has had an eventful career having achieved turnover above £25m in the 2019-20 season, returning to the Premier League on May 29, 2022.

489 CLIFTON PACKAGING GROUP LIMITED

Clifton Packaging Ltd was established by the Sheikh brothers in Leicester in 1981 and built a highly successful business in the flexible food packaging industry over the following four decades. The Group Holding company was formed in 2002 to own and control the group of companies. Both the business and the directors have won multiple awards over the years, both for their business success and their contributions to the community.

HIGHEST CLIMBERS

BELCAN INTERNATIONAL LTD

181 place rise from 329 to 148

UK subsidiary of Belcan Alliances Inc, USA. Provides engineering and recruitment services to the aviation industry worldwide.

A.F. SWITCHGEAR (HOLDINGS) LTD

124 place rise from 393 to 269

Established in 1974, AF Switchgear is based in Sutton in Ashfield and specialises in the design, build and testing of power distribution solutions.

CHAUVET EUROPE LTD

124 place rise from 467 to 343

Chauvet Lighting is a major innovator, developer and manufacturer of professional lighting and control systems. Established in France in 1990, the UK trading firm dates from 2009 and entered the Top 500 in 2021.

CASE STUDIES

A NEW ENTRANT

454 PPL PRS

This is an innovative company in the recorded music industry.

“We are delighted to have been included in the Top 500 Businesses in the East Midlands, particularly as we are a relatively new business, starting to trade in 2018 and then being hit with the pandemic in 2020. PPL PRS is really proud to be based here in the East Midlands, and we have worked hard to place ourselves at the centre of the thriving business community in Leicester having partnerships with Curve Theatre, BID Leicester, Leicester Tigers, along with the sponsorship of numerous events and awards in the city.

“PPL PRS collects fees via TheMusicLicence from businesses who play music to their customers and employees, and this money is then distributed back to music creators via our parent companies PPL and PRS for Music as royalty payments.

“As businesses return to normal, employee wellbeing has never been more important. Colleagues may feel anxious about heading back to the workplace full time after two years away, and playing music or the radio may help to ease some of those stresses. Many people turned to

A CLIMBER 274 ELECTRONICS FOR IMAGING UNITED KINGDOM LIMITED

Last year, Electronics for Imaging ranked at number 391. The firm supplies IT systems, including systems design and programming services, packaged software to clients in the print and packaging industries.

The result for the year shows an operating profit of £88,000 (last year: £17,000) and a turnover of £47,299,000 (last year: £32,779,000).

music to help them whilst working from home, easing feelings of loneliness and isolation, and playing familiar music in your workplace could ease that transition from home back to the office.

“This means that playing licensed music within your business not only helps to engage with your customers, but it can also be of benefit to your staff and you are ensuring that the people who create the music you are playing are able to continue to write, play and perform.” – Andrea Gray, Managing Director at PPL PRS

A NEWLY INCORPORATED COMPANY

314 NK MOTORGROUP LTD

NK Motors own two KIA dealerships in Derby and Chilwell. The business is owned by the Kumar family, and incorporated in 2015. It achieved turnover of £41.8m in 2019, a 25% increase from the previous trading period.

AN IMPRESSIVE TURNOVER INCREASE

218 B M FASHIONS (HOLDINGS) LIMITED

This group is a new entrant and is engaged in the design and manufacture of licensed apparel. Its turnover has increased from £22m last year to £59m.

“It means a great deal to the company to be listed in the Top 500 companies in the East Midlands. It is a clear indication of what we are capable of achieving and we will strive to continue to expand the business as we have in recent months and years. Being part of the East Midlands business community means we are part of a rapidly growing market and that is an achievement we are extremely proud of. As we continue our journey forward, we aim to bring value and sustainability to all of our processes.”

– Gurdev Mattu, Managing Director at B M Fashions

BUSINESS RESILIENCE AND FUTURE PROSPECTS

East Midlands Chamber’s Quarterly Economic Survey (Q2 2022) shows a sharp fall in business confidence from Q4 2020. Investment is also falling and companies are likely to build up reserves where they can. There are projections of a trade recession, which should not be exaggerated into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Uncertainty is increasing on many fronts such as political, and environmental as we see through the effects of climate change. For these reasons, there has to be caution over the short-term economic outlook for the region.

t’s hard to project the future, at the time of writing in June 2022, by looking at the past performance of EM Top 500 companies. However, having followed the fortunes of this group of businesses over the past three years, some observations can be made.

Firstly, all businesses have experienced the impact of the prolonged COVID lockdowns and eventual recovery during the current year. Some businesses were able to benefit but most experienced disruption, additional costs and loss of sales. They have also experienced, and generally adapted to, the lengthy Brexit separation and changes in trading, imports and exports from the EU, and the associated effects on workforce, regulation, market access and so on.

Having endured and risen stronger from adapting to these challenges, we now find ourselves confronting massive price rises in all energy costs as well as most raw materials, from foodstuffs to timber, cement, steel and plastics. These costs had started to rise during 2021 but the unexpected war in Ukraine and its effects have accelerated these increases to an alarming and in some cases unpredictable extent.

THE EFFECTS OF RISING COSTS ON THE TOP 500

Recruitment of the ‘ideal’ workforce remains challenging with low unemployment, and wage pressures with employees facing the same price rises. Inflation is now rising towards 10%, forcing companies to increase their prices and in discretionary (such as ‘luxury’) spending categories, demand may fall.

The East Midlands is fortunate in having a large and successful group of businesses that are generally very well-managed. In many cases, they are world-leading and demonstrably capable of riding out and recovering from the many challenges thrown at them. They are also very diverse in the range of industry sectors and both UK and international markets they serve. Indeed, international trade continues to be a growth area, enabled by the supply chain and logistics infrastructure the region has attracted. The combined effectiveness of leadership and management, and diversity of the business base, are both enduring strengths.

It is essential that the positive contributions of the region’s businesses to economic prosperity, employment and their provision of valued products and services is recognised, whilst businesses themselves need to continue to engage as good corporate citizens with communities, education, wellbeing and environmental action. The report on the sustainability of East Midlands’ top businesses shows progress as well as the need for continuing involvement in these areas.

However, it continues to be the case that the East Midlands still tends to be overlooked and does not possess the political and civic leadership that other regions have developed. It is doubtful if our elected representatives at Westminster have been very effective in addressing this. Whether the tentative moves towards unitary authorities will be effective is much too early to say. But it is also true that the business leaders, and the business representative organistions such as East Midlands Chamber, the CBI, and FSB, must continue to make the strongest case for the promotion, resources, investment, and support that the region requires to fulfil its potential.

Finally, we invite businesses to sponsor and help develop the East Midlands Top 500 for 2023.

Words by Professor David Rae

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MAKING CONNECTIONS THAT LAST A LIFETIME

SALEEM ARIF’S CAREER PRESENTS THE PERFECT EXAMPLE OF HOW ENTREPRENEURSHIP IS A ROLLERCOASTER OF SUCCESS AND FAILURE, BUT ALSO HOW CONNECTING WITH OTHERS KEEPS THE ROLLERCOASTER ON ITS TRACKS

Whilst studying at Cambridge University in the late 1990s, Saleem had his first taste of entrepreneurialism, setting up a recruitment magazine, called ‘Top 100 Graduate Employers’ – it was essentially a survey that listed where his peers most wanted to work when they graduated. It was an idea that materialised after he and a friend looked through a recruitment magazine that, by chance, happened to literally fall on the floor in front of them. Their conversation led to the creation of their first publication, which ended up being distributed by the thousand to universities across the UK.

The young publishers would make calls from their bedrooms in between lectures, often missing some, to sell advertising space, getting employers on board with their idea. What they were doing was certainly not popular with the Dean or the university’s careers service at the time. The business cost just £20 to set up, but was it worth missing crucial study time?

f you want a laugh, type my name into the Law Society Gazette site and see what comes up,” Saleem Arif tells me. He has always been single-minded, not worrying too much about what others think of him – and has certainly never shied away from being controversial. He advises: “Never let others’ criticism influence your decision-making.”

People in the East Midlands now know him as the founder and director of ReviewSolicitors, a website that collects genuine client reviews for law firms. Around five million people visited the site last year in search of a good lawyer. To understand Saleem’s success today, we must first read into the previous chapters of his life. There is one common theme throughout: connection.

“Whilst I was an undergraduate, I got into a fair bit of student debt, which pushed me into doing something to earn money,” Saleem told me. “The magazine earned me enough profit to get me out of trouble. Eventually, I brought in someone to run the day-to-day aspects of the business while I went off to do other things. At its peak, I was earning a comfortable living, only having to work on it for a few months of the year.”

The venture came to an end in 2008 when the rise of the internet left Top Employers magazine behind. “Unfortunately, by this stage, the internet was just starting to really take off and it put an end to recruitment magazines. We’d set ourselves up online by then, but we didn’t make the move fast enough. It was a great experience though and it taught me a lot.”

While the recruitment magazine was his first entrepreneurial offering to the world, Saleem experienced his first look at entrepreneurship a long time before.

As a child, he’d travel around with his mum

Words by Kerry Smith

who had started her own printing company producing books and magazines for most of London’s hospitals. He credits much of his success to learning from her. She was the first woman to be admitted to the London College of Printing in the early ‘70s. “It certainly wasn’t the done thing for an Asian woman back then. I used to go around with her while she was busy dealing with suppliers and selling. I’d be seeing the operation of it all.”

Before being accepted to read economics at Cambridge, Saleem decided to take a gap year – a decision that had a profound impact on his entrepreneurial path. Rather than choosing to spend the whole year travelling, Saleem opted for an internship at IBM. “It was a real eye-opener for me being out there in the real world. It made me grow up. That year changed a lot for me – one of my two business partners today is somebody who was in that same group at IBM.”

Having unintentionally collected a handful of contacts that, unbeknownst to him at the time, were going to have a real impact on his life years later, Saleem packed up for university, where he would eventually set up his magazine whilst studying economics. He also undertook an internship at investment bank, Merrill Lynch, where he went to work after graduating. But after running his own business beforehand, Saleem realised he was still keen to work for himself.

Telling his recruitment journey from the eyes of a young graduate, he commented: “I think once you’ve had a taste of running your own business, it’s very, very difficult to go and work for someone else. I really enjoyed the job, but I had ideas that couldn’t be heard from where I was in the company.”

His next stop was London Business School where he completed his MBA, another life-altering chapter. On the course with 400 others, Saleem says that around only 10% of the students were from the UK meaning he met people from all over the world. The relationships formed here were pivotal to his success later in life.

After an internship as a marketing consultant and a stint of running a banking recruitment business, which ended due to the banking crisis in 2008, a chance call from an old friend was the catalyst for a new business that would become QualitySolicitors, eventually becoming the UK’s largest legal brand.

“I had a call from an old friend of mine who was a barrister and wanted to buy a property near Leicester. He wanted to know if I knew of any good solicitors. We thought it was strange that there were thousands of solicitors out there but no way of knowing who was any good. We drew up a business plan based on that thought and presented it to lots of potential investors and angel investors.

“We were laughed out of every room including a pitching event at London Business School. That’s why when I received the Alumni Entrepreneur of the Year award from the school in 2011, it was a particularly pleasant moment. I recognised members of the audience from the event who hadn’t believed in the concept years before.”

On how the business made its success, Saleem said: “The business took off because the legal market was becoming deregulated through something called ‘Tesco Law’, meaning the likes of supermarkets could go into law. Legal firms were scared because who would go to Joe Bloggs & Sons when they could go to a high street brand they already recognised? A cabinet minister at the time said that buying legal services should be as easy as buying a tin of baked beans. That line resounded with me.

“As entrepreneurs you have got to be prepared to be controversial, especially if you don’t have a

As Entrepreneurs you have got to be prepared to be controversial, especially if you don’t have a large budget to play with

Saleem with then business partner, Sam Heathcote for the first edition of their magazine

large marketing budget to play with. So I organised a mock protest with a bunch of students I’d hired outside the Royal Courts of Justice. I had shopping trolleys filled with tins of baked beans wrapped in our logo and placards made saying ‘Down with Tesco Law – Real Law, Real Lawyers’ and caused as much trouble as I possibly could. I contacted TV channels and newspapers, which gained us massive amounts of coverage and PR.”

The business grew to £7m turnover in under three years and there were 400 branches of QualitySolicitors nationwide at its peak. It started advertising on prime-time TV including during episodes of Coronation Street and the FA Cup final. An offer then came in from a private equity firm that offered a life-changing amount of money for 51% of the business, hoping to turn the company into a global phenomenon. But as things changed rapidly for the company, the founders stepped away from the business.

After another chance conversation with an excolleague at QualitySolicitors, the idea formed to

create ReviewSolicitors in 2015 – something akin to TripAdvisor but specifically for the legal sector. An old friend from Saleem’s IBM days joined the venture making a trio of founders with disparate expertise in search engine optimisation, online reviews, law, and business management. But lawyers weren’t initially such a fan of the new idea.

“Lawyers that didn’t care about client service had had it easy for a long time since there was little transparency in the legal market. They had been able to get away with it as there was no central medium for clients to let their views be known about the service they had received. Many law firms were also not keen on change or didn’t necessarily get what we were trying to do. It meant we struggled for the first few years.”

Interestingly, from 2019 onwards, things started to change. Firms began to realise that social media and Google were important, that people do go on their phones to check them out. Covid also made a huge difference as people couldn’t go and see a solicitor, so reviews were suddenly far more important than ever before.

“We had an enormous flurry of law firms getting in touch with us to collect their reviews for them. The Solicitors Regulation Authority also became interested in reviews as the Competition & Markets Authority felt there was a lack of information for clients to make an informed decision as to which law firm to use. The SRA is now considering mandating law firms to sign up to a review platform. I’ve been speaking at SRA events to explain how important reviews are and why law firms should be doing it.”

The next step for Saleem is to branch out into other industries using the technology of ReviewSolicitors. He is looking to launch ReviewAccountants, ReviewBarristers and ReviewDentists in 2023.

It’s fair to say his career has been a rollercoaster – but when isn’t it for an entrepreneur? And the common theme throughout all his stories is that of connecting with others, friendship, and relationship building. Each business idea started with a connection.

On this, he commented: “It’s not necessarily my skills that have helped me so much. I think I’m someone people think they could work with, so when it comes to needing a favour, people are responsive. You need to go out, meet people, and listen to what people are telling you. I’m always receptive to new ideas and seeking a solution to problems. Once you can get into this mindset, you see all sorts of opportunities that you didn’t see before.

“The mark of an entrepreneur is someone who can think creatively using the assets they already have.”

The mark of an entrepreneur is someone who can think creatively about the assets they already have

Top: The start of ReviewSolicitors and right with wife Rachel

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MICRO-MOMENTS IN MACRO-SITUATIONS

AFTER HEARING FROM A BUSINESS SCHOOL PROFESSOR ABOUT THE PHENOMENON OF MICRO-MOMENTS, WE WANTED TO KNOW MORE ABOUT HOW THESE TINY INTERACTIONS CAN HAVE A BIG IMPACT ON AN ORGANISATION, AFFECTING ITS PEOPLE AND ITS CULTURE

The inaugural Real Entrepreneurs’ Awards, which took place in April this year, saw keynote speaker Professor Peter Stokes (De Montfort University, Leicester) take to the stage. The brief: to inspire the business owners, leaders, and inventors in the room to persevere on the journey of entrepreneurship.

He chose to do so by speaking about changing cultures and micro-moments in macro-situations. Enlisting those present to analyse their behaviour in business, he began by discussing the innate pragmatism and experience-valuing of UK businesses compared to the concept-driven and ideals-based work of our European neighbours. His point being that while facts and figures have their place, room should be made for theory, idea generation, discussion, and debate, which add up to make for a positive culture in which employees can thrive and customers and clients can respect.

Creating a working environment in which people are encouraged and feel comfortable or even excited about sharing their ideas in many ways, according to Peter, comes down to micromoments.

“We are living in changing and challenging times,” Peter said on stage at The Real Entrepreneurs’ Awards. “In a relatively short time, we’ve had to deal with Covid-19, Brexit, post-Cold War geopolitical and trade uncertainties, economic and financial crashes, circular economy, climate change, transforming markets, generations and communities, and the fourth industrial revolution: artificial intelligence. It’s created new paradigms and new world views, which we can facilitate by moving to a micro-approach and response.”

What is a micro-moment?

The term micro-moment is employed to mean the many and varied interactions and minute events of the everyday life. These crystallise into the macro-situations that go towards forming ideas of culture, situations and atmospheres.

Studying the role of micro-moments in relation to the construct of a business, Peter suggests that there are good and bad micro-moments.

Words by Kerry Smith and Professor Peter Stokes

A Leicester Castle Business School professor teaching Leadership and Professional Development, Peter undertakes practiceinforming, inter-disciplinary research involving a number of concerns around organisational behaviour, ethics, values, beliefs, attitudes, and the strategic trajectories which microfoundational choices (especially those made in the micro-moment) map out for individuals and organisations.

Good micro-moments might typically involve, for example: a kind and supportive smile; a helpful word; honesty and transparency; holding the door open for someone; and such. Bad micro-moments include, for instance: telling half-truths; gossiping; being late; and, a careless word. Micro-moments occur in: isolated incidents; conversations in passing; fleeting expressions; and, other small interactions that in the bigger picture of life, can be easily overlooked or even dismissed as unimportant. But, it’s the small details and brush strokes that make up the whole, bigger picture. The micro interactions add up to create the macrosituation within an organisation in this sense. We ignore and discount micro-moments at our peril.

The impact of a micro-moment

In his body of research ‘The Janus Dialectic of Corporate Social Irresponsibility and Corporate Social Responsibility – The Role of MicroMoments’, Peter analyses the nature of these micro-moments paired with their repercussions and how they shape either a corporately social irresponsible or corporately social responsible environment. He says the improvement of micromoment interactions should work to improve corporate social responsibility across a range of organisational settings.

Macro-events in relation to either (un) sustainable and (ir)responsible events are rooted in micro-moments centred on behaviour and choices. The paper argues that consistent ‘good character’ and ‘good behaviour’ are central to ensuring sustainable change. Alternatively, ‘bad’ character and behaviours have a propensity to engender ambivalent unsustainable and irresponsible environments.

The work heightens awareness of seemingly insignificant micro-behaviour in organisations undergoing processes of change. If allowed to occur without redress, negative micro-moments lead to negative impacts on the macro-aspects of the organisation, whereas positive moments tend to engender more sustainable and responsible environments.

Micro-moments as building blocks

One of the key takeaways from Peter’s talk at the Real Entrepreneurs’ Awards was how each of us in that room can use their awareness of micromoments to build personal resilience and respond more positively at work. He suggests that learning and self-awareness are key to ‘good’ micromoments. If everyone within an organisation were to have this consciousness of themselves and their interactions with others, this would arguably result in a sustainable and responsible business overall. In a nutshell, a person can build positive micromoments by:

■ Constantly consolidating and the re-inventing yourself

■ Learning from alternative environments, sports, healthcare, special forces, and spiritual sources

■ Thoughtfully creating serendipitous moments

■ Escaping your information bubbles, branching out and trying out new sources

■ Considering your agility in certain areas or departments and how this affects others

■ Surrounding yourself with ethically critical friends; relational rather than transactional

Could considering your overall business as a macro-situation and acknowledging those micromoments that have made it what it is today be key to challenging the culture within it?

It’s created new paradigms and new world views, which we can facilitate by moving to a microapproach and response

THE REAL ENTREPRENEURS’ AWARDS

CELEBRATING ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE EAST MIDLANDS

THE INAUGURAL WINNERS OF THE REAL ENTREPRENEURS’ AWARDS WERE ANNOUNCED IN APRIL AT RADISSON BLU HOTEL AT EAST MIDLANDS AIRPORT

The ceremony was the first of its kind, created off the back of the success of the Real Entrepreneurs’ Club and this magazine. The Club, its awards ceremony and magazine are produced by Cross Productions, which is also the parent company of Leicester-based Niche Magazine.

Jenny Cross, CEO of Cross Productions said: “I have always benefited from being in the same room as forward thinking entrepreneurs. There is a culture of knowledge sharing that’s almost infectious. By sharing knowledge, we all benefit, and as a result, our businesses grow and improve, and the economy feels the positive effects of that.

“I was really proud to see such an eclectic mix of personalities, industries and thought leaders and have many ideas already buzzing around my head for how we can develop the Real Entrepreneurs brand moving forwards.”

At the black tie event, which was headline sponsored by Morningside Pharmaceuticals, guests and nominees gathered for a three course meal, to hear key note speakers, and to celebrate their peers’ achievements.

Former ITV anchor and BBC breakfast host Llewela Bailey, who is now a university lecturer compèred the evening with elegance and humour. She also conducted an exclusive Q&A session with East Midlands-based restaurateur Jaimon Thomas, who is the founder and franchisor of restaurants Herb and Kayal, Merchant of Venice and Donald Watson’s Vegan Bar, and recently appeared in Leicester’s Niche Magazine.

Professor Peter Stokes from Leicester Castle Business School was key note speaker. He discussed the pragmatism of UK businesses compared to the theory-driven work of our European neighbours, as well as ‘micromoments’ and their impact on an entire organisation.

Winner of the most anticipated award of the night, Entrepreneurs’ Entrepreneur, Saleem Arif of ReviewSolicitors, said upon receiving the award: “This means an awful lot. It’s been a lot of hard work over the years and there’s been lots of big ups and downs along the way but to get an award like this makes it all worthwhile.”

THE FULL LIST OF WINNERS:

START UP ENTREPRENEUR

Sponsored by Kazzoo IT

Narinder Nijjar - Fraser Stretton Property Group

SCALE-UP ENTREPRENEUR

Sponsored by Patterson Commercial Law

Sophie Hainsworth - LoyalFree

INNOVATION IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Sponsored by Growth Partners

Lee Paxman-Clarke - HEAL.med

FOOD & DRINK ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR

Sponsored by BTT

Jake Karia - Jake & Nayns

ENTREPRENEUR FOR GOOD

Sponsored by Ian Guyler Business Consulting

Chris Cain - Kazzoo IT

ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT

Sponsored by JSP Virtual

Nisha Pahuja - Charnwood Regency Guest House

ENTREPRENEURIAL EDUCATOR

Sponsored by Premier Logistics

Dawn Edwards - Challenge Consulting

ENTREPRENEURIAL COLLABORATOR

Sponsored by Brewin Dolphin

Sophie Hainsworth - LoyalFree

INTERNATIONAL ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR

Sponsored by Morningside Pharmaceuticals

Mick Ventola - Ventola Projects

THE ENTREPRENEURS’ ENTREPRENEUR

Sponsored by Fraser Stretton Property Group

Saleem Arif - ReviewSolicitors

Words by Kerry Smith

I have always benefited from being in the same room as forward thinking entrepreneurs

IF YOU COULD TURN BACK TIME WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO YOURSELF?

THOMAS WILLDAY Founder Willsow

“If I could roll back time to the beginning of Willsow, I’d say to myself ‘just do it!’ I wished I had started the journey earlier.

“The hardest thing is starting so once you’ve done that the rest will flow. I’d also say, surround yourself with people who inspire you and people you can trust to get the job done. This frees up time for all the creativity and innovation. Most importantly, life is too short so don’t take yourself too seriously and try everything so you can relax in that old grandad chair and look back with no regrets… enjoy the ride.”

The main aim of Leicestershire-based Willsow book publishing company is to inspire and educate the future generations on the importance of our environment and everything it has to offer. To achieve this, they’ve created a truly innovative product for children; the UK’s first ever plantable children’s book. Never have you been able to read a story, tear a page out, plant it in the ground and grow your own vegetables from the pages of a book. Every page is embedded with carrot seeds, so with Willsow books, the end of the story is just the beginning.

KEVIN ROUTLEDGE Director

Morningside Arena

“Take the time to develop a Business Plan in as much detail as you can, and discipline yourself to review and update the Plan on a regular basis, ideally quarterly but certainly no less frequently than yearly.

“At each review challenge every key assumption in the modelling, including by taking some external advice on critical assumptions, and utilising, if possible, key customer feedback.”

As the Chairman of Leicester Riders, the director of Morningside Arena, and trustee of the Leicester Riders Foundation, Kevin Routledge received a British Empire Medal for services to the sport of basketball and the local community. He is currently the longest-serving club Chairman in the British Basketball League. Kevin is also a director of the British Basketball League, vice-chair of the Basketball Foundation, and secretary of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Basketball. Originally known as the Loughborough All-Stars, Leicester Riders are one of the oldest professional clubs in England founded in 1967 and were the founding members of the National Basketball League (NBL) in 1972 and the British Basketball League (BBL) in 1987. The team moved into the purpose-built Morningside Arena in 2016, which is owned by the Leicester Riders Foundation.