How I work
Whether the other side of the table is a university, a Fortune 500 company or a government department, the aim is always the same: make it easier for small businesses and the people behind them to get on with it. Understand what actually matters to both sides, find the version of the idea that works, and stay in the room long enough to get it delivered.
Communities, brands and institutions I've worked with
Universities and students
Bringing real world product thinking to students and staff, and turning it into practical sessions people could act on straight away.
Board role, young changemakers
Board level support for a community of young changemakers, from programme design to the confidence work behind it.
Small business, scaling up
Streamlining how a growing creative studio works, so the team could scale without the chaos.
Some of this work involves confidential figures, live tenders or unannounced programmes, so this covers what I can talk about publicly.
I advise No.10 on small business and sit on the No.10 Small Business Growth Taskforce, lead a workstream on the Small Business Regulatory Taskforce, and represent small business perspectives on the CFIT Taskforce (HM Treasury and FCA) and the OECD's D4SME Global Roundtable. The job is simple to describe and hard to do: make sure the day to day reality of running a small business is genuinely understood before decisions get made.
I run the Downing Street faith and business roundtable series with No.10's Faith and Communities office, giving faith based entrepreneurs a direct route into government. The first session brought Sikh business leaders into No.10 to talk about access to finance, procurement and the support that would actually move the needle for them.
Read about the first roundtableI've been building the case, directly with the Small Business Minister and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, for a national youth entrepreneurship programme, centred on a simple idea: every young person should have a clear next best step, whether that's a course, an apprenticeship, a micro grant, or starting a business. It's designed to speak directly to the UK's NEET numbers, which have passed 1.25 million.
Over a decade at Enterprise Nation I've helped take it from a five person team to 50+ staff, a 180,000+ member community and £5M+ in public sector contracts, building the corporate partnerships, government relationships and programmes that sit underneath that growth.
If you'd like to build something like this together, let's talk.
Whether you're building a partnership, shaping a programme, or want me to speak at your event, I'd love to hear from you.
Work with me