ABP News

The Association of Business Mentors and Advantage Business Partnerships Ltd are excited to announce a new corporate partnership between the two organisations.

The ABM is the trade association representing professional business mentors in the UK and Ireland. Born from the lack of a professional body that assessed and monitored the credibility of mentoring provided in the UK and Ireland the ABM does exactly that and can assure the credibility of its members through the stringent application procedure and proof of experience.

ABP is an ambitious UK wide organisation aiming to raise the bar for the impact and credibility of the UK’s mentoring, coaching, consultancy and training sector.  The Advantage team consists of 25 highly experienced business growth experts who work with ambitious business owners who want to grow further, faster and more easily by applying multiple skills through a range of delivery methods including mentoring, coaching, training and consultancy from across our team.

Daryl Woodhouse, Founder and Executive Chairman of ABP says ‘We are delighted to partner with The ABM.  The ambitions of Kerrie and The ABM are very much aligned with ABP in raising awareness for the impact good quality business advice can make to the bottom line of businesses who are keen to grow, and in encouraging business mentors to invest in their development to keep adding increased value to their respective clients.  In turn, through our combined forces and collective investment in the business mentoring sector we hope to raise the standard of advice received by businesses wishing to grow, and in the grander scheme to help the economy with more jobs being created.’

Kerrie Dorman, Founder of The ABM says ‘This partnership is most welcomed by the ABM, as we share the same ethics on protecting and promoting credible business mentoring in the UK and Ireland, ultimately looking out for the business owner on the receiving end of any business support, advice and guidance. We are looking forward to working together with ABP on many initiatives that promote this ethos nationwide, generating the awareness and accessibility of credible business support. It is partnerships like this, that will enable us to fulfil our goal which is raising awareness that substandard business mentoring is unacceptable.’

Britain’s Top 50 Business Advisers of 2014 Announced  – ABP Coaches Celebrate Recognition

Two South East based business coaches have been named as one Britain’s top 50 business advisers.

Both Warren Knight and Daryl Woodhouse who offer business advice to help local early stage entrepreneurs, as well as consulting established larger businesses, were picked from hundreds of advisers from around the UK for their work with SME’s, looking to fast-track their growth opportunities.

Daryl, Founder and Executive Chairman of nationally established business growth consultancy Advantage Business Partnerships (ABP), said: “It is all too easy for business management teams to get distracted and lose sight of what’s important to its founders and what they’re trying to achieve – there’s a strong risk that without good strategic advice you can wake up one day with a business that doesn’t bring you the satisfaction you long for. And what’s worse, because you arrived there through a series of a hundred small compromises over several months, you didn’t see it coming.

“Good advice can help you put simple systems and practices in place to make sure that the business stays on track and does what you wanted it to, and hoped it would.”

Warren, a social media expert and entrepreneur operating in London and a key Business Growth Partner at ABP, was delighted to not only make the top 50, but in fact, the top 10. He said;

“Technology touches every part of our lives. By understanding how technology can be used in a companie’s go-to-market strategy, it really helps increase brand awareness and drives sales. This is why I am so passionate about helping SME’s”

Warren recently launched his new book “Think #Digital First”, a step by step guide designed for a creative entrepreneurs, business owners as well as sales and marketing managers. Whilst Daryl who also has his first book in the works, is currently promoting ABP’s highly successful and free Business Performance Assessment tool – the SPA platform.

The awards are run by small business network Enterprise Nation, which asked thousands of businesses to nominate an adviser that had helped them to build and grow a sustainable business.

The awards, which set out to highlight the work done behind the scenes by experts helping Britain’s army of SME businesses to build and grow, revealed a rich vein of dedicated supporters for the UK’s expanding entrepreneurial culture.

Emma Jones, founder of Enterprise Nation said: “These business advisers are the unsung heroes behind Britain’s booming small business culture.

“The awards have uncovered some incredible work that has helped firms take steps towards sustainability and growth by taking a strategic look at their business.

“Research shows that those firms that take advice do better than those that don’t – and it stands to reason that good advice can help avoid some of the damaging, early mistakes entrepreneurs can make that can often force them to give up.

“There is now an increasing interest in taking strategic advice to overcome some of these behavioural barriers and unlock growth potential.”

Daryl and Warren’s top tips for growing a business are:

• Question everything you’re told.
• Ask others established entrepreneurs what they wish they’d asked for with hindsight – if you don’t know any, book yourself onto free business networking events (Eventbrite is a good place to find some).
• Make sure you actually get around to running your business and don’t spend all your time talking about it.

A Government report entitled Growing Your Business, written by Enterprise Adviser Lord Young suggested if Britain’s smallest firms were to take on just one more employee each, it would eradicate unemployment in the UK.

He said: “The evidence is unequivocal: businesses that seek and engage external help are more likely to grow. But much more needs to be done to encourage firms to invest in their capability.”

A report from the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce suggested by 2018 there would be more than five million people working for themselves in this country – exceeding the number working in the public sector for the first time.

The award nominees were judged by a distinguished panel including Emma Jones, and representatives from professional bodies including the ICAEW, as well as the Department for Business, Industry and Skills, StartUp Loans and James Layfield, the founder and entrepreneur behind Central Working.

On the 17th November, a significant new report, the Scale-up Report, authored by Angel Investor, Sherry Coutu, was published with details on how many more businesses can achieve ‘scale up growth’ status in the UK.

The Report highlighted 6 factors that need improving for the growth and success rates for new businesses to rise:

1. Targeting, supporting, promoting and reporting on scale-up gap closure

Freeing data makes it possible for stakeholders in the economy to identify scale-ups. Collaborating with and promoting others who help scale-ups fulfil their potential is the second most important thing government can do.

2. Accessing talent

For leaders of scale-ups, the number one problem that prevents them from being able to accept customer orders is access to talent, namely a skilled supply of people who they can hire. If they can’t hire the staff, they can’t accept the customer order.

3. Developing scale-up leadership

The second most important factor cited by scale-up leaders as stopping them from growing their revenues faster (by accepting customer orders) is lack of capacity and experience in the senior leadership team. It is hard to grow a company hundreds of times faster than is ‘normal’ without the right training and support.

4. Increasing customer sales at home and abroad

Barriers exist that prevent companies creating new products and services for domestic markets, and selling successful products in other countries.

5. Financing scale-ups

Fast growing companies often turn to the US or Asia for their financing. Although capital is available for entrepreneurs leading successful companies, if the company floats or is sold and the shareholders are not based in the UK, the gains do not flow into the economy. Additionally, the pressure on a company to re-domicile is greater if the majority of its funding is based abroad. This exacerbates the scale-up skills shortage.

6. Accessing infrastructure

Entrepreneurs say lack of access to infrastructure makes it more difficult to scale their companies in the UK than elsewhere. Suggestions include sharing physical infrastructure with large established corporates.

When Advantage Business Partnerships Limited’s Founder and CEO Daryl Woodhouse heard about the planned report launch earlier this year, he immediately registered ABP is an ambassador to support raising awareness of the Scale Up Britain campaign.

On Wednesday, 26^th November, over 100 influential business people from a variety of exciting hyper growth Start Ups, business support organisations and B2B corporate firms came together at the offices of award-winning print and design company Moo.com to find out more about the Scale Up Report and how its findings can impact growth for their businesses.

Daryl says ‘Britain has so many high potential and interesting start ups now, although many have not run a successful business before and so 95% don’t survive the challenges of more than 5 years in trade. When I heard about the report, I just had to ensure we were closely aligned with the whole upcoming Scale Up Britain movement.’

In collaboration with Paulina Sygulska Tenner, co-founder of Grant Tree, Scale Up Britain was created with high-growth British companies in mind. Inspired by the Scale Up Report, the key purpose is to widen the growth debate and provide practical solutions to dynamic business owners by those – and only those – who are in a best position to give it.

With a focus on shifting the conversation from Start Ups to Scale Ups and building sustainable businesses, Daryl Woodhouse, CEO of ABP and co-organiser of the event, expressed his excitement at the impact of the Scale Up Report. ‘The potential impact of the Scale Up Report is huge and could really help take many ambitious British business to the next level. We wanted to help businesses understand the report and learn from other successful fast-growth businesses on how they can scale up faster too. You can get involved too by sharing the report and these messages to other ambitious businesses in your network or client base.’

In further support of the Scale Up Britain campaign, the ABP group with its nationally diverse team of 25 professional business advisors, has put together a quick and easy to use, free online tool to help ambitious businesses understand exactly how their business is performing now so they can assess and prioritise the next key steps they need to grow. Find out more here through our 80 second SPA Explainer video. We hope you like it and use it effectively to ensure your business beats the odds of failure.

Further Information

Scale Up Report – http://www.scaleupreport.org/

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Starting a business and building it into a successful, sustainable, long-term, national market leader is much harder in reality than it may look on paper. It involves stubborn determination, long hours, is physically and mentally draining, with very few people publicly admitting so. “We’re doing very well” or “Busy!” are the verbal masks often used to hide the exhausted faces of those attempting to make their mark on the business world.

That’s why Advantage Business Partnerships founding directors Daryl and Elizabeth Woodhouse were delighted to be the only business shortlisted into 3 categories for this year’s FSB (Federation of Small Businesses) Awards, hosted at Hotel Pullman, St. Pancras London on 19th July 2014.

ABP was 2nd for ‘Best New Business’, whilst Daryl was also called on stage as 2nd for ‘Young Business Person of the Year’ (for the second year running) as well as being one of five finalists as ‘Real Life Entrepreneur’.

CEO Daryl says, “We’re really pleased to be recognised for the efforts of all our team at ABP, amongst over 900 award applicants. We remain focused and motivated to establish ABP as the national market leader and the go-to organisation for ambitious businesses seeking the very best advice and support to grow faster, more easily and with less stress”.

Co Founder Director, Elizabeth says ‘This recognition means a lot to us and makes us more determined to grow further over the next 12 months and win a category at next year’s FSB awards’.

Find out more about the ABP team and how they can help your business grow faster, and more easily via www.advantagebusinessltd.com