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The Entrepreneur
Growing businesses is in my blood. I grew up with a father who ran four businesses and a mother with a string of shops.
Whilst some kids had paper rounds, by the time I was 10 I had a small flock of sheep! The sheep produced lambs which I sold in the local livestock market and that’s how I started to develop my business skills.
In 1991 I entered the family agricultural merchanting business where I sold animal feed and fertilisers to farmers in Mid Wales.
In 1992 I started a Landscaping business during a time of recession. I went onto grow that company into a nationwide commercial landscape construction operation with sales of £4million. The company had two regional offices and won 3 nationwide awards for projects. I developed a Blue Chip Client Base including supermarkets, hotels, fast-food restaurants and London based property developers as well as construction companies and the public sector. Our supply chain spread across Europe and we were asked to tender for work on the Olympic developments at the Greek Olympic Games.
The Entrepreneur's Coach Ltd
In 2003 I became a Business Coach and worked with various coaching organisations. But I could see something was missing in what was being offered in the market place to business owners and entrepreneurs.
For some time I kept asking myself the question: “What did I need from a coach or consultant, when I was Managing Director of a business which I grew from nothing to be a nationwide player?
The answer to that is simple: I needed to understand what I did not know, overcome my fears and self limiting beliefs but I also needed to apply what I knew. But interestingly enough, at the time I thought I knew it all, did not believe I had any fears or limiting beliefs and was applying everything I knew! I also needed someone who had been there, seen it and got the T-shirt.
I didn’t take kindly to ex-corporates with no experience of growning and running an SME (Small to Medium Sized Business) trying to tell me how to run my business! I needed someone with experience to show me the tricks to make my life easier. That is the essence of “The Entrepreneur's Coach”.
Education
National Diploma in Agriculture: 1984 - 1987
Welsh Agriculture College, Aberystwyth
Higher National Diploma in Rural Management: 1988 - 1990
Seale Hayne College, Devon
Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management: 1990 – 1991
Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester.
Business Growth Programme: 2000 Cranfield University
NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) Practitioner 2005
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latest blog
Is your marketing economy proof?
Tuesday 08 December 2009
Last month I sat down with the MD of a company who was complaining about how the recession was impacting on his business. He said to me ‘it is like someone has turned a tap off’. I asked him what marketing he did. His response was Read More ...
