Business Live: for curious entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs

Nickala Torkington runs Flourish, a social enterprise which support women to create the change they see needed through peer learning, crowd sourcing, mentoring and investment. Flourish’s recent crowdfund, in support of their #InvestinWomenChangemakers Festival and Fund, was their 4th successful crowdfund. Nick Middleton is founder of Zen Oracle, Zen Golf Mechanics and FlowMotion Golf. An innovator...

Get yourself an education in business growth with this radio show podcast featuring an in-depth interview with Jon Seaton, co-founder of specialist online educational publisher, Twinkl. Jon and wife Susie launched Twinkl to support the teaching community by providing access to resources and classroom material. Around 500,000 teaching resources have been created and the business has customers in mo...

Jodie Marshall has been running A Mind Apart Theatre Company for 10 years. It is a thriving business, a social enterprise, earning income from delivering education contracts, from parents paying for their children to attend weekly sessions and holiday clubs, and from adult workshops (among other income streams). Its mission is to use performing arts to "challenge, inspire, encourage and chang...

Sarah David runs consultancy Thrive. She has worked at an executive level in a £1.5 billion turnover law firm, and for small businesses, charities, not for profits and startups. "As long as you're dealing with people the challenges remain the same," she told me yesterday. The live radio broadcast of this interview generated some of the most positive feedback of any episode to date....

"You can't be what you can't see," writes Kisha Bradley, engineer, STEAM-inist, and founder of Bright Box Makerspace. For children to become the scientists, technologists, engineers, artists and mathematicians of the future, they need to know what options are available – and build appropriate skills. Hundreds of children have played, created, and unleashed their imaginations th...

Have you hugged a politician lately? Whether you feel disdain, disgust or deep love for your elected representatives, they can be a powerful force to help your business or social enterprise or to help you get positive things done in your community. Harnessing support from a politician can help you to fight injustices, assert your consumer rights even when big businesses want to ignore you, generat...

What do you want your website to do for you? It's the key question which must be at the top of your brief, not what do you want your site to look like according to Ant Clifford of Creative Stream.  Ant covers how to come up with a powerful and specific brief to ensure your website design and build agency delivers a site that does what you need it to do, and generates a return on your investme...

Pam Warhurst trained as an economist, has held senior board level roles for all sorts of organisations and is the founder of the Incredible Edible movement through which food has been a catalyst for community action, for learning and education, and for business creation. This is now a worldwide movement stretching from Canada to New Zealand. It's simple. "If you eat, you're in,&quot...

Olusola McKenzie, founder of Learn to Re-create Ltd, a fashion and textiles social enterprise, on how determination, consistency and flexibility are the key factors which helped achieve her vision. Daniel Koseoglu of Affecto Recruitment, with an update on skills and recruiting talent in the tech, data science and digital industries.  And Jay Bhayani with a pre-election run through of employment la...

Aldo Monteforte is CEO and co-founder of insurance telematics leader The Floow . Last week, The Floow was named winner of the Red Herring Top 100 Europe award – another trophy in the innovative Sheffield firm's cabinet. Red Herring's awards honour the year’s most promising private technology ventures from the European business region. Aldo explained why the Red Herring award has special...

Running your own business? Always make sure your clients are happy? Great. But if those clients aren’t making you happy, don’t respect you or pay you on time (or want to pay you in fish and chips!) then you don’t really have a business, you have a pretty miserable job. And many freelancers and small business owners are frustrated with cycles of feast to famine in their work, bemused by a multitude...

The Anglers Rest in Bamford – a few miles west of Sheffield – is more than a pub: it's a post office, cafe, music venue, meeting space for clubs and societies, art gallery and community hub. But a few years ago its future was uncertain. Part of the portfolio of a remote PubCo, The Anglers Rest had suffered years of under-investment and a short-term approach. And in 2012 it was at risk of perm...

There's a problem in venture capital. In the UK, VC-ready startups gravitate to where the money is: London (and to some extent Cambridge and Oxford). That's led to a "tech funding gap in the North of England" – risking a brain drain of businesses seeking investment away from northern cities. Plus, VC decision makers invest in businesses run by people who are "just like the...

Many businesses and social enterprises have described on this podcast and radio programme how they have used crowdfunding to test their market, reach customers, or access finance to build their business. But if you’re a business advisor and your clients are asking you about access to finance and how to run a successful crowdfund, where do you signpost people to? Author and crowdfunding expert, Bar...

Deborah Bullivant of Grimm and Co demonstrates the incredible power of storytelling today. Grimm and Co is a children’s literacy charity and ‘apothecary to the magical.’ It  has been “supplying evil plots, wild schemes and kitchenware since 1148,” and has to be seen and experienced to be believed. Deborah gives the lowdown on why she launched Grimm and Co, and how she did it, with the support of a...

Laura Bennett, Elizabeth Shassere and Johnny Pawlik returned to the radio studio. Elizabeth and Laura recently traveled to Gaza and mentored entrepreneurs at a bootcamp for the Gaza Sky Geeks programme. They were two of only seven mentors selected from all over the world – and gave their expertise as volunteers. We discussed the specific challenges that entrepreneurs face in Gaza; how Laura and El...

What does a business psychologist do, how do they help businesses – and what are the most common challenges they address? Simon Kilpatrick, chief executive of Intrinsic Links, explains – and covers how he's built Intrinsic Links since launching at the start of 2014. From securing his first clients, to financing start-up and growth, to choosing partners to collaborate with, Simon's experi...

New interviews with Elizabeth Shassere and Laura Bennett about the Gaza Sky Geeks programme and with craftsman Richard Osborne, of From the Workshop . Elizabeth Shassere and Laura Bennett will be traveling to Gaza in September, to mentor startup teams competing for a place on the Gaza Sky Geeks accelerator. Google for Entrepreneurs founded Gaza Sky Geeks in 2011 to build a startup movement in a fr...

Over 50% of prisoners and unemployed people in the community have dyslexia or similar learning difficulties; more than 70% have low levels of literacy. And for many prisoners, like today's guest Dale Easter,  imprisonment is like a 'revolving door' – Dale spent 23 years of his adult life going into and out of prison more than 40 times. This experience is common in those unable to re...

Vanda Kewley set up The Suit Works, a social enterprise providing a free service to help unemployed men of all ages to succeed at interview by building confidence and self esteem through personal styling. Their clients receive a suit, shirt, tie and shoes and if needed an interview skills training session to help them be the best they can in job interviews. Vanda's been on the show before. Sh...

Dr. Heather Anson is a multi-national law consultant and part of the team at Digital Law UK, director of DLUK Evaluate, and owner of Anson Legal. She joined me for a fascinating discussion about offshore companies, tax evasion and avoidance, and how the IRS in America investigates and uncovers corruption. Heather was born in America and worked in Arizona, so I picked her brains about the political...

Hannah Duraid founded The Great Escape Game, Sheffield's first and largest live escape room experience which has now been played by over 18,000 people. In the Great Escape people work together to escape one of four themed locked room scenarios in 45 minutes. Hannah talked through the lessons she has learned in launching and growing the business – and some of the support that's been most...

An apprentice who at 19 years old has already saved Rolls-Royce £10m; the author of a new report describing Sheffield as the beer capital of the world and a member of the team behind a rocket-powered car all feature in this week's Business Live radio show. The Bloodhound Supersonic car was the headline attraction at this year’s Get up to Speed with Engineering and Manufacturing (GUTS) event,...

Louise Page is the acclaimed playwright known for Salonika, Another Nine Months, The Statue of Liberty, Love From a Stranger and many other works. Louise has also written extensively for TV and radio, including for ten years on BBC Radio 4's radio serial The Archers. She is a specialist in clear and effective business writing too. She has clear tips for better writing and storytelling you can...

Author Joanne Harris, poet and broadcaster Ian McMillan, writer and League of Gentlemen member Jeremy Dyson and social entrepreneur Ben Payne – plus Grimm and Co founder Deborah Bullivant. It was a pleasure and privilege to attend Monday’s opening of Grimm & Co, the “apothecary supplying sorcery services and unnatural products to magical beings,” which is also a Yorkshire charity, a writing an...