Helpston, England, United Kingdom
Recently promoted to the position of Tuk Tuk Driver and focused on finding, converting and getting old laptops into the hands of desperate parents who need them for their children. Runs a Wedding Car Experience company where all that matters is the joy it brings. Always looking beyond the economic. At the things that matter - not the things that don't. Focused at making people's lives better. That may be creating better environments, creating fairer communities or just helping people do the things they love doing. Hoping to leave sons a legacy: “My dad was involved with doing that..”. Those who know me, know I smile a lot. Other stuff about me: An apprentice with a mechanical engineering company so my dad would not be upset at me leaving uni. 35 years in IT. An engineer when a 10MB drive was as large as a desk drawer. An early 1990s sales leader when you could do no wrong. An e-Business Director of a $100m play in mid 90's. An Internet pioneer with terrible timing in 2000. A not for profit that helped the hardest to reach young people into amazing job. An energetic, goal focused, social entrepreneur with a track record of opening senior level conversations, discovering opportunities and closing projects. Has, through direct experience based understanding of the real business challenges of senior executives, an ability to enthuse senior people around a cause and to align people behind an idea. Highly recommended by clients, suppliers, colleagues and management across all the organisations he has worked for. Very active offline and online networker. An experienced senior professional with an entrepreneurial spirit. An evangelist, customer advocate and a technology geek.
I have been lucky. I have had some very kind people help me have an amazingly satisfying working life. It's right that I thank them as I have always stood on the shoulders of giants. Some of them don't think they were giants but each of them are. So, in no particular order, I'd like to thank; Julie Dawson (Consultant, Zing): Shahid Azeem (Chair of Aldershot FC and MD or ArcomIT) for the amazing insights he has shared with me: David Spounser: David North (MD, The Internet Mentor): Louise Punter (CEO, Surrey Chambers of Commerce), Hannah Golding (COO, Social Outsourcing): Kerrie Hirst (Funding Manager, Social Outsourcing): Carol Squires (Sales Director, Surrey Chambers of Commerce): Ian Martin: Archie Maisari: Rik Alexander, (Strategic Advisor): Gary Hunt, (CTO), Simon Perree (Founder, Play.com): Paul Zimmerman (CEO, Firebox.com. Ex Amazon management team): Mick Linsell (Ex Managing Director, Royal Mail Service Delivery): Nick Tomlin (Co-Founder of Tomlin Bean. Ex Co-Founder of Air Miles): Joe Krancki (Associate, Frog Capital): Neal Gandhi (CEO, Quickstart Global), Mark Dugdale (Acdadia Group), Asif Mashhadi (Dixons group), Bernard Hewitt (Chairman, Warehouse Express), Craig Bunker, Carole Woodhead (CEO, Hermes), Andrew Starkey (CEO, Spiral4) and Dick Stead (MD, Parcelforce), Andrew Hawkins (Product Director, IMI), Jay Patel (MD Spark), Jerry Daykin (SM, Cadbury), Robert Scoble (Tech Guru), Peter Bale (Director, CNN), Andrew Scott (Director, BBC), Francine Hardaway (Nice Tech Guru), Nick Meyers (Board, Proximity), Tony Wang (UK GM, Twitter), Nick Tomlin (Director, T&B), Geoffrey Bean (Director, T&B), Richard Yeo (CTO, TGPG), Anthony Millet (COO, Active Instinct) and Gary Hunt (CTO, AppCrowd), Paul Blanchard (CEO, Right Angles), Tim Williams (The App Guy), Mark Dugdale (Dugdale Digital), William Buist (CEO, Societial Web), Thomas Power (CEO, Ecademy), Rik Alexander (CEO AppCrowd) And so many more....
Ethos represents something I have been struggling to find - The perfect organization. An organisation where a number of differently skilled, senior, individuals that care enough come together on an adhoc basis to solve some of the nation's greatest societal challenges. This is not an organisation that talk their hind legs off. It's an action orientated organisation that uses a unique model to coalesse skills around a problem, analyse it, plan a solution and do what it takes to resolve it. Once done, the team dissolves and the individuals find new challenges within Ethos where their skills and experience can be used. It's the future of how companies will be run and I'm proud to be part of it.
Welcome to The Lemondrop Company. Or ‘TLC’ as people call it. The last 7 years has been a long and winding road for me. I decided to leave the world of employment and enter the world on self employment. I learnt that, rather than giving you the freedom to do what you wanted, stress reached new levels not knowing when and where the next paid engagement would come from. In the early days, I gratefully took what was offered as I slowly hunted for the ‘work I love’. I also learnt that the future world of work for today’s young people is very different from that explained to them by schools and parents like me. Young people today are savvy enough to know that things are changing fast. They know that working in the gig-economy for zero-hour contracts is in many of their foreseeable futures. They know that AI will displace many of those jobs faster than anyone expects. The increase in social inequality, the massive increase on mental illness problems in the very young and staggering low productivity are all symptoms of how the young feel about the future. Once a upon a time, it was central and local government that tried to help. No more: As the famous note said “There is no money left”. Today it’s left to the VCSE (Volunteer, Charity and Social Enterprise) sector to help. And they, in turn, urgently need future funding strategies as their ‘normal funding routes’ compress. The pie is getting smaller and the number of VCSEs trying to get a slice is increasing. So, I recently decided that I am going to focus at identifying future thinking VCSEs who are thinking about a 3-5 year plan on how to secure funding and need help to engage business large and small. Although it’s not exclusive, I’m targeting VCSEs helping young people. TLC engages on a pro-bono, paid contractual or part time employment basis. If you are Volunteering Organisation, a Charity or a Social Enterprise needing help, make contact. I’d love to help you and smile.
Working with Penny Power on her follow up to their very successful Ecademy network as their Commercial Director. PPL is a joint venture between Penny and Darren Shirlaw that is a holding company for a number of brands that focus on the digital and social media sectors. - DYA (http://www.digitalyouthacademy.com/ ) is a organization that connects digital youth to the business world by providing training and an apprenticeship program. - Frontier (http://frontiercoaching.com/ ) is a coaching organization that helps companies of all sizes embrace social business. Run by a group of senior and experienced business people, including Thomas Power, the company brings a refreshing results orientated view of social business to the boardroom. - LeadORS (http://Leadors.co) is an indicator that businesses’ of all sizes can use to initially qualify the aptitude of their staff to embrace the new ORS business models.
Working with a larger team of amazing people from every walk of life, I'm focused at helping High Growth SMEs across the Enterprise M3 region grow faster. The LEP is offering a very cost effective (free for now) service for high growth SMEs in the area where help from people like me can be requested to accelerate their growth plans. What? Not another government led initiative? Bad news. It is (kinda). Good news, it’s exciting enough for me (and you probably know how verbose I am about many crappy government programs are) to believe in it. The difference is that it is being driven by the local LEP and not local / central government. It is being delivered through a group of individuals who are far better and experienced than me. Which is pretty good. The energy to do something in this area is incredible. So what credentials does this group have? OK, so between us and with the help of Enterprise M3, we know a few things; - Great people in the area across our combined huge network - Local companies with fabulous products that are looking for partnerships - National corporations that are looking for collaborators - International expansion options through UKTI and others - Local and national funds to help companies to grow - Local and national financiers, angels and VCs - Startup and growth opportunities across the region - Skills resourcing when there are no skills available On top of that each of us has a 'speciality'. Ranging from mechanical engineering through to academia.. As you can see from this LinkedIn profile, mine is all about technology, entrepreneurship and innovation. So if you are a SME that fits the criteria below and who believes that they are either in a high growth phase or think they need a lift up to get there, contact me.