the times | Monday May 23 2022 43
Business
Rishi Sunak’s small business manage-
ment training scheme has awarded an
£8 million contract to a consortium of
support agencies to recruit thousands
of voluntary business mentors.
The contract from the Department
for Business, Energy and Industrial
Strategy has gone to Newable, the
enterprise development agency set up
in 1982 under Ken Livingstone’s
Greater London Council and still
owned by the capital’s 32 boroughs. It is
working with Enterprise Nation, the
small business platform, and the Asso-
ciation of Business Mentors.
The consortium now has to recruit
enough volunteer mentors by August to
provide ten hours of quality advice to
the thousands of small business owners
taking part in the 12-week “Help to
Grow: management” training scheme,
which was launched by the chancellor
Mentors needed to deliver
Sunak’s business training
in 2021. In its first year of operation, the
hundreds of mentors involved were
paid for their time. The scheme is deliv-
ered by business schools nationwide
and aims to engage 9,000 small busi-
ness owners a year for the next two
years. They pay £750 for the course,
with the rest of the cost covered by tax-
payers.
Newable is run by Chris Manson, a
serial entrepreneur and former com-
mercial manager at Chelsea FC, while
Enterprise Nation is led by Emma
Jones, who campaigns on behalf of
small businesses and the self-em-
ployed.
Access to the scheme is patchy in
some regions, with government offi-
cials expecting only 125 businesses to
take part in the northeast of England
between April this year and March
2023, compared with 380 in the north-
west and 1,000 businesses in London
and the southeast of England.Richard Tyler
the fast-food chain, now has an ambitious plan to build a brand that will become synonymous with plant-based products
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Why travel to the
office? Because
real contact counts
have a monthly Town Hall update
and drinks afterwards. The taxi ride
downtown from the airport has
gone from something like 20
minutes to an hour and 20 minutes.
So why bother flying all this way,
when the jet lag is such a killer?
Well, I agree with Susie Ma,
founder of Tropic Skincare, who
wrote last week that Zoom is no
substitute for making connections in
person. I find you can hold
everyone’s attention for up to 90
minutes on a video call, if you’re
lucky. The meeting I had yesterday,
because it was in person and
because we had whiteboards and
could work through various
different strategies, lasted for four
and a half hours. Time flew and it
felt like we needed another two
hours. It was one of the best
strategic sessions I’ve had with the
North American team.
Another benefit is simply making
yourself accessible. This is a new
Gymshark team, who have a lot of
questions about the company and
are keen to play their part in
writing the next chapter of the
business. Our vice-president of
brand here — ex-Beats and ex-Nike,
just a ridiculous talent — grabbed
me for a quick chat on the office
sofa. He said: “I need to find a way to
effectively educate and influence
Ben regarding American culture.
How do I do that?” Ben
happens to be in Denver
the week after I leave, so
I said that when Ben’s in
town that he becomes
the boss’s shadow. It’d be
like: “Ben, are you going
out for dinner? Great,
you’re coming out with
me. Lunch? Great,
you’re coming out with
me.” Really try to take
every single opportunity
to provide the advice he
wants to share and get
that repetition of
message. I don’t think I
would have been able to
have that kind of chat if
we hadn’t been here in
person.
Later, a younger member of the
team came up to me and wanted
some advice on her career. We
talked about how useful it is to set
out your priorities in your
professional and personal life. When
you do that, you quickly work out
the things that you’re willing to
negotiate on and the things that you
want at all costs. We grabbed three
sheets from the photocopier and
started to jot down a mindmap. I’m
expecting her to walk in today and
have those sheets filled out for me.
On my return, I expect to be
buzzing around the office in
Solihull. The United States can do
that to you. Yes, American business
has a style that, as a Brit, you have to
work through. Everybody here has a
“great” day, while we’d be content
with a “not bad” one. But their
positive, can-do mindset is
infectious.Steve Hewitt is executive chairman of
Gymshark, the gym apparel brand
whose sales grew by 54 per cent to
£402 million last year, with a
£46.5 million profit.C
ovid disrupted our
international expansion
plans, as it did for many
others. Back in early 2020,
we were all set for Ben
Francis, our founder, to move out to
Denver and lead our growth in
North America. He would have
immersed himself in life and
business in the United States,
supported by five key employees
from Britain. They were going to be
the Gymshark DNA core team,
before starting to recruit locally.
Then the pandemic hit and all of
those plans disintegrated. We had to
move to Plan B.
Instead, from day one we hired
exceptional American talent who
could see the potential for
Gymshark to take off in what is
already our largest single market.
We now have more than 120 people
in Denver and the team is settling in
and performing well.
Under plan B, my job is to help
them to continue to overachieve,
while embedding that Gymshark
DNA and navigating
some of the challenges
of not having Ben in-situ
locally. Aged 29, he is
now our group chief
executive.
I’m writing this in
Denver, having just led a
quarterly board review
with the senior team
here. I can report that
air travel is definitely
back. Heathrow
Terminal 5, on a
Tuesday, was as busy as
it gets on the first days of
the school holidays.
There were no seats at
the British Airways
lounge and the aircraft
was packed, so much so that the
airline, the only one flying direct to
Denver at present, asked me if I
could delay my trip to the next day.
The flight was good. Masks were not
mandatory.
Arriving in Denver, you notice
that more Americans are wearing
masks than we are back home,
probably one in five of the people I
have walked past. The country is still
in a different phase of the pandemic
to us. The news that they have
reached the millionth Covid-related
death was on the television screens
this morning.
Denver has probably been less
affected than other big cities
because there’s so much outdoor
living here — I can see the Rocky
Mountains from the 39th floor office
room I am in; they’re only about an
hour and a half away by car — but
attitudes to Covid have eased since I
last visited in November, when you
had to wear a mask even while on
the gym treadmill. People are
returning to work in offices.
Yesterday our office was about
60 per cent full and today it will be
more like 90 per cent because weSteve
Hewitt“
You can hold
everyone’s
attention for
up to 90
minutes on a
video call, if
you’re lucky
Trent Water, which was fined
£1.5 million in December for illegal
sewage discharges. “If we’re going to
retain freedoms for my children, my
grandchildren and for entrepreneurs,
we all have to step up,” Vincent said.
“We need to help business and help
people to have a more harmonious
relationship with the planet, with
nature. Fifteen years ago that would
have sounded like real hippie dippie
shit. Now, hopefully, people are
realising it’s just a requirement.”Business
market credentials. He wants all
businesses to be valued on their cost
to all stakeholders, including the
planet. And he wants business, rather
than regulators, to take the lead. The
danger of failing to create this
“ethical capitalism”, he said, was that
business would play into the hands of
“the forces that potentially want to
take freedoms away from the
individual [and] away from businesses.
“I’m worried there’ll be carbon
credits for the individual. There’ll be
restrictions placed on business by
organisations that don’t even
understand business. And there’ll be a
centralisation of global power. It will
take freedom away.”
He said this concern was partly
why he had helped the government to
set up its Council for Sustainable
Business in 2018, which advises
ministers on how businesses can be
mobilised to achieve environmental
goals. The council is now led by Liv
Garfield, chief executive of SevernTIMES PHOTOGRAPHER RICHARD POHLE