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Connect Yorkshire held its Annual Summit yesterday at Cedar Court Hotel and for those unlucky ones who didn’t attend I thought I would share a few of the thoughts from the Panel. But before doing so I will repeat a short part of my own introductory talk.

Next week I will summarise the gems from Richard Halpin the founder and CEO of Homeserve plc and from John McArthur the CEO of Tracsis plc.

New Benefits for Members

We are introducing 3 new benefits

1. As from 1st Jan our Masterclasses will be subject based rather than the story of the ups and downs of one of our Entrepreneurs in Residence (EIRs). They will still be delivered by our EIRs but will normally be a Q&A type session rather than a simple talk as in the past. The subjects for the January, February and March Masterclasses will be Recruiting and Running a Sales Team, Business Planning-the importance of the process and Leadership Skills
2. Included in the membership fee is a quarterly Sales Training session 09.30-15.30 for our members delivered by our new Partner durhamlane and Richard Lane told the Summit about their training.
3. Thirdly we will be helping our members market their goods and services. If they send their news stories and press releases to Sophie Patton we will push them out through our social media channels

The Future

Before introducing the speakers I outlined our plans for the future. I am determined to make Connect Yorkshire the best, which we are already, and the best known, business support organisation in Yorkshire. That will involve us providing even better services for our members and have approximately 450 members and 100 Entrepreneurs in Residence.

The Panel

The Panel was made up of 3 of our Entrepreneurs in Residence Rachel Hannam the joint founder of Gatenby Sanderson, Gav Winter of Ten10 and Robin Hill of Rapid Spike

The Questions

1. What ignited the spark in you to start a new business or to make significant changes to an existing business.  Rachel trained as an accountant before starting Gatenby Sanderson whereas Gav and Robin always wanted to have their own businesses
2. What would you say are the top 3 skills needed to be  successful entrepreneur. All united round hard work and determination-never give up
3. What is your favourite aspect of being an entrepreneur.  Being your own boss
4. How do you/ your business generate new ideas. Some come from the staff, some from customers some from the owner
5. How have you rewarded or how do you reward your best or senior employees. All have, or have had EMI schemes, which have resulted in some decent sums for their teams when Random Storm was sold and I think when The Test People merged

There were also some good questions from the audience including from Tony Pratt – utilinet-yorkshire. In prospecting for clients/customers ,how would they rate the outbreak of “Networking events”  

Owen Gleadhall – Merlinsoft  How likely is it that  REAL investment in this area will actually happen and a genuine ‘Northern Powerhouse’ will be created?

Phil Harper – Tribosonics Ltd (non member). What is the vision for your business? How did you decide on the vision for your business?

Craig Burton – The Works (CY Partner) What impact would they predict GIG working might have on their businesses and the challenges for their business around talent pipelines.

Jonny Ross – Jonny Ross Consultancy Ltd  How much emphasis does the panel believe Leeds City Council should be making to ensure a successful bid to their being named Capital City of Culture 2023?