Being able to spend some time with an EIR is always beneficial, Jonathan Turner helped me to realise what I was looking to achieve, not only in business but in my personal life too. It’s always good to tap into the knowledge and experience that someone like Jonathan has. Real pleasure to have met with Jonathan at Bowcliffe Hall, such a beautiful place.

Simon was inspiring, brilliant and insightful.

From the moment I learned about Connect Yorkshire, one of the things that immediately caught my attention was the prospect of engaging with an Entrepreneur in Residence, and my experience with Simon Biltcliffe surpassed all expectations.

Simon was simply brilliant. What struck me the most about Simon was his insightful perspective. He has a keen eye for identifying opportunities and potential pitfalls, and he shared his wisdom generously.

Beyond his expertise, Simon’s approachability and genuine interest in my success were truly commendable. He took the time to understand my goals, aspirations, and unique business circumstances.

In summary, my experience with Simon Biltcliffe as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Connect Yorkshire was nothing short of exceptional. His brilliance, insightfulness, and generosity in sharing his expertise were invaluable to me. I am grateful for the opportunity to have worked with him, and I would highly recommend Connect Yorkshire and their Entrepreneur in Residence program to any aspiring entrepreneur looking for guidance and support on their journey.

A huge benefit of being a member of Connect Yorkshire is the opportunity to meet with their Entrepreneurs in Residence. I was fortunate enough to meet with Chris Henry recently to discuss the growth plans for our business, how to build resilience and further develop a productive lead generation process. Chris brought a wealth of knowledge to the conversation based on his own success and experience with a similar business model and I found it really useful to talk about and sense check my ideas as well as coming away with some practical actions. I’m looking forward to meeting him again in the future.

Connect Yorkshire offered me the opportunity of a mentoring session with an Entrepreneur in Residence and I chose to meet with Gez Walsh of Innergy Group Ltd. Gez listened extremely well to my plans for Aquatrust and we chatted for over two hours whilst he made notes for follow up.

The pointers he sent me along further to the meeting are invaluable and he offered help in many areas I hadn’t thought of such as personal planning, people and EMI schemes.

We’re already arranging a follow up meeting next month and I look forward to catching up with Gez on these areas!

Many thanks Gez

It was a pleasure meeting Neil Warnock. We discussed, amongst other things, our latest product line. Neil filled me with confidence that we are in a great position to take this further, as we have a proven core product, the perfect reference customer, further sales, implementation battle scars and strong financial control.

We agreed that the next step is to more clearly define and identify the target market and its requirements, from which a more informed strategy planning can be done. That way we’ll be clearer on marketing messages and channels, route-to-market, channel partners, team augmentation and incentivisation, prod enhancements/dev processes, product/installation packaging etc.

Neil even offered to get in touch with some of his contacts to see if they could also help us further.

Thank you Connect Yorkshire for arranging this invaluable meeting.

I recently joined Connect Yorkshire and was offered the opportunity to have a mentoring session with Anna Assassa. I was delighted to meet Anna and felt an instant connection – I knew I’d made the right choice!

Anna quickly grasped a good understanding of my business and what is needed to grow. She gave me some invaluable advice and insights which left my mind racing, filled with ideas!

Anna – thank you so much for your time, knowledge, focus and clarity. I found our mentoring session both inspiring and thought-provoking. I’m so looking forward to our next session.

Thank you Connect Yorkshire for this impactful opportunity.

My co-director James and I had a fantastic meeting with Connect Yorkshire Entrepreneur in Residence Simon Biltcliffe mainly about how we could improve our business, we discussed the hurdles we had come across setting the business up in covid. He also told us about the problems he has had in his business and how he overcame them and how he could help us in our business after leaving a large corporate company. He came up with a few ideas as to where and how we could move forward which we are implementing.

We got on really well with Simon and plan to meet him again

I want to say thank you to Jonathan Sands for your time and insight during our mentoring session. The session gave me a huge amount of perspective and has helped me gain a lot of clarity on my direction. It was very kind of you to offer to look over my refreshed proposition, which I am currently working on.

I had a fantastic session with Michael Bridge, we discussed retaining staff, the options of setting up an EMI scheme or whether to do down the route of profit sharing. We also discussed in details the issues with building a successful management team and my own exist plan. Mike was really helpful and was able to give me insights into what really make up a successful team based on his own vast experience in building up a successful management team. There was loads of great takeaways and things that I can practically implement within my business.

I chose to have my Entrepreneur in residence slot with Rachel Hannan. I found the session extremely useful. Rachel kindly gave me over 2 hours of her time to discuss my business. She was able to help me to articulate what my current questions are within a few minutes of us meeting, things I have been struggling to put into words for a while!

She then helped me to work through some of the options available to me, which with her keen business acumen was invaluable. I really appreciate her time and this offer from Connect Yorkshire, thank you very much.