My mentoring session with Hugh Facy was one of the most interesting and rewarding days I have had in a long while. We met down at Gripple and visited all 3 sites and had lunch. What an eye opener to an amazing company. Hugh talked about his business and what it has achieved and was candid about the numbers and earnings. A majority of the company is employee owned which is a new concept to me. Being an innovator at heart myself this visit reinforced my beliefs about the importance of innovation; Gripple expects that every 5 years 20% of their income will come from products that don’t exist before. Never sit back and think that more innovation is not needed-it is. And now Hugh is Chairman he delegates as much as possible so that people develop-until they don’t deliver that is! Thank you Connect Yorkshire for organising it

After having a mentoring session with Michael Bridge it was clear from the get go that he was very knowledgeable and better still, wanted to give guidance and share his expertise. Using the sessions with Entrepreneurs in residence through Connect Yorkshire is a fantastic tool to take advantage of being a member.

I had the pleasure of having my mentoring session with Rana Harvey.  Having heard Rana speak a couple of times at Connect Yorkshire events about her story, the way her business grew and develop and also the challenges she faced along the way, I knew I didn’t want anyone else.

Rana took the time to listen to me explain about my business and where I wanted it to go over the next 6 months, 1 year, two years etc.  The advice and guidance Rana gave was simply brilliant.  I have taken everything onboard and already seeing the results.  Thank you Rana.

I had my mentoring session with John McDonnell last week at my business premises in Allerton Bywater. We talked through my business plan and the challenges the business is facing. John was very generous with his time and challenged me on various issues and raised some very thought provoking actions and pushed me to consider the main issue in our business. I would recommend anyone who has not taken up this opportunity to get this organised, as it is a very valuable mentoring session that will benefit you and your business.

My 1 to 1 mentoring session with Gav Winter helped me clarify several important points for my company Katchr. It was timely because we are trying to make a change to our marketing approach so it involves more digital and Gav had experience of this shift. He gave me feedback on some of the marketing ideas we are developing so I can now send both our internal marketing team and our external marketing consultants top level thoughts about where we want to go. Thank you Gav, and thank you Connect Yorkshire for organising it.

I had a really useful mentoring session with Connect Yokshire’s Entrepreneur in Residence John McDonnell last week. We discussed my growth plans for Advanced Dynamics which I am in the process of developing and John had some great ideas about a possible new development for the business-and how to improve my current plans. Thank you Connect Yorkshire for organising it.

I recently had a mentoring session with Peter Roberts. Peter offered great advice on company growth through his own experiences and offered his expert advice on my strategies going forward also. Thank you Nick for arranging this, its my second mentoring session and strongly advise people to take the opportunity to engage in the ‘Entrepreneur in Residence’ programme if they have the chance to do so.

I met with Richard Doyle at his office in Boroughbridge.  My business (BLMS) is built on broader IT management skills rather than a narrower specialism, which has made it harder to concisely explain what we do. This was the main focus of my mentoring session with Richard. He took time to understand the background of BLMS and then challenged me constructively with lots of direct questions. He has a very engaging personality and I found the session really valuable. I came away with what I feel is the clearest value proposition BLMS has had in its 5 years existence.

My mentoring session with Adrian Fizpatrick was really beneficial and enjoyable. To start with we discussed each others business backgrounds and then moved onto how I could grow my business. I need to get a target list of decent sized businesses and Adrian helped devise a novel approach such as offering some free benefits to get me through the door. I’m putting into practice many of the points we discussed-it was a great session.

I met Connect Yorkshire’s Entrepreneur in Residence Graham Honeyman of Forgemasters in the week of 11th October 2020 and we had a really interesting discussion. We concentrated on how he communicates with his staff and what changes he has made at Forgemasters. Our discussion has produced a few ideas for me to implement at my company; the meeting has been very valuable to me. Graham and I will remain in touch especially as our two companies,although different in size, face many similar issues