Member Article

BizSmart helps Worcestershire businesses ‘elevate’ growth with dedicated peer-to-peer program

A leading Worcestershire business support provider has helped 17 businesses enhance growth through ‘Elevate’, a dedicated peer-to-peer program supported by Worcestershire Business Central, Worcestershire County Council and the European Regional Development Fund.

Founded in 2012 by proven entrepreneur, Kevin Brent, BizSmart has successfully established itself as a leading business support provider, having developed a series of support initiatives with a key focus on bringing like-minded business leaders together via peer-to-peer learning and engagement.

Awarded a regional business support tender at the start of 2020, Kevin and the BizSmart team introduced ‘Elevate’ to over 30 Worcestershire businesses at launch events hosted at the end of February 2020, which provided the opportunity for selected attendees to learn from BBC Apprentice Winner, Mark Wright, and gain insight into what the Elevate program has to offer and how it can support business growth.

From here, 17 businesses joined the peer-to-peer driven program and have since benefitted from monthly support meetings, which have focused on the core pillars of the BizSmart scale-up journey and enabled business owners to understand and work through fundamental challenges to drive business growth.

Kevin explained: “The latest statistics show that just 4% of businesses in the UK successfully scale beyond 9 employees, typically equating to around the £1 million turnover mark, with the majority stuck in something we call the ‘owner’s trap’ where they have created a business that is overly dependent on themselves

The Elevate program, supported by Worcestershire Business Central , Worcestershire County Council and the European Regional Development Fund, has been created to help Worcestershire businesses identify and overcome key blockers to growth, improving their chances of long-term scalability and success. Although we didn’t plan for Elevate to take place during the COVID-19 pandemic, all participants benefitted significantly from the peer-to-peer support process, and we now look forward to continuing to work with these businesses through our wider BizSmart support initiatives.“

Having successfully completed the Elevate program, Matt Busby, owner of The Name Label Company, added: “The Elevate program was beneficial, it challenged the way we worked, the way we looked at and dealt with issues and most importantly the way to approached planning. The BizSmart team gave us the tools and insight, whilst the peer-to-peer learning challenged the way we have traditionally done things, approached issues and then suggested alternative ways to deal with them. The Smart90 planning ensured we set out our 90 Plan in a very structured format with check and balances along the way and full accountability.”

“As a business, we have benefited enormously, but also I feel I have ‘grown’ as a leader in the business and know that we are in a much better position than when we started the program. I am very grateful to Worcestershire County Council for having the vision to put on such a brilliant program to help local business. I thank BizSmart for delivering such inspiring content & support; it has helped us get through which I’m sure most people would agree, a very challenging 2020. I look forward to my continued journey (and learning) with the BizSmart team.”

BizSmart has established a leading reputation as the region’s business support provider of choice. With a clear mission to help as many business owners on their scaleup journey as possible, the firm has recently unveiled the launch of its Franchise model, which will enable Franchisees to deliver the proven support programs to business owners UK wide.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Jones .