In a recent edition of The Gage, Greengage’s podcast channel, Rosalyn Breedy, a Corporate, Funds and Financial lawyer with over 25 years’ experience working in private practice, investment banking and family offices talked to
Greengage CEO Sean Kiernan about the best way to nurture entrepreneurship and diversity in the UK. In the second part in this blog series, we look at these factors in more detail.

There are several key factors that are essential in nurturing UK’s entrepreneurs. The key building blocks are Exposure, Education, Networking and relationship building and Communication.

Exposure

Exposure to successful entrepreneurs, be they in family businesses or otherwise, is hugely beneficial to other
entrepreneurs at different stages of their respective journeys and to established businesses willing to share the ‘secrets of their success’ in terms of funding, finance and business development.

Family-owned businesses can play an important part, in that they have a lot of knowledge they can share and deep pools of expertise and experience that can be tapped. It is not just about the Bransons and Mittals, a lot of family business leaders stay out of the limelight, preferring to keep a low profile. They are nonetheless extremely valuable resources to be tapped in shaping UK entrepreneurial policies for pragmatic and meaningful outcomes.

And it is not even about big businesses – myriad small businesses in the UK, from hairdressers to drivers, are run by individuals that have, by necessity, created business plans, secured financial backing or support and learned to plan ahead. They know how tough it is to succeed as a business owner – how to get finance, how to recruit and retain employees and the reality of how long things actually take in real life. There is much to learn from those that have already trodden the entrepreneurial path.

Education

We need to give shape to the huge amount of untapped talent – the ‘diamonds in the rough’ (ideas and people) – in the UK. Starting in schools, all children should be taught basic financial management skills, including core banking, balance sheet and P&L modules. Whether they become entrepreneurs or not, this provides all children with very valuable knowledge that will benefit them enormously in later life. Outside of teaching the basics at school or university, business communities themselves should be called upon to do much more, contributing their know-how to address, for example, “the three most common questions” they are asked in the field.

The knowledge (and experience) of other successful business owners offers invaluable insight in the entrepreneurial space and could be influential in the cultural shift from doing things ‘on the fly’ and learning by trial and error, to a more strategic, experience-based approach to what is known to work, and what does not work as well. It might also go a long way to redressing the perception that only ‘certain types’ can be successful entrepreneurs. Dragon’s Den, The Apprentice and other programmes may be great at promoting the concept of entrepreneurship but are not a realistic representation of the typical journey to success.

There is no question that the entrepreneurial agenda needs to be brought into schools and universities much more. In reality, every school child and graduate today and going forward is likely to have the experience of working for or with entrepreneurs – or indeed being one themselves – but there is no clear guidance as to what that actually means.

Networking and relationship building

This is obviously very hard to do without knowing how to access the right networks; business communities nation-wide could and should be much more proactive in encouraging entrepreneurs’ participation and engagement. In particular, much more is needed to encourage the inclusion of entrepreneurs from a broader spectrum of locations, cultures and ethnicities. It is a virtuous circle, as entrepreneurs become more visible, so others will recognise people like themselves being successful in this space, and in turn, will likely be more confident in their expectations of how their own journey could pan out.

As part of networking, entrepreneurs need to develop relationships with trusted advisers – the lawyers, accountants, PR agencies and others that are essential to taking them through their journey. If you’re going to climb a mountain, you want to be surrounded by a team that a) has your best interests at heart and b) will help you overcome the challenges and help you get to the top.

If the entrepreneur is the parent of their business, so to say, taking their idea from conception to birth and nurturing its growth and success, trusted advisors can be considered the ‘godparents’, keeping a watchful eye on how it’s all going, making tactful interventions when necessary and enjoying celebrating all the important milestones.

Communication

More – and better – communication is an imperative. Academics and business leaders tend to speak at a very high level, based on an assumption that everybody they will likely have to talk to will have a similar level of understanding of their subject, or business, as their own. It is very easy to lose an audience with insider language, or excessive use of industry terminology and acronyms.

An example of this is the burgeoning digital asset industry and advent of new technologies like blockchain and crypto. While there’s a huge amount of noise about these across all media, without clear communication and explanation it is easy to see why these might be perceived as risky and fraudulent rather than the (more prosaic) view that they could be new and more effective approaches to managing traditional business processes.

Business shorthand is obviously an efficient means of communicating concepts between players in the same business community. But if the goal is to communicate and engage with those outside a specific community, it requires a more structured and prescriptive approach to explaining core concepts. If your audience understands what you are saying (however broadly), they are more likely to trust what they are being told.

Nurturing all these factors will be central to making sure that the current and future generations of UK entrepreneurs and small business are encouraged to grow and thrive.

To learn more, listen to our podcast series, The Gage Episode 7 — The Importance of Family Business and Entrepreneurship in the UK