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Emma Jones
Interview Phadria Prendergast
The woman that builds entrepreneurs and businesses is none other than Emma Jones MBE. WOTC caught up with the business expert to discuss the beginning of it all, what support is currently available for businesses during this time and her favourite topic - entrepreneurs.
Phadria: How did it all begin for you?
Emma: Well, it began quite a long time ago, I guess, is the first thing to mention. I had been working for a big accounting firm. So, when I was in university, I worked for a big firm called Arthur Andersen and I left there when I was 27 to start my first business which, this was in the year 2000, it was at the height of the ‘dot com’ boom, and so I left what felt like a very safe job at the time to start a .com company called Techlocate.com, and that business I actually started with a co-founder. It fortunately, went really well and then two years in, we sold that business, and I guess, the experience of starting, growing and then selling that business gave me the idea for Enterprise Nation, which has been my second company – a much more long-standing one. So, 10 years in the making that Enterprise Nation is and, of course, what Enterprise Nation is all about is helping people start and grow their own business. I grew up with a mum who ran businesses, so I think that started my interest in anything entrepreneurial and being my own boss.
P: You mentioned that the entrepreneurial spirit lies in your family, did you ever want to go down the same route that your mother went down? What is it that she did?
E: She ran restaurants and I never wanted to do that! So, we grew up, literally above the shops. Mum had restaurants; we tended to live above the restaurants. It wasn’t necessarily wanting to do what mum had done in her business but what was helpful was that, literally, around the dinner table, we would be talking about, or mum would be saying how the business was doing. My brother and I worked there from a very young age on weekends, and you got to see – you weren’t aware of it at the time – but you were picking up top tips around customer support. It builds a very strong work ethic, because we would go and work in restaurants on weekends while most of our friends were still out playing. So, it subconsciously - and as I said, you’re not aware of this at the time when you’re growing up in it - literally being surrounded by an entrepreneurial family gives you that grounding and I guess, possibly the biggest thing is it gives you that kind of breakdown in psychological barriers, because one thing that puts off so many people from starting a business is the fear of giving up their day job and thinking ‘can I actually make this work’.
Definitely when I left Arthur Andersen to start Techlocate, that fear was still there and then, when I started Enterprise Nation, the fear was there of ‘can I make it work’. But I think when you’ve grown up and you’ve been used to it, the fear, maybe, is slightly less, because you can see somebody else has done it, you have a role model and therefore that boosts your confidence. So yeah, I didn’t want my mother’s profession, but I think that grounding definitely helped me with the skills to run a business and, possibly more importantly, the psychological impetus to do it.
P: Over the last few months, so much has happened in the world of business, generally. It doesn’t matter what kind of business you run or own or brand or anything; everything is a business because of transactions. So, what does the future of business look like to you now?
E: We have seen - and I know that people are always quite surprised about this – we have seen a huge increase in people’s appetite to start a business, and there’s a couple of factors around that. There are a lot of people on furlough who have now got some time to turn their passion project and test the waters to see if they can generate income from it. There’s also a slightly sadder note where people have sadly been made unemployed and they feel that gives them a kick that they need to start their own business.
So, I do think that, if somebody says to me ‘what will entrepreneurship be looking like in 12 months’ time?’, I think we’ll see a boost in start-ups and, what I hope that we see – and this is the big job that Enterprise Nation does day in, day out – is that we can, hopefully, keep most of the small businesses in survival mode over the next 12 months. Of course, so many business have been affected in the last couple of months, but the one thing that I COVID has done to many business owners is make them much more resilient and so, we’ve spoken to 1,000s of business owners who’ve said ‘if this happens again, I want to go into this as a stronger business so, what can I do diversify, to look for new customers, to do more online, to make sure that my cash position is looking much safer’.
The great thing about business owners, entrepreneurs, founders is you can throw a lot at them and they can take on a lot and they will learn from it to hopefully build a stronger business. But as I say, if in the terrible situation that COVID does come back, they’ll be fitter, but of course, that just makes it a fitter business to be able to withstand anything.
Looking ahead, I think a bright future for start-ups and, hopefully, a bright future for those businesses who have been able to survive the pandemic and keep trading, because business owners have learnt so many lessons around how they can maybe just do things a little bit better.
“The great thing about business owners, entrepreneurs, founders is you can throw a lot at them and they can take on a lot and they will learn from it…”
P: Thank you so much for that. I think a really big thing is a of people – a lot of business owners – don’t know what kind of support or opportunities are available for their businesses. Could you talk us through what is available?
E: Yeah! Well, first of all, there’s a huge amount of it available, so that’s the good news for anyone, regardless of your phase actually. So, if you’re starting up or if your saying ‘actually, I’ve started selling online, I’m doing pretty well. Now I want to grow’. So, whether it’s start or growth, there’s quite a lot.
The first one I would mention would be Enterprise Nation, of course. We’re this online platform that offers so much free support, daily events. We’re now delivering an Amazon business accelerator, which is going to train 200,000 small businesses from all parts of the UK in how to do more online to build online resilience. So, EnterpriseNation.com, lots and lots of support.
In addition to that, particularly in London, there’s something called the London Growth Hub, which is based at City Hall, and it’s a government funded organisation that – you can’t set up face-to-face sessions at the moment – but you can set up calls with advisers who can give you help.
Local councils – they’ve had a really important role during COVID, actually, because if anyone was trading on the high street, they'd have the organisations that are giving out these cash grants to small businesses. So, your local council is always worth checking out what support they have available on much more of a local level, because councils have high street support programmes, they sometimes do have cash incentives.
So, I’d say they’re the 3 first places to have a look – Enterprise Nation, London Growth Hub and your local council.
In addition, there’re business networks and, even though these business networks are not meeting in person at the moment – I’ve seen that you’re very active in this area - any business in London can just go onto Eventbrite and, pretty much, any day of the week at the moment, there’re online events, which makes geography more irrelevant because, whether you’re in London or not, you can attend any online event.
But when physical events come back and everyone’s looking at the dates and the timing of that, certainly in London, there is something every single day and night that small business owners can attend. There’s a huge wealth of support definitely available for small businesses. It’s just worth starting in those first few places – local councils, business networks which you can find on Eventbrite, London Growth Hub and then Enterprise Nation can hopefully offer help as well.
P: And what more do you think that the government could be doing?
E: This is always a tough question for me, because I always think they’re doing quite a good job, so my list of what else they could be doing is always quite small. We’ve actually just launched a programme with the government called Recovery Advice for Business. So, the government is sending small businesses to our platform to have free 1-hour advisory calls with lots of different kinds of advice, like accountants, HR experts, social media professionals etc. So, the government is doing that. The big thing that the government did in the past 3 months is they dished out a lot of money to small businesses. For me, the role of the government - and we’ve been very close to the government for years - I just always feel that the best role that they can play is shining a spotlight on good programmes that small businesses can access. So, I’m not a huge believer in government delivering big business support programmes, because I never quite feel that the government is the right organisation to do that. To deliver business support, you have to really understand what the customer wants, and you can understand it a lot better if you’re actually running a business yourself.
Government – and this is not meant to be any criticism – but Civil Servants don’t have that knowledge of what it’s like to run a business, so I never feel they’re best placed to deliver business support. What they can do is say that ‘there is a great wealth of business support out there; what we want to do is make small businesses aware of that’. So, for me, I just always think what the government’s role is, is can they showcase good business support programmes and, essentially, just create conditions of confidence for small businesses.
In this crazy world that we’re living in at the moment, can they somehow give stability, in terms of interest rates, even trade deals being negotiated at the moment, there’s a big role for the government to just communicate all the time and say ‘we’re thinking about small businesses. We want you to be exporting and we’re going to make it really easy for you to do that’. Government’s role is really championing enterprise, talking about it in a really positive way, creating those conditions so people feel safe about starting and growing a business in the UK, and spotlighting good things that are going on. My answer is never ‘Government should launch a programme’ or do anything else, it’s more can they just create the positive conditions for enterprise to flourish.
“My answer is never ‘Government should launch a programme’ or do anything else, it’s more can they just create the positive conditions for enterprise to flourish.”
P: And what kind of advice would you give to an entrepreneur wanting to start up a business during this time?
E: At the moment, there’s a particular message I feel around this. Previously, pre-COVID, if anyone said to me ‘what’s the advice? I want to start a business’, my first bit of advice would be ‘keep hold of the day job and build your business as a side-hustle’, because it just gives you that time to build your confidence to understand what business is.
But I feel I need to slightly change that advice at the moment because, of course, a lot of people might not have a day job. So, it’s kind of two-folded; if you do still have a day job, I’d say keep the day job and build it up as a side-hustle. If you don’t have a day job, I would say, in a way, challenging times like this can be the best time to start a business, because there’s market opportunity and the other great reason why it’s a good time to start a business at the moment is you can get assets quite cheaply.
For instance, six months ago, if someone wanted to start a retail business in London, they’d be looking at huge start-up costs like getting a shop and everything to go with it, where, of course, in challenging times, you can almost hustle a bit better and get better deals.
So, for those who are not in employment are thinking ‘is it a crazy time to start a business’, I would say take small steps towards it; write a business plan, get your first customers, get some feedback, get yourself on social media, which can all be done on a low budget. So, take those steps towards it, but it is a good time to be starting, because there are gaps in the market, there’s the ability now to sell to people online and you can get assets at a slightly cheaper price. Advice overall is definitely do it; if you have got a job, I would say try and build it around and alongside the day job.
