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It's a pleasure to welcome Sarah Jane Thomson to my SME Walkabout with BOOST&Co. Sarah Jane is one of the UK's foremost female entrepreneurs with a long and successful track record in building multi-national businesses from the UK. She's founded, floated and acquired firms, winning multiple business awards. She was the youngest female CEO in the City of London during the 1990s. On a personal note, I've known Sarah Jane for six years as I invited her onto my first night on a then brand new station, talkRADIO where we discussed her business passion, First News. First News is a children's only newspaper for 7 to 14 year olds with a staggering two-million readers. It doesn't just distill complicated news stories for the younger generation, but also campaigns for their demands and needs. First News joined a campaign to abolish the abuse of Child Soldiers and was presented to the G7 Summit. Sarah Jane exudes energy and inspiration and if you're an SME entrepreneur who's despaired a bit during the pandemic, listen to this episode of #JonnyWalks for some valuable and timely encouragement. Everyone goes through challenges.

We’re heading to BOOST&Co’s sister company, Growth Lending in this episode, to find out how they’ve turned the disruption of the pandemic into opportunity for the SME sector. Principal Vicki Taylor, based in Growth Lending’s Manchester office is highly experienced in big banking and started life in supermarket retail, but she’s now enjoying the pace and flexibility of a smaller-scale lender to make a big impact in companies looking to grow and scale up. And Tom Seymour, regional director of Growth Lending, and based in Bristol sees the opportunity of matching his firm’s many lending products in a low-interest environment. While you’re digesting out chat with both experts, visit the “contact us” page at Growth-Lending.com to get in touch. 🎧 This is an essential listen if you’re an SME in the UK looking to finance your next stage of growth.

Neurodiversity is increasingly recognised as a metric to improve educational standards. We learn differently from one another. Some are left behind in the classroom, but it’s not because they’re less clever. It’s that we all ponder logic in different ways. Today we talk to Michael Hall, strategic chief financial officer of Cognassist, who says “as long as you have a brain, we can show you how you think and learn!” The Newcastle-based data analysis company is shaking up adult education, with a new digital approach to identifying learning difficulties. Too many of us leave education without a single qualification. Cognassist has assessed more than 70,000 people and prospective students can access bespoke learning programmes. It makes a significant difference to the process of learning. Cognassist enables colleges and independent trainers to cognitively assess their learners through digital means 🎧 Let’s find out what it’s all about with Michael Hall.

Foodhub has become Britain’s third biggest online food-ordering portal with a combination of sound judgement and a bit of cheek! It’s the no-frills entrant to the UK’s food delivery sector. In a recent promotional campaign, they encouraged users to “Just Delete” other competitor apps! FoodHub now has 22,000 takeaways on its books, compared with 18,000 restaurants for Uber Eats, having grown 160% in 2020, thanks to a surge in demand during the pandemic. Based in Stoke-on-Trent but also with staff in India, Australia and the US, FoodHub has increased its turnover from £3m to around £30m in the past three years. And they’ve now secured significant funding from BOOST&Co as it enters negotiations with private equity firms to raise £100m. Jonny Gould spoke to Mohamed Chaudry, the company’s chief financial officer.

This is Jonny Gould's SME Walkabout with BOOST&Co. We're heading to Norwich as first point on our of tour of East Anglia as we celebrate world-class innovation once more with the Cofinitive 21toWatch Awards. Celebrating Nicholas Parsons' best weekend work in Norwich, we talk to Dr Berwin Clarke of Iceni Diagnostics, who use revolutionary carohydrate-based technology in biotech, we check-in on the fascinating world of holography with Aleksandra Pedrasewska of Vivid-Q and Gita Khalili of Glycovue brings mobile diabetes management to the world.

We’re heading east again to talk to three extraordinary entrepreneurs, recognised by The Cofinitive #21toWatch awards, sponsored by BOOST&Co, which celebrate the world-class people, companies and things they make and do across Cambridge and the east of England. Flusso, the world’s smallest flow sensor designed for low-cost, high-volume applications. Cambridge GaN Devices, who’ve found a brilliant way to make transistors that are over 100 times faster, lose 5 – 10 times less power and are 4 times smaller than existing silicon equivalents. And Spotta, which combines AI, machine learning and IoT sensors to create a digital way of tackling pests. They cause over $440bn in damage each year, affecting industries as diverse as hospitality, farming and forestry. 🎙It’s all happening in Cambridge and the east of England. Listen to a fascinating episode of innovation, disruption and business vision!

Another episode, another trailblazing female entrepreneur. Welcome to Jonny Gould’s SME Walkabout, Emma Sinclair MBE! During lockdown, Emma started an initiative which caught my eye: a way to give more SMEs the critical advice they needed to navigate the commercial emergency of lockdown. With a full-time day job and a full-on family, she didn’t have much time or bandwidth - yet she knew when she did reach out, it really helped. So Emma opened up a few half-hour slots every week asking for £50 in return for 30 minutes of her time. She then spent that money gifting something from another SME. That way she derived some tangible value, sending people gifts and reaching people who otherwise wouldn’t be on her direct radar. Emma founded car park management firm Target Parking (which she has since exited) and now co-leads tech company EnterpriseJungle. She’s the youngest person in the UK to take a company public and her determination and entrepreneurial zeal led to an MBE in the Queen’s 90th Birthday Honours for services to entrepreneurship. Emma’s also the first mentor of Building Young Futures, a UNICEF initiative aimed to teach disadvantaged youths in developing countries business and life skills so that they’re better equipped to find work or start a business. LISTEN 🎧 to the powerful Emma Sinclair MBE.

We’ll be updated by Lance Forman, CEO of H Forman & Son, smoked salmon manufacturers since 1905. We’ll also be replaying a part of the interview with the WEIRD CEO, Charles Towers Clark, who’s revolutionary thinking on running businesses has proved spectacularly right with the onset of the pandemic. Ironically, I interviewed him about the changes we can expect in our work-lives - just as lockdown in March 2020 was starting. And as the cofinitive #21toWatch prepares for its awards ceremony, I catchup with a nominee who’s on the shortlist for a second successive year, it’s Agile Analog’s CEO, Tim Ramsdale.

Jonny Gould’s SME Walkabout welcomes two guests today: BOOST&Co’s Cambridge principal, Faye McDonough and Lance Forman, managing director of H Forman & Son, smoked salmon manufacturer. We focus on the forthcoming Cofinitive #21toWatch, sponsored by BOOST&Co and a story of family business survival by emergency “pivoting” on more than one occasion. It’s a celebration of the people, companies and ‘things’ they create across Cambridge and the East of England, setting standards in innovation and entrepreneurship across the globe. #21toWatch showcases the lesser known, recognising exciting new entries across all market sectors and the panel of judges will assess each SME on Innovation, Challenge, Influence, Viability and Memorability. Entries have now closed and the shortlist is announced at the start of February, with the annual #21toWatch Top21 unveiled in a unique event on the first Thursday in March 2021. You’ll hear some of the winners right here! And if there was a world champion of “pivoting” a business plan to survive, to up sticks and restart to survive, the award might go to an independent salmon smokehouse in London’s East End. I talk to Lance Forman, the fourth generation family member of the only smokehouse left in that part of the country.

This is part 2 of Jonny's conversation with Kate Hardcastle MBE. In the first part, Kate discussed her 25 years at the heart of changing customer insight and how she advised SMEs and larger corporations on how to anticipate those changes. In this second episode, Kate argues there was "patterning" going on before lockdown - and Covid has only served to speed things up. Jonny Gould's SME Walkabout is supported by BOOST&Co.