Business Coaching

Meet the BGCN Coaching Team

We know how difficult it can be to successfully run your own business, we know lots of businesses realise they could benefit from a trusted adviser, a critical friend or a just someone to talk through the ideas, the pressures and frustrations and the opportunities that come with running your own venture.

<h5>Simon Baker</h5>
<p>Simon has over 30 years senior leader, advisor and doer experience in the low carbon energy sector. His passion is solving challenges for start-ups, joint ventures, mega-projects and large corporates, both alone and leading multifunctional, multinational teams using his extensive breadth of experience from shop floor to the Board room. He focuses on delivering simple solutions to complex problems, be they: defining growth strategy; developing projects and supply chains, or shaping investments for successful delivery. Skills in: coaching, mentoring, acquisitions and divestments; corporate risk and governance; transformation and change. Operates authentically with high integrity.</p>

<p>Qualifications include: MBA, first-class engineering degree and practical qualifications. Covering the UK from his East Anglian base.</p>

Simon Baker

Low carbon economy

London and East

<h5>Peter Basford</h5>
<p>Peter had 33 years banking experience and is used to dealing with clients of all types from Start ups to £500M+ per year turnover Multi National Businesses. He has worked in commercial, private banking and retail Banking.</p>

<p>His real passion is for helping others realise their potential and has mentored colleagues, Businesses and for the School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE). </p>

<p>He has a post graduate diploma in coaching to back up his years of practical knowledge. Peter specialises in helping growing SMEs particularly with Customer Service, Business Development, Finance and using new technology to do things in a better and more efficient way. </p>

<p>He is a qualified Clarity4D coach and trains people on how to make the most of LinkedInCo founder of the Innovation Lab in Suffolk, which is a co working space for early stage technology businesses which enables him to support many start ups and promote Suffolk as a great place to live and work</p>

Peter Basford

SME

London and East

Alison Beech

SME

London and East

<h5>Damian Burdin</h5>
<p>Damian has had an interesting and varied career working in a variety of sectors, including Retail, Sales, Education and Hospitality.</p>

<p>For the past 20 years, Damian has specialised in the Further Education sector holding positions of Training Manager, Quality Director, Ethical Procurement Director and Chief Executive Officer.<br>His passion is enabling individuals to realise and unlock their true potential through coaching and mentoring.</p>

<p>Has a broad experience of growing a business organically, through acquisition and start up. Specific areas of expertise include business planning, strategy, change management, succession planning, coaching, mentoring, performance management and recruitment.</p>

<p>A proud dad of two boys, he enjoys supporting them with their hobbies of football, drama and boxing. </p>

<p>Damian is based in Crewe and working with clients in Cheshire and Merseyside. </p>

Damian Burdin

Education and Training

<h5>Brian Bush</h5>
<p>Brian is a sales/business development and relationship specialist having worked in a number of areas across the private and public sectors. From involvement in growing business (small to large) to creating and growing his own ventures Brian has a real passion for business. He has been directly involved in business through insurance, UK Gov, digital & technology, cyber, physical & asset protection, learning & development, education, healthcare/health & wellbeing and manufacturing.</p>

<p>Driven by purpose and able to motivate and inspire others Brian can bring connection to a team or business to ensure a positive culture can exist to enhance efficiency and therefore profit.<br>A very well networked individual Brian always brings his extensive connections to all projects and businesses that he works with and uses strategic partnerships to drive forward opportunity.</p>

Brian Bush

Business Development

London and East

<h5>Kathryn Eade</h5>
<p>Having started and scaled her own business, Kathryn’s passion is now to help business owners, especially other female founders and their teams, to grow their business from the inside out, enabling them to avoid overwhelm and achieve sustainable success.</p>

<p>Her approach is based on listening, asking insightful questions and quickly honing in on the needs of her clients. She translates her extensive knowledge and experience of building a business into practical solutions that her clients can use to achieve success.</p>

<p>She started her career in the International charity sector, where she set up projects in 6 different locations around the world and led global teams to deliver them.</p>

<p>In 2003, she set up own learning consultancy which she ran for 15 years. She supported diverse clients in a range of sectors including Sport, Fashion, Media and Education, both in the UK and overseas. Whilst in Montreal, she worked in collaboration with others to create the city’s first bilingual Entrepreneurial Hub.</p>

<p>As an award winner for her work inspiring female entrepreneurs, she is frequently called upon as a speaker and panelist.</p>

<p>Specific areas of expertise include: coaching, mentoring, board facilitation, global, virtual and cross-cultural team dynamics, change resilience, business planning, strategy and start up.</p>

<p>When she’s not working, you’ll find her outdoors either swimming or running, or planning her family adventure!</p>

Kathryn Eade

SME

Elma Glasgow

PR

London and East

<h5>Sim Goldblum</h5>
<p>Sim is a very experienced leader, non-executive director, board adviser, senior manager, consultant, coach and mentor. He has worked with companies across many sectors from global automotive to SMEs, in business development, JV creation, M+A activity, team leadership and development.</p>

<p>He is passionate about helping business owners recruit, develop and retain the right people for each role, and is adept at addressing under-performing teams and dysfunctional boards.</p>

<p>Sim is very effective when advising SME business owners and leadership teams and brings independent thought, creative expertise and strategic wisdom to bear in all his assignments.</p>

<p><strong>Key Services</strong>:</p>

<ul><li>Implementing effective business growth solutions to add six figures to the bottom line in 12 months</li><li>Improving the business 1 person at a time by creating and delivering coaching and development plans</li><li>Building/Rebuilding Purpose for the business and for teams</li><li>Coaching and Mentoring senior staff/board members and owners</li></ul>

<p><strong>Sectors</strong>: Engineering, manufacturing, biotech, automotive, NHS, services</p>

Sim Goldblum

SME

<h5>Paul Greenhow</h5>
<p>Paul is an enterprising and energetic individual with over 30 successful years FMCG experience in both Retailing and Manufacturing operations. He is a people orientated and insightful character with proven abilities in sales management, and a track record of driving exceptional profitable growth through creativity and strategic business development.</p>

<p>He has now turned his experience to wanting to help others and as such, is now a seasoned Mentor with The Princes Trust and holds several Board advisory roles. A structured thinker who succeeds by understanding the wants and needs of the customer and matching this by driving positive change within the business team.</p>

<p>With a post Graduate Diploma in Marketing, Paul is a rounded Coach who looks to drive the commercial agenda with a focus in the Food & Drink sector. He has worked with multi sited operations predominantly in the East Anglian region but also in Ireland, Holland and Scotland. Paul Lives in Cambridgeshire with his Wife Fiona, Son Oliver and Daughter Holly.</p>

Paul Greenhow

Food and Drink

London and East

Rob Hall

SME

<h5>Mikael Korsgaard</h5>
<p>Helping people helping themselves to transform has been of interest to me since my teenage years. In 2004, I finally decided to gain insights about the art of transformation through coaching. Since then I have coached people of all ages and from many diverse fields, including athletes.</p>

<p>I invest myself into the dialog with the coachee (you) and become involved in your path. With empathy and the understanding of what the challenge is for you and what you would like to evolve away from and into, I focus on the importance of valuable and sustainable change by you for you. From our first intake conversation, the focus is you and the change you are seeking. Through listening with the intent to understand and learn about you, with encouragement and by holding you accountable in being persistent, our conversation will have one primary focus: ‘what change by you, will change a lot for you’?</p>

<p>There is an opportunity for growth and learning in all situations and challenges that we encounter. Throughout our work I will help you recognise your strengths and support your growth in areas where needed. By putting your problem areas and your challenges into new perspectives, you will gain new insights and grow personally.</p>

<p>I work primarily with SME’s, personal owned businesses and start ups. I also work with leaders who wish to become a better leader, especially around values, goal setting and influential and intentional leadership.’</p>

<p>As I am based in Denmark I suggest that we make meetings and coaching environmentally friendly and sustainable.</p>

<p>On-site coaching and training is of course also an option that I provide. It is also easy for me to schedule meetings anywhere in the EU if required.</p>

Mikael Korsgaard

Danish International

<h5>Richard McEvoy</h5>
<p>Richard is a Finance professional with a long history of stakeholder management at Board level, supporting setting of strategy and delivery. Also recognized for M&A experience, Change Management and has a passion for developing people around me, including their Health & Wellbeing.</p>

<p>Richard has considerable business-to-business experience in a service-led industry, supporting core economic sectors including Banking, construction, house-building and manufacturing across both SME and Mid Corporate Regional business.</p>

<p>Richard currently has a number of Non Executive and Board Advisory roles, with an emphasis on commercial aspects and transformational change. Richard is also presently driving organisational capability at an LSE Listed Property Fund.</p>

Richard McEvoy

Org. transformation

<h5>Phil Mowat</h5>
<p>Following a career in the events industry straight after university, Phil became involved in franchising at the start of 2009.</p>

<p>Nicky, his sister, was running a small hair and make up artist agency. Thinking about her growth plans, she looked at franchising as a route to growth. Phil, becoming tired of 15 hour days and late evenings in events venues, jumped on a train to the NEC in Birmingham and visited the National Franchise Exhibition to learn about franchising and what was required to develop the business into a franchise. In 5 years the booking agency had built up from a team of 10 to 350 make up artists, run by a network of 40 franchisees. Having reached critical mass and due to the rapid enhancements in automation, this allowed Phil to pursue other opportunities in franchising, whilst remaining (and to this day) a company director.</p>

<p>His next step was to take on a role as the Head of UK Operations to assist an Australian franchise business (Local Appliance Rentals) to open up and expand into the UK. Phil ran the operations, trained and onboarded new franchisees and led the day to day business, whilst working with Head Office in Brisbane, 10 hours ahead (no get away from the late nights!). The franchise network grew rapidly, from 5, to reach 35 franchisees by the time he left the business 18 months later.</p>

<p>Next up was a role working as a qualified Business Coach and the National Strategic Partnership Manager a leading coaching business. Phil worked with small business owners from a variety of industries, on a 1-2-1 and group basis, helping them to build systems for their business, build a team of employees, and allow them to work less, but make more money. Putting systems in place is one of the most important aspects of franchising, but it’s also very important for any business to work well. Alongside the coaching, the strategic partnership work was to form and manage partnerships that provided win-win-win solutions for the franchisor, the franchisees and the partner. The business partnered with the high street banks (HSBC, Santander, NatWest and Barclays), to run seminars and events to educate and teach the business building system to business owners around the country.</p>

<p>Phil’s last move was into another global franchise operation, working as the UK Country Director for Expense Reduction Analysts. He led the network of 100+ franchisees (all business consultants), as well as managing the internal departments and his own franchise support and recruitment teams. His biggest achievement was to help steer the business through the challenging Covid-19 pandemic and national lockdowns, allowing the franchisees to thrive and meaning the franchisor could continue to grow, in a very tough market. This role opened his eyes to the world of consulting and the opportunities that exist to help businesses to grow.</p>

<p>Phil loves the variety of businesses and sectors he gets to work with via BGCN. One day working with a small “mum” owned business to a much larger corporately owned business the next day.</p>

<p>His personal mission, by 2030, is to help over 300 businesses grow and create no less than 3,000 work opportunities. Off the back of this, he wants to raise £30,000 for good causes, by personally donating £10 for every work opportunity created. </p>

<p>A man on a mission!</p>

Phil Mowat

Franchise Specialist

London and East

<h5>André Neville</h5>
<p>André specialises in assisting new and established businesses in the engineering and manufacturing sectors in the Mid-Suffolk region. With his international sales, leadership and training background, he is adept at turning his hand to other sectors and has supported many SME’s in his time with BGCN.</p>

<p>André joined the British Army in 1994 where he spent 15 years as an engineering manager within rotary-wing aviation. After leaving the military he trained the British Army in engineering before stepping into a technical sales role in the heavy-duty off-road manufacturing industry.</p>

<p>As a Technical Sales Manager, André worked extensively in Europe, India, Africa and the Middle East, dealing directly with multi-national OEM’s and distributors while also managing the engineering design team. He is furthering his education by studying for a Level 5 Diploma in Education and Training and has recently completed an MBA at the University of Suffolk.</p>

<p>He is passionate about cycling and enjoys discovering the local roads in Suffolk and the hills in Spain. Other interests include spending time in Belgium, exploring WW1 history and of course sampling the local beer!</p>

André Neville

Manufacturing

London and East

<h5>Daniel Owen-Parr</h5>
<p>For 25 years, I have been leading high performing teams: 17 of those years have been in the banking and finance industry. I have held senior positions in Dixon’s Group, Lloyd’s Bank, and Together. I am currently with VAS Group as their Commercial Director.</p>

<p>I have managed clients with turnovers of up to £100million, across all sectors, and this has given me a unique perspective when it comes to running companies at all levels. It has also given me great insight into business dynamics and I have the leadership experience to develop teams with outstanding culture, resilience and performance – all attributes needed for success.</p>

<p>As a coach, I primarily work with SMEs, start-ups and owner managed businesses. I have a very strong affinity with financial services, retail, and sports & fitness businesses. I also work with leaders and managers who wish to improve, especially around mental toughness, goal setting, self-awareness and performance management. I am qualified as a Clarity4D coach. This allows me to support senior leaders and their team to unlock their full potential.</p>

<p>Within the property finance industry, I am a media-trained spokesperson: I have over 30 radio interviews under my belt, countless editorials and blog coverage, podcasts and three TV interviews on Sky Property TV.</p>

<p>Spare-time finds me utilizing my leadership skills as a triathlon coach. I have also tested my own boundaries by completing numerous marathons, triathlons, two Ironman events, the Marathon Des Sables and an English Channel relay swim.</p>

<p><strong>Specialities:</strong></p>

<ul><li>High Level Sales Expertise</li><li>Strong Leadership and Emotional Intelligence Skills</li><li>Developing Exception Teams</li><li>Lending and Development Finance</li><li>Managing and Developing People</li><li>Delivering Excellent Client Relationships</li><li>Coaching and Media Trained</li><li>Presentation, Public Speaking and Communication Skills.</li></ul>

<p>My preference is to coach via Zoom as this gives me the ability to operate anywhere in the UK and at a time that suits you.</p>

Daniel Owen-Parr

SME

Online Coaching

<h5>Sam Parnell</h5>
<p>I have a successful history in technical sales and implementation across various sectors. For the last decade I have been working with a team of developers, designers, technical SEO experts and digital marketers and have combined my sales experience with my digital knowledge focusing on helping businesses to grow online.</p>

<p>We all hear that a great digital strategy will revolutionise business but buying multiple services and ensuring they all dovetail efficiently together can be a minefield. It’s my job to be the digital advocate within your organisation. I help to plan digital strategies, working out how you can use digital tools to make more of your mission; helping teams like yours implement digital projects, sometimes using existing tools, sometimes creating new ones, that includes CRM’s, collaborations, communications, campaigns and lots more. I work with digital experts to build websites and software, sometimes from scratch, sometimes on top of existing platforms.</p>

<p>There’s a lot there, but here’s the best place to start: what’s the problem you’re trying to solve?</p>

<p>I work with BGCN coaches maximising their specialist coaching knowledge and giving projects a digital dimension to open up revenue opportunities.</p>

Sam Parnell

Digital strategist

London and East

<h5>Ali Powell</h5>
<p>Ali’s experience covers the international hospitality sector with a focus of hotels, fitness, retail and retirement living.</p>

<p>She has been awarded:<br>• Business Woman Of The Year, Retail and Consumer 2017 – First Women Award<br>• Building Customer Relationships 2017 – Marketing Society Excellence Award<br>• Turnaround Of The Decade Award 2017 – TRI Award</p>

<p>She has a proven track record in diagnosing issues, helping businesses understand what great looks like for them, and set out a path to maximise both people and commercial acceleration, for transformational growth.<br></p>

<p>She has held senior leadership positions in Strategic Planning, Marketing, Sales and Revenue Optimisation at Hilton, InterContinental Hotels Group, Premier Inn, Fitness First, Royal Mail, PegasusLife. </p>

<p>Her last corporate role was as Chief Commercial Officer for a private equity company. Her experience is broad and deep, and has helped stagnating clients turnaround businesses, find new and steady revenue streams, generate millions of additional income and put millions on their profit margins.<br></p>

<p>Ali enjoys making a difference and adding value to the business world, it is a natural ‘next step’ to start her own business growth consultancy.</p>

Ali Powell

Hospitality and Leisure

London and East

<h5>Wendy Richards</h5>
<p>Through her own life experience Wendy has learned that success in business is not only about how to make money: It is about personal development, commitment to a dream, and the drive to make a difference for yourself and all the people in your life.</p>

<p>Wendy is passionate about working with small business owners and health care practise owners to help them achieve their goals in a way that is sustainable for both them, their team and their families. Through her own personal experience, as well as personalised coaching methods, she provides unique and powerful solutions for personal and business growth.</p>

<p>Wendy takes a holistic approach to your business, encouraging you to dig deeper at what is preventing you from achieving your goals.</p>

<p>In 2003, Wendy moved to South Africa from the UK in search of inner peace and happiness. In 2019, her sixteen year African adventure came to an end and she returned to the UK to fulfil her vision of inspiring happiness and self-fulfilment in others. Wendy has owned and sold three companies, learning the hard way about what’s involved in creating a thriving and profitable company. With over 15 years of business experience, you benefit from the lessons she has learned without having to make those same mistakes.</p>

<p>Isn’t it time to rise above your challenges and create a profitable business?</p>

Wendy Richards

SME

London and East

<h5>Nigel Sandbrook</h5>
<p> Nigel had a rich career with Lloyds Bank culminating in his dream job as Area Director – Manufacturing. His love of business started with his father taking him around factories when he was six years old. Ever since then he has been passionate about SME’s the challenges they face to produce and sell products and services.<br>He has wide experience in various sectors spending much of his time with clients although he has been a senior lending and audit manager.<br>A qualified banker gaining an ACIB. </p>

Nigel Sandbrook

Manufacturing

London and East

<h5>Ciara Scallon</h5>
<p>One of the benefits of having a rich and varied work life, is being able to help others enrich their own. My diverse career encompasses stockbroking in the City & Europe, global outsourcing and change management in Australia, and charity fundraising in the Arts and Heritage sector in the UK. I most enjoy working in the SME sector where each person’s input can make a tangible difference.</p>

<p>I run a professional fundraising practice. We help bring to life the dreams of individuals and communities, for profit and not-for-profit. I also serve as a Trustee on the board of charity contributing to strategy and direction. I love the problem-solving aspects of every project, working out how to tell each story to best effect. A lateral and strategic thinker, I am direct and honest, whilst supportive in finding new ways of approaching difficult issues. We work collaboratively towards finding the innovative – or obvious – solutions.</p>

<p>I passionately believe that relationship building is the cornerstone of any successful venture, particularly those wishing to grow. I would be delighted to have a conversation about any current or future challenges or opportunities.</p>

Ciara Scallon

Charity & Not for Profit

London and East

<h5>Gary Styles</h5>
<p>Gary joined us off the back of a successful banking career spanning 32 years including 26 years working closely with Commercial clients. During his time at Lloyds Bank, he over-saw and supported over 100 Private Equity backed businesses across the UK, with sales of £10m+ operating across a range of sectors; from Fertility Clinics to IT Support companies; Electronics Retailers to Travel Operators; Builders Merchants to Hair Straighteners.</p>

<p>His close involvement with Executive Management Teams and their PE investors gave him great insight into the plans and processes in making businesses more efficient and fit for growth, whilst at the same time, providing a trusted banking relationship hand to his many business customers.</p>

<p>Recognised by work colleagues and customers alike for his down to earth approach and ability to ask the difficult questions, Gary acquired a few grey hairs whilst directly supporting businesses through and beyond the Financial Crash of 2007 where the impact on his customers (and his own employer) needed close oversight. His last 3 years at Lloyds saw him appointed as Yorkshire’s main Credit Sanctioner in the Bank’s Mid-Markets Commercial team, before moving into business consultancy in 2019.</p>

<p>With an ingrained desire to see businesses succeed and flourish through great systems, data excellence and appropriate and deliverable strategies, Gary is keen to support small business owners in the Yorkshire Region in achieving their dreams and aspirations and is ready to hear from you!</p>

Gary Styles

SME

<h5>Neil Thorogood</h5>
<p>Neil has recently retired from banking after 36 years at Lloyds Bank of which the last 29 were working in the Small Business and Commercial sector. During that time Neil trained as a Business Mentor and worked with several start-up businesses in that capacity.</p>

<p>As well as working with businesses across all manner of sectors Neil holds a specialist Lexcel accreditation for his work with the Legal Profession over the past 12 years.</p>

<p>One of the many roles Neil fulfilled whilst at Lloyds Bank was the introduction and roll out of its Route Map programme which included a number of specially designed tools to help businesses identify Long Term goals and set Medium term targets as well as developing a better understanding of their market and key performance indicators.<br>Neil strongly believes that his skills can be used to support and coach growing and ambitious businesses to help them achieve their objectives by understanding what success looks like to the owners.</p>

<p>To supplement the support provided to potential clients Neil also has a wide network of contacts across Essex and East London to where specialist and bespoke services can be introduced where required. </p>

Neil Thorogood

Professional Services

London and East

<h5>Abi Turner</h5>
<p>Abi specialises in supporting user experience (UX) design for businesses, from startups right the way through to large corporates. She provides research and design expertise of the end-user interaction with a company, its products and its services.</p>

<p>Her job is to stop your customers from having to think about using something. In fact, great experiences should be invisible. Think about the noise of the shutter sound on your phone when you’re taking a picture. That was her idea from the 90’s when she was working with BT & Nokia on defining 3G mobile experiences. There’s no physical shutter, but the sound tells you the picture has been successfully taken.</p>

<p>Why is that important for your business? Effective UX design increases sales, increases customer retention, boosts referrals, lowers your support costs and it’s also proven to reduce development costs of building the wrong features or fixing usability issues. Abi takes an evidence-based approach, initially gathering any business data and metrics to identify impacts to your business and provides opportunities on how to solve them.</p>

<p>The best user experience don’t happen by chance – they’re the result of careful research, data and design planning. Examples of digital platforms with modern UX design practices embedded are Airbnb, Netflix, Spotify but UX also spans physical product and service design too. </p>

<p><strong>Key Services</strong></p>

<ul><li>Provides lean start up support to find customer problems worth solving by creating value propositions that clearly demonstrate a return on investment. </li><li>Helps businesses conduct customer insight to identify value opportunities and business growth.</li><li>Can review end to end service experiences for customers and back of house operations to identify experience improvements and efficiency opportunities to reduce costs. She can also design new services from scratch too.</li><li>Provide usability testing and evaluations of products and services to identify short, medium and long-term fixes. </li><li>UX design and feature delivery.</li><li>Help implement frameworks for effective UX delivery.</li><li>UX coaching and development.</li><li>Business metrics and optimisation to drive return on investment.</li></ul>

<p><strong>Sectors:</strong></p>

<p>Abi’s worked with embedded technological companies, to household names and design agencies. These have spanned industries such as health, telematic insurance, telecoms, education and software-defined networks. She’s designed for the web, mobile, apps, SaaS and physical products. She also has wealth of experience across consumer, business to business and employee experiences too.</p>

Abi Turner

Digital Experience Coach

London and East

<h5>Jane Warden</h5>
<p>I have been working as a business trainer and coach for the past 21 years, and previous to that I managed sales and admin teams. My passion is to help people to identify barriers and help people to remove them and grow their productivity to attain a higher level of business. I enjoy seeing improvements from my work and seeing the satisfaction from clients who can see a way forward. Firstly we ask questions such as ‘What is it I am aiming for?’ ‘How do I accomplish those?’ ‘What or who do I need to achieve the plan?’ After the coaching phase then usually there is some training required which is why I find it helpful in my experience of delivering a wide selection of courses from Sales Process to People Management to Resilience.</p>

<p>My personal mission is to provide high quality coaching and training courses which are interactive, enjoyable and affordable to any business of any industry or size. I strive to assist people to ‘think’ and to challenge them in a fun way and leave a lasting impression. In addition to this I aim to inspire our delegates and give them the confidence to adapt and change for the better so that they can achieve their aspirations and goals.</p>

Jane Warden

Sales Training

London and East