95. A business growth masterclass: Funding, branding and sales strategy | Emma Jones

0:00Welcome to All About Business with me, James Reed, the podcast that covers everything about business, management and leadership. Every episode, I sit down with different guests who bootstrap companies, masterminded investment models or built a business empire. They're leaders in their field and they're here to give you top insights and actionable advice so that you can apply their ideas to your own career or business venture. so far we've explored how to identify a business opportunity and how to get your business up and running in this final episode we're focusing on what comes next growth i'm joined once again by emma jones entrepreneur founder of enterprise nation and the uk's small business commissioner in this episode we'll discuss how to build a brand attract customers develop sales skills and understand the different funding options available to help grow your business.

1:03So today on All About Business, we're going to go to episode three of being an entrepreneur and starting a business with Emma Jones, who's given us stellar advice, I have to say, so far on episodes one and two about how to be an entrepreneur. This episode, Emma, is entitled Going for Growth. So we've decided we want to be an entrepreneur that we're going to set out on this journey. We've actually started a business that is running quite nicely, but we're now becoming more ambitious and think we can take this business forward in a really dynamic way. We're going to talk about branding, selling and finance, but I'm going to start with branding.

1:46What does it take in your experience to build a brand? I think it takes being true to yourself and knowing who you are in order to build it I will never forget we years gone by we used to host events and this is sort of the PR element of building a brand but I do think PR is important we used to run these events called meet the journalist and there was a great journalist at the time called Kiki Loizu and at the time she was enterprise editor of the Sunday Times and she came to this event and we'd got this full audience of small businesses desperate to get in her pages. And she offered this piece of advice, and I've been quoting her on it ever since, where she said, if you don't know your story, how am I meant to report it?

2:31And so I think step number one in terms of promoting your brand is knowing your brand. And when you ask lots of business owners, still to this day in 2026, if you ask a lot of business owners, who's the most famous entrepreneur in the UK, outside of James Reid, they will say Richard Branson. Well, I'm afraid that's who I was thinking of when you said that. Well, this is the thing. He's been around for donkeys years. This is who most people think. We need to think of some more, don't we? But he's brilliant at building his brand. If you Google Richard Branson and you click on the images tab, every single image that comes up of him is constant.

3:08And it is the long-haired, non-tie wearing, buccaneering entrepreneur who changes industries. from the get-go, he knew his brand and he knew how he wanted it to be presented. So I would say, step one, understand the story that you want to tell. So are you the risk taker? Are you the homemaker? Understand your brand. Then I do think PR is important. And for startups, there's so many journalists that want to cover you. So then I would say, get to know journalists. there's a brilliant thing on twitter formerly known as twitter now x.com uh which still runs to this day it launched over a decade ago when journalists are looking for small business stories they use the hashtag journo request so lots of small businesses will search that hashtag because it could be that the journalist is saying i'm looking for a business in london that's just started in the finance area please contact me if so they put that on x so they put that on x Yes.

4:08Journal request. So businesses should keep an eye on that. Absolutely. When they're looking for stories. Interesting. Get photography done. And again, in episode two, we were talking about how to do this on a bootstrap of a budget. One of the best ideas I ever heard from a lovely young business is they wanted top level photography done. They made aprons. They were making beautiful aprons. And they wanted photography, but they didn't have any budget. They went to the local college, went into the photography students and said, will you take pictures in exchange for free aprons? They had a beautiful portfolio of photos done.

4:40So, of course, when you're sending off releases, send great imagery, know your story. And as your business grows, and I know we're talking about kind of business growth all the way through to as your business grows and you have become an expert in your field or the spokesperson. every time a journalist calls say no to everything else to respond to their call because that's the position you want to be in where journalists are calling you to say right we want your take on this particular story so you should really prioritize them i think pr is well it's a and i'm sorry to journalists uh listening pr is a free way of getting your brand out there it's brilliant free advertising and of course it builds trust and credibility so if your customers are reading about you, hearing you on the radio.

5:25It's a great help. But then people get PR agents, don't they, to help them with that? They do. But if you want to start on a bootstrap, you can do it yourself. Lots of the messages that we're giving across these episodes is you can do so much yourself and it's good to do it yourself because you learn the basics. As your budget comes in, you've now got the income, now hire a PR agency because they can be going out and doing it for you. So I think it's a great way. PR is a great help. But of course, social media has been huge for brand raising so people are building big communities on the big social platforms and that's another great and effective low-cost way of getting your brand out there building a huge following so what does a brand actually do what i mean what function does it actually perform i always feel that a brand is and this is kind of something that's used a lot it's what people say about you when you're not in the room so i always think that's what's built with a brand and and one One of the best brand builders I ever saw in small business, and it's kind of been a lovely story watching him all the way through, is years ago when I was running Startup Britain, which you referred to at the very beginning was a national enterprise campaign.

6:34We did a food and drink event and we had a speaker come on who was running a business called Jimmy's Iced Coffee. Well, I had never heard of this business. The founder of the business called Jim Cregan was just starting out. And I'll never forget the event was in Kingston. And I'd introduce, I said, next up is a young founder called Jim Cregan, who's just starting out in a new business called Jimmy's Ice Coffee. And on stage comes this lycra wearing coffee cup. And essentially, this audience of 100 odd people, everyone got their phone out to take this picture of this crazy coffee cup that just appeared on stage.

7:12And this is what Jim used to do in the early days. He would go and speak at events dressed as a coffee cup imprinted across the front and of course he knew everyone take a photo so imprinted across the whole of the front of the coffee cup was jimmy's iced coffee so all of a sudden he's got 100 people for free who are spreading it out on social media and all the way through his journey i thought he was brilliant at brand building because he would then create youtube videos of him doing wraps and it was just incredibly effective anyway about three four years ago successfully sold to Britvik it was a beautiful story of start grow build your brand build a community successful exit so having a bit of a gimmick or something that's going to get you noticed is still important and even in this digital age standing out this is what's important standing out and the people who I see who are particularly good at standing out and they're not necessarily doing it to stand out are the people who start a business because based on a social mission.

8:13So, and this is very relevant for young entrepreneurs. Lots of young entrepreneurs see things that they don't think are right in the world. And therefore, they say the way in which I'm going to get around this is to start my own business. Therefore, they have a point of view and an opinion. Again, just to quote a recent example of a company doing phenomenally well is the toothbrush brand Suri, S-U-R-I. Who's been in your seat. Okay. Well, the two co-founders who are brilliant co-founders. Very good toothbrushes. But again, they kind of looked at a market and they said, this waste is insane. We need to do something about it.

8:48So they have a point of view that's coming across in all of their promotion. That is what helps build a brand is when you've got something that you want to say to the world. So that suggests storytelling is very important. Absolutely. And they have a special story around sustainability as well as teeth, which is an interesting combination. So it gets your attention. They also have a lovely story about co-founders and finding the right co-founder. So I think everything about their story is goodness. I think that's how it can be summed up. And this is where it goes back to your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room.

9:25Jimmy's Ice Coffee, super playful. It was all across the brand. Richard Branson, buccaneering. You know, this is to get that across effectively, know your story, be consistent and be on the channels where your community are. So your advice to young or entrepreneurs of any age is that you should be thinking about this from day one. Absolutely. What's your story? What's going to make you stand out and make people talk about you when you're not in the room? And get in front of journalists because journalists can be your great friends. And as I say, journalists love innovation, newness, who can I profile?

10:00And so they're looking for these kind of stories. And what was that hashtag you look for? Journo request. Journo request, everyone. Keep an eye out for that. So let's move on from branding to sales. I mean, sales, I mean, every business needs sales. Otherwise, it's not a business. Every business needs people who are good at sales to grow and flourish. So, I mean, every business is different. So this question is a bit of a funny one. But how do you get your first customer? I mean, because people are going to say, well, what's that? But I mean, how do you get your first customer? Great question.

10:33um i particularly like seeing when your first customer and i've i've seen and written about this a lot we've spoken a lot about people who may start a business on the back of a side hustle so they've worked somewhere else during the day they're building a business at nights and weekends so i love it when the first customer is actually their employer right existing employer existing employer yeah well that was true of this business and it reads first customer was gillette who he used to work for and and my first business so I set up a first business and I'd worked for Arthur Anderson our first client was Arthur Anderson so I guess the message in that don't burn bridges no it's a very important message it's a good point uh so first client you know if that uh suits you uh otherwise friends and family of course can be good first customers and then you want them to kind of share the word so you can go wider uh but this and I said it a number of times but the brilliance of starting a business in 2026 is you can now effectively make sales online and off.

11:32And by that, I mean, regardless of what you're selling, if you want to sell offline, there's so many opportunities to pop up. So pop up retail is so much more popular than it ever used to be. So you can take temporary leases, try something out, sell at markets where you just have to sell on a Saturday. So kind of get in front of people. But of course, online sales, the major platforms we know what they are amazon ebay etsy vinted fair.com which is put your products on them where you just and and they go global this is the other thing about the global marketplaces is the number of business owners who i've met who run such efficient e-commerce businesses they they either design the product or of course they find the product they put it on these marketplaces you can even outsource fulfillment so the product doesn't even come to you you get perfect at the product.

12:25You also understand how the marketplaces work. You make sales all over the world and you don't even touch the product. So I have interviewed business owners, employee of one, run from a home office with a million plus in turnover by effectively selling through marketplaces. So selling online via the big social media platforms. So of course, TikTok shop, very popular, Instagram, Facebook marketplace, lots of businesses selling on the social platforms. on the e-commerce marketplaces. But I would say don't forget that in-person customer as well. That's very interesting. I mean, that's a huge change over the last couple of decades.

13:04What sales skills should every founder develop? I mean, clearly IT is what happened with this or awareness of. But what other sales skills? Well, so there's another sales skill, which I think is a very much a psychological and a personal one. And James, if you'll forgive me, another story I'd love to tell of, again, I've repeated it so many times as sales prowess. There's a great popcorn brand called Joe and Seth's and the founder is called Adam Sofa. And I will never forget him telling me the story. And as I say, I've repeated this so many times. He wanted to get his popcorn into Selfridges. So he went into Selfridges.

13:41And of course, what every retail buyer will say to you is to put your products on my shelves, I have to get rid of one. So understand what I'm currently selling and what my market needs. So he'd gone in, understood where the gap in the shelves were, and he found out who the buyer was. So he contacted this buyer and said, hello, I'd like to introduce you. This is my popcorn. Here's how it's going to help you make sales. And what he did next, and I think this can always be our tendency as humans, is you send an email, you don't get a reply. So then, well, first of all, you've got to make sure you are tracking that so you know to follow up.

14:15But rather than send an email the week later saying, hey, did you get my below email? Instead, a week later, he sent another email and he said, just thought I'd update you. We've just got an order to be stocked on British Airways. Still heard nothing. Two weeks later, or just thought I'd update you. We've just won a Good Food Taste Awards. Two weeks later, just a little update. Here's an article about us in the press. and what I love about this is he wasn't annoying her by saying hey did you get that did you get that did you get that he was updating her so by the time she was ready to buy she wrote him and said thanks for all these updates I'm ready to buy come in and I'm going to give you the contract so this is what I always used to do in my businesses when you have the budget set up a CRM system.

15:03In the meantime, you can just use a good Excel spreadsheet, customer relationship management. So at the beginning, use an Excel where you say who you've written out to, who you've contacted, any response, because of course, you may not get a response when you've done the follow-up. But the follow-up is not nagging the buyer, the follow-up is updating the buyer. And this, I think the skills required for that, good organisational skills to kind of keep track, but also persistence. And this is what entrepreneurs have to have by the bucket load is the ability for people to say no. And one line I love about entrepreneurship is getting to a yes is just going through seven no's before you get to the yes.

15:46So just not giving up. We've said this many times. Don't give up, but don't nag. Just keep the person updated. Show your growth and traction because of course at the end of the day what buyers want to buy is they want to feel trust in who they're buying from and of course anything that builds your credibility and confidence in the buyer is good to do i like that the updating and we all get emails from people saying have you seen my last email and trying to sort of shame you into replying but this makes you feel curious so what's happened there now and eventually you might ring them back or say come in for a chat very good advice thank you um how much time should the entrepreneur or founder spend selling themselves as opposed to doing other business functions great question i think this goes back and and sorry to kind of repeat this but i think this goes back to this point of focus on what you do best and outsource the rest so um if you are great at the external selling presenting promotion and if that's the thing that delivers value for your business, I would say you want to spend a lot of time doing it.

16:57If that is not your strong suit, find someone who has got that as a strong suit or kind of build your support network around it. And so personally for me at Enterprise Nation, I spent a lot of time out and about promoting the brand, winning new work because that's what I do when in the business. If it's not your thing, find others who do it. But I would say what you do want to make sure is that your brand and your business is known, is being spoken about, because this is where it comes back to. It helps you win work from customers, but it also helps you win employees. So the more that you're positively known about, people want to work for you, people want to fund you, and people want to buy from you.

17:40If they don't know about you, then you don't have that credibility. A slight pushback on that. I completely accept your point, play to your strengths, which we discussed in the previous episode. But there's a risk, isn't there, if you're not involved with selling at all, that you become, as a founder or entrepreneur, remote from the customer and thereby less tuned in to the customer and less able to really sort of adapt your offering to the needs of the customer because simply you're not in touch anymore. or in some ivory tower if you've been successful or a dingy back office if you haven't. But either way, you're not in contact with customers.

18:16Isn't that a risk? It is a risk. And of course, businesses have to continue to refine what they offer. And it brings me back to, I once interviewed a founder who ran a very successful food and drink business. And there were three founders in his company. And when I said to him, what do you all do? He said, I'm the salesman. He said, my second co-founder focuses on the finance and my third co-founder focuses on the operations. And I remember thinking that interview, I am so jealous that you have those three people because across that skill set, you've got everything. They each knew what they were meant to do and it works in harmony.

18:54You know what I was thinking when you said that? Just find a good recruiter and hire the other two. Or do that. Keep hold of your equity. Yeah, exactly. And hire the good people. Yeah, that's what you should do. But both are true. Yeah, it's the same message. It's a good message. And I'm with you on that. So let's move on to money. We've talked about brand. We've talked about sales. Let's talk about funding growth as we want to scale up our business. Yeah, what point should a founder think about raising money? I mean, or should they at all? I mean, is that necessary in the entrepreneurial journey?

19:29Well, I think it does have to be a conscious decision from the founder to raise funding. And I think the point, and we've spoken about this a few times, I feel that the point at which a founder should consider it is when they have honed what it is that they're doing and they feel, if I don't raise money to scale it, I won't get the scale that I'm after. and I think that's the point at which lots of businesses say right I have to raise money because without it I won't get the accelerated growth I'm looking for again good thing about this is there's so many sources of funding available and in fact if anything in the UK at the moment there's a lot of funding available there aren't enough businesses going for it so at the moment we have an issue with lack of demand rather than supply but my advice Hang on, you say that, but funding from who?

20:20Who's not getting the demand? So this is, well, there's funding available and this is where it kind of looks like a funding escalator, I guess you could call it. So angel investment. So lots of people start by saying, I'll start with angel investment. So, you know, people talk about this friends and family round where friends and family contribute funding, then into slightly more sophisticated angel investment. And then what we do have is these big venture capital funds. I mentioned in the last episode, startup loans, which is funded by something called the British Business Bank. So the British Business Bank government funding has got funds going out across all English regions.

20:59Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland have their own funds available as well. um so the high street banks the british business bank funds angel investment this is all funding that's available to entrepreneurs and startups what we're hearing is that the funding is there but and this is partly potentially to do with bounce back loans during covid there is a slightly uh risk appetite from small business owners at the moment is quite low because many took on bounce back loans and don't want to get into a deposition again. There might be other reasons that we could investigate. But the demand is subdued.

21:35Yes. Yeah. Maybe you should cut the interest rate. What, me? I think that's either a Bank of England governor decision. Yeah, but maybe to match up the supply and demand is all I'm thinking. But what I'm hearing, and it's helpful, is that there are places people can go where you will find financial support. Some of those places are publicly funded. Absolutely. So for angels, and again, James, you may have had guests who've spoken about this before, a very popular tax relief in the UK that continues to be underway is EIS, so Enterprise Investment Scheme. So this is as a business, when you're raising investment from angels, they get attacked, the angels get a tax relief.

22:15Great place to look for angels is something called the UK Business Angels Association, lots of regional angel networks. So an angel is actually a person who invests in a business. Sorry, I should have described that. Just to be clear. Yes. Yeah. Angels are high net worth individuals. Sometimes they invest as an individual, but more often than not, they come together with other angels to form syndicates. Did they make this word up for themselves? So an angel investor is an individual typically who will come and take an interest in investing in startups, small businesses. An advice to business owners is if you are looking for angel investment, ideally look for angels who've got industry experience in your sector as well.

22:58So if you can accept funding, but also could they open the doors to sectors that you're wanting to get into, that's kind of then the icing on the cake. Because you're getting smart investment in the sense that they'll help you. They can bring in ideas. Absolutely. Absolutely. So how do you know whether your business actually needs funding? Well, that's a great question. Well, dare I say, goes back to having an accountant on side. So I guess there's a, and again, a message that's often used is you want to be raising money when you don't need it. And I do agree with this. Lots of business owners have to raise money because they need it.

23:42And in fact, we've seen this a lot recently is when business owners have to pay tax bills, they will go to rapid forms of funding in order to get the funding to pay a tax bill. What they're having to do is pay very high interest rates because they haven't given themselves the time and the preparation. So first of all, the piece of advice is raise money when you don't really need it, because then you're giving yourself the time to prepare, you're doing all your projections but dare I say you're also going into a position of raising funding where it's not necessity funding it's opportunity funding where you're kind of saying we we either need it or we don't it's just a nice to have it which is such a strong position thinking about it's opportunity funding what are the opportunities that this would open up beyond day-to-day I think is interesting and that's the best form of funding and as I say ideally growth funding does what it says on the tin, it gives you the funding to move into new markets, go overseas, hire your next 25 people.

24:43So if it can be for growth, it's a good story for everyone. So I know the answer to this, but I want you to tell me. What's the difference between debt and equity funding? So debt funding is when you borrow money and you pay it back with interest rates applying. So it's alone equity funding is when someone invests in your business in exchange for shares so you as the founder have to decide do you want to surrender equity even though i was always told never to use the word surrender because you're not surrendering it you're giving equity in exchange for whatever funding it basically you're selling it yeah so um equity is you as the founder will have a reduced shareholding.

25:28And of course, with equity funding comes voting rights for the shareholders who are now shareholders in your business. And we've mentioned this previously, James, is the more that you know yourself as a founder, the more you will know the form of funding that's right for you. If you don't like to be told what to do, or you feel that you want full control of your business, debt might be better for you. It's on clear terms, you're borrowing, you pay it back. if you are looking for supportive investment and a board and shareholders who will come and be involved in the business, equity investment could be your route to go.

26:07Yeah, I suppose it's interesting to weigh up the relative cost of each of these. I mean, there'll be a price attached to both, whether it's the interest rate or the price of the shares. That's important. You said right at the beginning of our shorts about entrepreneurs being people who are looking for freedom and flexibility. You just use that word control. I mean, you are risking control with either of these, actually, because the debt will come with certain caveats. And if you don't meet them, you might lose control. And similarly with equity, if a new buyer comes in, becomes sort of more and more sort of established.

26:45So I think that's a key decision for people, isn't it? Debt or equity and how they're going to do it. It is a key decision, but it's also part of the learning journey for entrepreneurs. And we spoke about this previously is you start a business, you're full of life, you're full of optimism, the business is growing, you're doing a great job. It gets to a stage where you have to become a leader and dare I say a manager, because when you start, it's probably just you. If you're scaling a business, you may have a considerable team, you need to manage that team and be a leader. and part of becoming a leader is working in collaboration with others.

27:25So I think this is part of the self-awareness of founders and I do say and I know I've said it repeatedly in the sessions, having a mentor, having an advisor who can help you through that I think is a really useful thing to have. Just from a personal experience when I was selling my last business Enterprise Nation, I had a moment where I went to my mentor and said, I'm just not sure about this. It's kind of giving up control. And he said to me, you have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. And I think this is the thing is having people around you who can help you through that journey of maybe surrendering some equity, having to work in collaboration with others.

28:09it's not a bad thing it's just an evolution of you being a founder so it's all part of that learning journey being an entrepreneur is becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable i think it is absolutely i would agree with that so are there other what other different funding options are available for growing businesses just as we come to the conclusion of this session you know we're talking about debt equity anywhere else you would point people well i guess the banks we haven't actually used the word bank yet go to the bank well british Business Bank. So the banks, of course, are all open for business and they all want to help their ambitious companies who are growing.

28:46British Business Bank is increasingly becoming such an important source of funding. And as I say, they are the kind of lender of first resort to lots of venture capital trusts across the UK. So I think that's a really good place to start. And actually, on the British Business Bank website, there is something called the Finance Finder. It's either called Funding Finder or Finance Finder. And again, small business owners can go on there. They can say what stage they're at in their journey. They can say, are they looking for debt or equity? And then it will show all of the options available to them.