ABOUT INSPIRE
It works because it is personal.
No generic advice - we listen and work alongside established businesses and the people leading them, bringing wisdom, perspective and practical support to whatever comes next.
CLIENT VOICE
PEOPLE BEHIND INSPIRE
Experienced people in your corner.
Rob Perks and Mandy Paterson lead many of Inspire's client relationships.
Their backgrounds are different, but their approach is shared: understand before advising, respect what's already been built, challenge thinking where it helps and stay connected to what happens next.
Together with Inspire's wider team and specialist network, they provide something deliberately simple – experienced people who can understand the question, see the bigger picture and help get things moving.
Their backgrounds are different, but their approach is shared: understand before advising, respect what's already been built, challenge thinking where it helps and stay connected to what happens next.
Together with Inspire's wider team and specialist network, they provide something deliberately simple – experienced people who can understand the question, see the bigger picture and help get things moving.
ROB PERKS
Drive. Determination. Discipline.
I was a born entrepreneur, starting my first very small-scale business at the age of 10. My teacher at the time was very encouraging and allowed me to offer my services to my classmates. My profits were no more than pocket money, but the thrill of the chase began then.
Learning the value of the 3 Ds
I know business leaders who wake up every morning waiting to see what today will bring and reacting to it rather than leading it.
A wonderful approach for a lifestyle business, but the epitome of everything that is wrong in a business that wants to be successful.
"We aim to open at 9am, but if no one is here, something will have cropped up."
I once saw a notice in the window of a shop in a delightful rural village in England:
React and adapt to changes in circumstances, of course, but don't let life or other priorities blow you off course.
Decide on a goal and then execute it meticulously, relentlessly and ruthlessly.
Drive. Determination. Discipline.
It was during this time that I learned what I believe to this day to be the key to success in business, and in fact much of life generally - the 3 Ds:
"Delivery is everything, not just on time, but ahead of time, with no mistakes and no second chances."
Perhaps the greatest gift to my career at this time was learning and gaining wisdom from some of the sharpest minds in the City. Building trusting relationships with them was essential and, believe me, these guys took no prisoners.
Clearly this required gaining a lot of knowledge, but more importantly for me, it was growing something very personal to them, which they had entrusted to me, into something much bigger that provided the real satisfaction.
My first career was in Investment Banking in the City of London in the 1980s, advising and managing the assets of some of the world's wealthiest individuals, entrepreneurs and companies.
Learning how to compete in a fiercely competitive, low-margin market
I then moved into the lending businesses of several major banks, including setting up a new mortgage division in one.
This enabled me to learn how to distinguish a good risk from a bad one and, in these roles, I managed teams of up to 500 people across various disciplines.
Learning how to recruit good people and, if at all possible, avoid recruiting ineffective people was vital.
Developing people and teams to win against fierce competition was essential, as was a relentless search for efficiencies in a low-margin, high-volume business where results were only as good as the previous month's performance.
I concluded my career as Business Development Director on the Board of a PLC.
Learning how to be a good Non-Executive Director
I have also sat on the boards of two fast-growing insurance businesses as a Non-Executive Director, learning how to challenge and advise executives without getting involved in running their businesses.
For sure, that can prove challenging at times, but it requires a new set of skills and getting results through persuasion rather than direction.
Managing and resolving board conflicts and strongly held opposing opinions was a valuable skill to learn too.
Learning from starting my own small businesses
Since leaving the corporate world, I have started and grown four businesses, two in financial services, one in hospitality and one in education, where I am still a Director but my daughter leads the business day to day with her business partner.
How did I get on?
One of the financial services businesses essentially failed and was wound up, two were sold and one remains as part of my future retirement fund.
From these experiences, I learned that as a small business you are at a great disadvantage in many ways compared with a large company, because large companies have so many resources available to them within the business.
Marketing and sales, IT, legal, tax and accountancy, finance, HR and business strategy - the list goes on.
With luck, a small business will have a couple of these, but even then it is probably one person compared with a team of hundreds.
My vision for Inspire - create the ultimate support network for small to medium-sized businesses
This fact inspired me as I took on my current role at Inspire. It also led to our business name.
Could we create an infrastructure of support for small businesses with up to 100 employees that would give them access to those highly valuable resources when they needed them, at a cost they could afford?
And could we be different from most other advisory firms in that we would not just advise, but we would not be too proud to get in there with them where needed to actually deliver stuff?
Never being one to duck a challenge, we set about this task 14 years ago.
"Almost all of us no longer do what we do for what we can earn - our prior careers were for that."
I believe we have managed, using all the contacts built up over the years, to create just such a network of professionals.
Almost all of us no longer do what we do for what we can earn - our prior careers were for that.
Now we are dedicated to bringing the knowledge and wisdom gained over the years to smaller businesses grappling with the challenges that impact every business, at a price they can afford.
I am only one such person. There are over 40 professionals in our network.
Being not-for-profit, we can plough any profits we make back into delivering services for our clients.
My values
I believe that learning does not justify arrogance.
Learning is a life's work, and so we don't pretend to know everything - we just know when we need to call on someone else with that expertise, and we have their number.
I don't believe building a business is easy or that there are any magic formulas or one-size-fits-all frameworks for success.
Every business is different and every client is an individual who matters, who has ambitions and plans and their own unique set of challenges to overcome.
I love what we do.
We are here to share our wisdom with you and have your best interests and, most importantly, your priorities at the centre of what we do.
But don't simply take it from us.
Listen to what our clients say in the video, or if it would reassure you, we can arrange for you to chat to one or two of them.
We love long-term relationships with most of our clients, who we would now regard as our friends.
We'd love you to join us.
Founder & Managing Director
MANDY PATERSON
Make it happen.
"From the age of 14, I recognised the need to 'make it happen', and I have been making it happen ever since!"
My journey started in the travel and tourism industry, working in sales and marketing with industry entrepreneurs. This gave me global experience and cultural exposure, helping me gain a rich understanding of people whilst working in roles that needed drive, determination and dynamism in fast-paced SMEs, along with some years in the corporate world.
This brought breadth and depth of experience and helped me shift gears at speed in my career development.
Taking the learnings from this, I set up my own tour operating business in South Africa, gaining qualifications that put me into a group of just three people in South Africa to accomplish this.
On returning to the UK, the recruitment industry found me, and for the following 13 years I qualified and climbed the ranks to go on to run my own recruitment agency and business, with a small team of 17.
This exposure to people from all walks of life, and businesses of all sizes, structures and sectors, broadened my horizons with experience that dovetails beautifully into the Inspire world.
This breadth of knowledge and experience brings a wealth of hands-on practical expertise that would be very difficult to find in most people’s career trajectories, harnessing an unusual set of skills that I call upon every single day with each twist and turn of the challenges that today’s business leaders face.
With the onset of the 2008 financial crisis and the foresight of what would come next for the industry, I sold the business, leaving me at a loose end for 24 hours before I was approached by O2 to set up and run business teams for them.
Another day, another challenge.
Keen to make it happen, I set off on a new journey in comms and digital, with technology at the very forefront. For me, the challenge was learning something new whilst taking my toolbox of people skills to generate new business centres across various locations.
Navigating the corporate world once again, and following that success, I was ready to take on another challenge...
Then Inspire found me - the perfect destination for my exciting and varied career journey.
What matters and what I bring
Openness to understand, to operate impartially and confidentially, and to make a difference in all that I do.
That might be the extra kind comment I can make at the fuel station to bring a smile to the face of the person who has worked tirelessly all day without recognition, or identifying a bear trap with a business owner to save them from falling foul, saving them a whole world of pain and many thousands of pounds whilst finding a way around it.
With my intense drive and insatiable appetite to learn something new, I have taken my interest in residential real estate to build a successful property investment and development business that brings a wider layer of know-how for other landlords and investors alike.
So, this is me, Mandy Paterson.
PEOPLE DEVELOP TOO
Developing businesses means developing people.
The challenges facing a business change as it grows, and so do the roles of the people leading it.
Inspire supports owners, MDs, directors and senior managers as they step into greater responsibility, navigate unfamiliar decisions and develop the confidence to lead the next stage.
It isn't about teaching experienced people how to do their jobs.
It's about having another experienced perspective available when the role asks something new of them.
YEARS TOGETHER
Don't just take our word for it.
We're proud of the relationships we've built with our clients. We are happy for prospective clients to speak directly to other business leaders who already work with Inspire to hear first-hand what the relationship is like from their side of the table. Actions speak louder than words, so please feel free to get in touch and we'll arrange an introduction.
YEARS TOGETHER
Don't just take our word for it.
We're proud of the relationships we've built with our clients. We are happy for prospective clients to speak directly to other business leaders who already work with Inspire to hear first-hand what the relationship is like from their side of the table. Actions speak louder than words, so please feel free to get in touch and we'll arrange an introduction.
Prefer to talk directly to us?
Rob Perks
CEO, Inspire Biz
- T: +44 (0) 7800 123 456
- E: rob.perks@inspirebiz.co.uk
- WhatsApp Available
Rob Perks
CEO, Inspire Biz
- T: +44 (0) 7800 123 456
- E: rob.perks@inspirebiz.co.uk
- WhatsApp Available