©Braided River 2009

Contact

Email:  enquiries@braidedriver.net    Twitter: www.twitter.com/braidedriver

I work with small businesses, some for-profit and some not-for-profit, to help them get through the many tasks involved in setting up and developing a successful business:

• Developing a really clear vision of what is the purpose of the business
• Clarifying what the business founder/s want from it themselves - financially and in other ways
• Understanding their business as a financial entity and how to use cash flow forecasting methods to test commercial decisions
• Putting together a business plan
• Identifying who they’ll need on their team as partners/ employees/ freelancers/ advisers/ volunteers
• Getting a detailed action plan to make sure that what they do each day/ week/ month is directed towards them achieving specific longer-term goals

Mentoring uses many of the same skills and methods as coaching but it also entails a more hands-on transfer of knowledge and expertise. What I’m able to offer in this work is the benefit of thirty years’ business experience, which I have gained working with and for commercial organisations ranging from the tiny to the enormous (BP, Barclays, Mitsubishi Finance, Abbey) and setting up and running a number of businesses myself. The latter include ventures that failed as well as successes - and the experience gained in both cases is of equal value in mentoring.

The unifying theme that runs through my work is that I do, fundamentally, believe that:

• Everyone is capable of far more than they usually allow themselves to believe - and in a wider range of areas of activity.
• Everyone is naturally creative - in the sense of being able to respond in a constructive way to the challenges, difficulties and opportunities that life throws up; devising and enacting ideas, plans and projects to take them forward.
• Making sustained change - to one’s work, one’s organisation, one’s life - is inherently a difficult thing to do which requires courage, persistence, awareness, support and a clear vision of where one is heading..and why.

If you’d like to know more or to arrange a free initial consultation about your business please email me at the address below.

‘Andy is an inspiration. He is able to understand and support a creative business by giving expression to its creative side and structure to the business. Most importantly, he is does so in a way that is appropriate to the individual at its centre.’

Jane Adam

Jewellery Designer/ Maker