Member Article

A festive chat with… Graham Marley, chief executive of Let’s Do Business Group

Let’s Do Business Group works with small businesses across East Sussex to provide one-off advice, strategic consultancy services, bespoke training and development plans, as well as access to finance and b2b exhibitions for new businesses and budding entrepreneurs.

In the next part of our ‘festive favourites’ series on Bdaily South East, we spoke to Graham Marley, LDB Group’s chief executive about his highlights from 2015, his plans for Christmas and what he hopes to achieve in the coming year.

2015 – Looking back

What were the highlights for your business in 2015?

At the Let’s Do Business Group we help businesses to start-up and grow through a number of ways, such as access to finance and this year, we surpassed the £10m lending mark.

Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently this year?

We have had our most successful year in our history in terms of the number of businesses that we’ve been able to help, but we’ve struggled to find the time to plan – we are now doing that more effectively to ensure that we build on this year’s successes in 2016.

How has your industry changed in the last year?

The business support industry changes often as the Government brings in new programmes and drops old ones.

However, through being a very effective delivery partner we’ve actually grown our contract base this year in a very difficult and competitive market.

2016 – Moving forward

What are your key focuses for next year?

Growth is one of our key focuses for 2016, in particular increasing the number of companies we lend to. In order to achieve this however, we need to raise further capital.

Unfortunately, the Government is somewhat myopic about the Responsible Finance (RF) sector – who work to increase access to fair finance. Despite the fact that we and, other Responsible Finance providers have delivered outstanding value for money under previous Government investment

What are you most looking forward to in 2016?

Outside of work a great sporting year – the Rio Olympics, England winning the European Championship, with Brighton and Hove Albion and Sussex Cricket both getting promotion too!

What do you expect will be your biggest challenge in the coming year?

They say moving house is one of the most stressful experiences in life – and we’re moving office in the New Year. I think ensuring a smooth move with limited down time will be a big challenge!

The softer stuff:

If you could go back in time, which piece of advice would you give your younger self?

Be more confident and trust your instincts.

How will you be celebrating the festive period?

With my family and a large glass of wine.

Missed our previous features? Check out our festive catch-up with Salman Iftekhar and Michael Gadsby, co-founders of Staffing Match and Martin Campbell, MD of fintech startup Ormsby Street. If you’d like to take part in our festive series, please get in touch direct - ellen.forster@bdaily.co.uk.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ellen Forster .