Member Article

Worcestershire Business Support Provider celebrates growth after helping hundreds of regional business leaders navigate COVID-19

A leading Worcestershire business support provider has doubled its client base, after helping 100’s of regional business owners navigate through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Founded in 2012 by serial entrepreneur, Kevin Brent, BizSmart® has successfully established itself as a leading business support provider by developing a series of proven support initiatives with a key focus on bringing like-minded business leaders together via peer-to-peer learning and engagement.

Having transferred all support services online with the use of video conferencing tool, Zoom, Kevin, and his team of experienced business coaches, have doubled the number of attendees to its ScaleUp Club, Smart90® Club, and SmartBoards® within just 6 months, demonstrating an increased demand for peer-to-peer interaction and business support during the COVID-19 pandemic.

ScaleUp Club, an online monthly meeting that allows business leaders to discuss and resolve current challenges with groups of like-minded peers, consistently welcomes in excess of 40 local business owners; a figure replicated for the BizSmart® Business Future resilience webinars.

The business support provider’s most recent Smart90® day planning workshop supported over 70 delegates in 19 breakout rooms, enabling them to outline strategic objectives to navigate through the final, challenging quarter of 2020.

Kevin explained: “I founded BizSmart 8 years ago with a clear vision to transform the support available to professionals, by creating and delivering a series of cost-effective initiatives that would add real value for business owners; enabling them to tackle challenges and learn from like-minded individuals, whilst helping them to achieve their objectives and scale growth.

The COVID-19 pandemic has proved incredibly challenging for business owners across the region and in quickly recognising this, the BizSmart team worked hard to ‘pivot’ and move more of our monthly services online, so we could deliver the same standard of support to those working remotely.

Not only have our activities like ScaleUp Club proved valuable in connecting and creating a community of like-minded and even struggling business owners, but the use of technology has enabled us to welcome and support a large number of new business leaders, ensuring we can deliver vital support during this challenging time, whilst enabling us to drive our own growth.“

Appointed by Worcestershire County Council in early 2020 to deliver the ‘Elevate’ programme, designed to help regional SMEs identify challenges and scale growth, BizSmart has established a proven reputation as the region’s business support provider of choice, with its Scaleup Radio podcast now having reached an audience in excess of 7,000.

With a clear goal to reach and support as many business owners as possible during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 is set to BizSmart®’s most successful year to date, both in revenue generated and through the level of support and positive impact delivered to business owners across the region.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by John Stone .