Business support workshops

Context: How does an advertising and marketing business get involved in providing business support to other small businesses? It may seem an odd transfer of skills. However having run Glued for twenty one years David Wilson and Rob Harrison have had ample experience of steering a business through growth, banking crises, recessions and a pandemic. Add to this the insights gained from working with clients going through those very same challenges – a wealth of knowledge is evident. 

A new service: The opportunity to turn this experience and knowledge into an income-generating service arose from an understandable coincidence. For some time, Glued had been presenting workshops sharing some of the ‘tricks’ of their trade as part of a sales and marketing process. A member of the team at Coventry & Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce attended one of our events and subsequently invited us to provide business support workshops for start-ups.

This experience gave us the confidence to tender and win the provision of business support workshops to other Chamber of Commerce programmes and to the University of Warwick Business Ready programme. By this point Rob Harrison and David Wilson felt they had earnt their spurs.

Growth: As the pandemic took hold Glued won the campaign to recruit participants in the Business & IP Centre Worcestershire Programme. Our role grew to planning and managing a subsequent phase of the Programme which included not just the co-ordination of workshop facilitators and business advisors but also delivering workshops and providing advice ourselves.

Glued are now providing webinars and mentoring start-ups in Northamptonshire too, with a contract to deliver for the Business & IP Centre Northamptonshire.

Scope: Our capability with business support has grown beyond marketing too. With topics as diverse as ‘Imposter Syndrome’ and ‘The Business Model Canvas’.  See below for a list of some of the wide range that we can offer ‘off-the-shelf’ aside from those that we are adept at writing for clients from scratch.

• Developing a business/brand proposition
• Winning and retaining business
• Building a brand
• Developing creative concepts
• Beginners email marketing
• Gathering customer insights (qualitative market research)
• Taking a business to market
• Business model canvas
• Managing yourself for business owners
• Leadership skills for business owners

Here are some of the organisations we have delivered support for:

• Coventry & Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce
• BIPC Worcestershire
• BIPC Northamptonshire
• Chartered Institute of Professional Development
• Coventry & Warwickshire Growth Hub
• University of Worcester
• Aston University
• The College Marketing Network
• The Association of Colleges
• Business Ready/University of Warwick