Business and Professional Development Training

Entrepreneurial Learning

Greenwell helps businesses and professionals to become more entrepreneurial. We specialise in engaging a more diverse range of people in entrepreneurial activity, through: 

Clients and partners for our entrepreneurial learning services include:

hothouse_logo_2013 uea logo  re connect  smiths row  prince's trust 


sunderland
bipc norfolkideastap logo

If you’d like to know more…

Review the details below of current workshops and our mentoring service. We also regularly develop bespoke sessions to meet the needs of specific client groups.

Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you’d like to know more or to discuss ideas or options.  Erika Watson   0797 5743281    e.watson@greenwellconsulting.co.uk

Workshops

We deliver “practical and inspiring” enterprise and creative thinking workshops. Engaging information, examples and ideas are combined with group and individual exercises, enabling powerful insights and direct application to your own venture or idea.

Start-ups and Social Enterprise

Enterprise – could I, would I, should I?   Is enterprise an option you’re considering?  This interactive workshop will help you to think it through, sharpen focus and assess how close to ‘enterprise ready’ you are and what you need to do to close the gaps.

The Big Idea   In this highly-interactive workshop you’ll be introduced to a range of creative thinking techniques to generate and/or improve ideas and create a compelling business vision.

Market research   You may have a great idea, but it’s not a business until you have customers.  By the end of this session you’ll be able to carry out your own customer and competitor research as well as analyse your industry and market trends. With those tools your business will start with a huge advantage.

Getting and managing money  Does money drive you or is it just a way of keeping score? This session will help you put it in its place. We’ll explore sources of funding and the lean start-up approach. You’ll also be introduced to the fundamental financial aspects of running a business.

Making it Happen In this creative and focused session you’ll bring it all together in an effective and concise business model. You’ll also learn how to present your business, get on-going support and make the connections you’ll need to start and grow a successful business.

The Small Business Funding Maze This workshop will help you to navigate and engage with small business funding options. By the end of the session you’ll be able to: better understand and deal with your own financial psychology; Assess options for financing your business start-up or growth; Deliver more effective proposals and presentations to funders; Understand funders’ requirements and how to meet them. The session may include a panel of funders.

Business and Professional Development

Creative Business Booster Review, refresh and plot the future of your business. By the end of the session you will have: updated your vision and brand values; put together a practical business model; developed tactics to improve strategic focus and efficiency; set goals and a plan of action

Becoming a Consultant  This highly interactive workshop will introduce you to what’s involved in running your own consultancy business: understanding the industry, standing out, getting clients and making money.

Effective Networking  Most people hate networking, but know it’s important for professional development. This session will help you to develop a more effective and strategic approach to both face to face and online networking, which benefits your business or career and keeps your values intact!

Creativity Bites  Dip into creative thinking over breakfast or lunch!  Each snappy session immerses you in a different technique including: creative visioning, random links, art, metaphor and many more.

Knowing me, knowing you This practical session aims to introduce some of the leading inventories (Learning Styles, Belbin and MBTI) and help you to understand how to use them to improve your personal effectiveness, working relationships and employability.

Blogging for Business/ Researchers  This practical workshop introduces blogging as a means to build your business or to establish reputation and authority and to enable greater professional impact and engagement.  It introduces the benefits of blogging; how to set-up your own blog and contribute to others; techniques for a more engaging writing style; ideas about what to write about, how to promote your blog and measure impact. Click here for further details and feedback on a recent session for researchers.

Strategy Day  This session can focus on either business or career strategy. It will help you to take a step back, prioritise strategic choices and competing pressures, reflect on and review your direction and develop a coherent and authentic strategy to get there.

 Other topics include: 

  • Marketing & Sales
  • Social Enterprise
  • Social Media Marketing – an overview workshop or focused sessions on: Blogging, LinkedIn and Twitter.
  • Winning the Bid or Tender

Bespoke sessions

We can also put together bespoke sessions to meet your specific needs, recent examples include: team-working; leadership; strategy day (vision, mission & values); Implementation planning; legal structures for social enterprise; developing a business model.

What delegates say 

“The creative thinking and group work was excellent.  It helped me to really think through and evaluate my business plan”.

“I thought the whole day was excellent, well focused, well judged, and enjoyable.”

“Great teacher. Engaged the audience and kept level of interest high throughout.”

“These sessions are great!  I like the small groups and lots of chances to apply the workshop to our own ideas”.

“I really appreciated the personality of the trainer, which encouraged me to participate, and the practical aspect of this program which gives me an insight of what I want to do”.

“I’ve had a lot of those sort of workshops but this one really succeeded in being both practical and inspiring”.

“Excellent session and trainer. Practical application and very good presentation”.

“Just a quick note to express a huge thank you for your invaluable contribution [in facilitating the workshop] on Wednesday.  I think we have all come away having found it hugely valuable and are now re-energised.”

“The session helped me to clarify my thoughts with useful exercises. The instructor was very engaging and the session covered the issues very well.”

“You have a lovely presence and presentation style.  The workshop was nicely structured and very valuable .”

Business Mentoring 

Workshops can be complemented by 1-1 business mentoring sessions. Business mentoring is also available as a stand-alone service.

What is mentoring?

“A helpful relationship based on an exchange of knowledge, experience and goodwill. Mentors help someone less experienced gain confidence, clearer purpose, insight and wisdom. In developmental mentoring, the mentor too is changed by the relationship”.  A business mentor supports mentees to develop their business vision, put it into practice and improve business performance.  All of the mentors we work with are trained and experienced business advisers or coaches, with substantial entrepreneurial experience, knowledge and networks.

Erika Watson is a highly experienced mentor and accredited business adviser, with particular strengths in working with women-led businesses and social enterprises. Client feedback for Erika is listed below.

“I got so much from my mentoring sessions. I loved being able to mind map my plans and often look back at that map.  I found my mentoring sessions invaluable in helping me clarify where I want my business to go – and in working out what steps I need to take to make it happen”.

 “You have the ability to get straight to the heart of what we are discussing and I come away with an action plan that I know will work”.  
“Thank you for a really useful session.  I’ve even more to think about now than before and I feel energised by it.   Realisations happening all over the place.  Sign of a good mentor”.
 “A great consultant, she has in depth knowledge based on her strong social enterprise track record. She is also great at relationship building and she has a high level of emotional intelligence.”
“Erika has been a very sensitive and perceptive mentor for me, demonstrating patience and discipline as well as flexibility and insight, which was just what I required at a time when I was trying to work out how to formulate a freelance business of my own design with some tricky issues to resolve. Erika has very useful frameworks and systems which help to focus ideas and discussion and move it forward. She is also very friendly and accommodating. I was very happy with my choice of mentor and would willingly work with her again”.