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Posted: Wed 17th Jun 2026
9 min read
Enterprise Nation is one of the small business support providers delivering voluntary mentoring as part of the government's flagship Help to Grow: Management Course.
When economist Srimi Van Rossum launched her Korean skincare franchise in the UK last October, she had just four people on her team. Within three months, she'd shattered her £50,000 revenue target, hitting £72,000. Today, less than a year later, her RIMAN beauty business employs nearly 300 people across the UK, Italy, and Spain, with launches in Portugal, France, and Australia imminent.
Guided by digital transformation and digital leadership expert Mel Ross through the government’s Help to Grow: Management programme, the business achieved this through a fundamental shift in mindset.
"I had run four separate businesses over 18 years," says Srimi, who moved to the UK from Australia two years ago. "But I'd never had formal education on business management. The course was incredibly helpful, but having a mentor like Mel was probably the biggest mind shift, really seeing myself as the owner of this entity, as the driving force behind it."
That revelation might sound obvious, but for many entrepreneurs juggling operational demands, it's transformative. Srimi had been thinking in terms of incorporating people, teaching them, training them. Mel helped her reframe the question entirely.
"It's not what we do, it's who do we need to be in order to do what we need to do," explains Mel, whose proprietary framework in neuroscience and leadership mindset is used by governments and organisations worldwide. "Srimi knew at the beginning and was willing to go on an inward journey, not just an outward journey. That awareness and intention are already a measure of success."
Small businesses see significant development through mentoring: Become a mentor and provide 10 hours of one-to-one support. Find out more
Mel, who volunteered as a mentor after previous work with the UN supporting female entrepreneurs, is selective about her mentees. She took on Srimi after just one interview. "I don't take on volume," she says. "I'm very specific about the people I work with."
Their sessions followed a simple but powerful structure: Srimi would present a challenge, and Mel would help her dig deeper. "Often the question I was asking wasn't really getting to the solution," Srimi recalls. "By the end of the session, I'd reframed it entirely. Mel would give me practical tools, literature to read and proper homework."
But beyond the techniques, Mel focused on something more fundamental. "It's one thing to create a vision," she explains. "It's something very different to believe in it. We tend to miss that step and go straight into sharing it with the world. Having a vision is very different from believing in my vision."
That distinction proved crucial when Srimi faced the challenge of onboarding people from wildly different backgrounds, nurses, teachers, and people with no corporate experience. Her instinct was to adapt her processes for each individual.
"Mel said, 'No, you don't,'" Srimi remembers. "'You design the process that comes from your vision, and people follow that.' She gave me a questionnaire, an interview technique to understand them, but that was just to understand them, not to change the onboarding to suit them."
The results speak for themselves, but Mel identifies two words that made the difference: commitment and courage. "Either one being absent will dramatically decrease success," she says. "Srimi had the commitment to drive toward results, but also the courage to ask the right questions and take the right actions when required."
Srimi's discipline was evident from the start. "I was blown away that somebody would spend ten hours with me, teaching me everything they knew, off their own back," she says. "I felt it was my responsibility to treat that as precious. I'd write hundreds of notes after each session, then pick two things and implement them that day."
The approach paid off spectacularly. Within three months of launch, Srimi had not only hit but exceeded her revenue target by 44%. More importantly, she'd built what she calls a "rock-solid core team" of leaders, the key to managing exponential growth.
"We very quickly established we would go the non-linear route," says Mel. "Rather than do the right thing, we'd do what's right."
Mel is clear about her approach to sustainability. "The measure of success is how well I've delivered the sustainability piece," she says. "It's incredibly important that I share techniques, beliefs, habits and templates so leaders can use them with their own teams."
Srimi is now documenting all those processes, creating a library her growing team can access. "I have to change the language a bit for people who've never worked in corporate environments," she says. "But the tools are really useful."
As she prepares for her next phase of international expansion, Srimi remains grateful. "When people ask what the best thing about the course is, I say the course was great, I learnt skills and tools. But by far the best thing was having Mel."
Mel adds:
"I'm a firm believer in exponentiality, enabled by the AI world we inhabit.
"Leadership and entrepreneurship aren't linear. You don't do this, then that, then the other."
For Srimi, that non-linear journey has already taken her from four people to 300, from one country to six, from tentative founder to confident leader.
"I now have people who want the same things and are excited about the same level of growth," she says. "That mind shift, that was everything."
Polly Dhaliwal, COO of small business support platform and membership community Enterprise Nation, said:
“When we started to recruit volunteer mentors to support small businesses, we had no idea what the response would be. It involved pledging at least 10 hours of your own time per candidate, as well as undergoing training, but time and time again, we have seen thousands of knowledgeable individuals like Mel step forward to help.
“Good mentoring on the Help to Grow: Management course is a key component to success for businesses, the people they go on to employ and for the economy.”
Ninety per cent subsidised by the government and delivered in collaboration with industry experts and experienced entrepreneurs, the 12-week course provides a combination of online sessions and face-to-face learning, delivered by business schools. It's aimed at senior leaders of small and medium-sized businesses with five or more employees.
Being a mentor goes far beyond the rewarding feeling of 'giving back'. Mentors gain a range of personal development benefits from the experience.
Become a voluntary mentor for the Help to Grow: Management Course and commit 10 hours over 12 weeks to support businesses with their growth action plan. Sign up today
The national mentoring element of the Help to Grow: Management Course is being delivered by a partnership of Newable, Enterprise Nation and the Association of Business Mentors on behalf of the Department for Business & Trade.
