It's time for episode nine of our podcast, the Small Business Sessions.

The Small Business Sessions: Taking on the soggy tea bag entrepreneur style!

Podcast

Enterprise Nation Member Ricky Kothari is the founder of 

 and is on a mission to transform the way we brew a cup of tea, putting an end to scooping out soggy teabags with your fingers once and for all! After being challenged by none other than prime minister David Cameron to develop his business, Ricky quit his management consultant day job to focus on T-Sticks full time.

This session has some great, first hand advice around the importance of understanding the customers that you're selling to, how to create an experience round your brand and getting to trips with your USP. 

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Other episodes of the Small Business Sessions:

The Small Business Sessions (S1E9): Taking on the soggy tea bag entrepreneur style!

It&apos;s a tough vocation being an entrepreneur and owner of your own business however, the rewards both emotionally, financially, professionally, and your impact on other humans, can be rich and satisfying. There are highs and lows and my job is to help you smooth the ride providing consulting services focusing on specialists areas that will impact everything you do - knowing your customers, what makes them tick, aligning your offer and values in ways that always resonate, that builds long-lasting relationships and drives digital revenue.
B2B buyers have evolved. They no longer just purchase, they subscribe to your values, the brand experience you offer as well as product &amp; pricing fit. They want trusted partnerships, not just suppliers. Investing in marketing tactics can very often fumble without the right up-front investment in understanding your customers, building emotional connections, telling your story, getting the right technology in place and optimising engagement throughout the buyer and customer journey. After 25 years of bringing up kids, providing a safe and secure home for my family, my motivations and &quot;North Star&quot; are quite different moving forward. If you want to build your business and need to lean on someone who has been at the forefront of marketing digital transformation and want access to know-how, essential tools and tricks that will underpin every aspect of how you go-to-market, I can help.
The added benefit, I have a great network or equally professional and gifted colleagues spanning the whole spectrum of what it takes to do effective marketing so if I don&apos;t know it, I know someone who does.
Here&apos;s the &quot;professional low-down and career highlights&quot; blurb.
I&apos;m a versatile and experienced Director and Board Advisor who has passionately followed and been highly active in the transformation of B2B marketing and sales over the past 14 years supporting scale-up to large corporate businesses. Experienced across multiple sectors principally hi-tech manufacturing, technology, media, fintech, education and professional services. I offer a proven track record of supporting ambitious senior marketing, sales and c-suite executives to challenge, navigate, question and adopt modern transformational strategies to create and accelerate growth.
Business strategist and real-world cross-functional tactical execution leader leveraging business &amp; technical acumen to challenge complex growth stage issues
A specialist in the essential digital sales &amp; marketing components to drive revenue. I can help you..
<ul>
<li>Understand your customers first (deal cutomer profiles &amp; personas), what makes them tick and how to create solid GTM plans (buyer journey mapping, messaging, content planning, integrated campaign planning).</li>
<li>Thinking about buying technology? I can help you Identify the key business priorities that warrant investment in technology before you spend a penny!</li>
<li>How to create the most appropriate and effective technology ecosystem to drive digital engagement, sales &amp; growth</li>
<li>Avoid the traps that can lead to technology failure</li>
<li>Marketing &amp; sales technology consulting experience includes Folloze, Drift, 6Sense, Bombora, Salesforce, Oracle Marketing Cloud, Outreach, Turtl, Adobe, Bombora, Hubspot and more</li>
</ul>
EXAMPLE SENIOR LEADERSHIP ADVISORY ROLES
Global Automation Vendor: Advisor to global marketing leadership team. Tech stack investment strategy &amp; optimisation, campaign performance analysis, strategic service &amp; team investment, change management, creating a data-driven culture and using data analysis to make decisions
Global Industrial Solutions Vendor: Advisor to global marketing &amp; sales leadership teams on cross-channel digital programme conversion optimisation and account-based marketing/sales programmes. Tech stack audit, optimisation and investment strategy including conversational marketing &amp; sales (chatbot) strategy, programme delivery, sales onboarding &amp; enablement.
Global Colocation &amp; Data Centre Provider: Advisor to EMEA marketing &amp; sales leadership teams on tech stack optimisation, technology investment strategy and multiple marketing operations programme delivery – integration, analytics, chat strategy, ABM, lead nurturing &amp; lead scoring, sales &amp; marketing alignment.
BOARD ADVISORY ROLES
Sales Directorships at two, top five global technology corporations (SaaS application products)
Managing Director, Board Advisor, Marketing Consultant, global B2B marketing agency
Business Director, Board Advisor, Marketing Consultant , UK B2B marketing agency
Sales Director, global SaaS technology scale-up (EMEA growth-IPO-Acquisition)
Partnership Lead for numerous US SaaS scale-ups breaking into EMEA

Marketing Strategist and Tech Adviser

Lunch and Learn: How personas and ideal customer profiles boost your marketing

Why you should work on your personas and ideal customer profiles before spending any money on marketing or sales.

Hello! I am a Programme Manager at Enterprise Nation, with a passion for providing support for small business owners through digital campaigns with our partners. I have a particular love for all things marketing, online and in-person events and strategy!&nbsp;

Programme Manager

Next Generation: Market and access customers for your service

A group for all Next Generation participants. Join other likeminded entrepreneurs and trainers to learn how to stick to weekly goals and be held accountable for your business! If you’re not part of the Next Generation Bootcamp but would like to connect with like-minded business owners, don’t worry, there’s a group for you too!

Jarmila Yu is the Founder and MD of YUnique Marketing Ltd, a strategic marketing consultancy. 
She’s spent 25+ years building and growing businesses, heading up marketing in start-ups, challenger brands and some of the world’s largest brands. She knows the value of great marketing, what it takes to develop a successful marketing strategy and how to lead it to achieve peak performance. Jarmila is a Consulting Chief Marketing Officer for business leaders in UK and International SMEs.

Founder. MD. Consulting Chief Marketing Officer.

Marketing Principles Mentoring Package

Get the CMO Advantage™ to Launch, Grow or Transform your business.

The Marketing Principles Mentoring is a package of eight one-hour weekly or biweekly 1:1 online sessions designed to guide business leaders who want to take a DIY approach to their marketing. Using the 8 P’s of Marketing as a frame for our conversations you’ll get to sharpen up your marketing basics and set yourself up for business success.

Benefit from working with a marketing expert who can remove the feeling of overwhelm, pr

I started my first business at 17. Back in the 80&apos;s there was no internet, no support and I didn&apos;t have a network of friends or family that could help. Over the next 40 years I have started many more from a courier company to an in-flight catering business.
As I gained experience, I would willingly share it with others. Sometimes people just want to bounce ideas around with someone that has experience and knowledge that leave you motivated and better informed. Unfortunately, not everyone has that important network so I decided to volunteer for The Prince&apos;s Trust.
Having someone believe your idea and you as an individual is invaluable, especially when no one else does. One of my first Prince&apos;s Trust mentees would give me a dozen reasons to pack it all in and I would give him a dozen to keep going. He eventually went on to win the prestigious Pride of Britain Awards. I volunteered for the Trust for over a decade not just as an advisor but the interim Chair of the awards panel.
I am a qualified business advisor, an accomplished business mentor and an accredited business coach. But most of all, I have decades of experience supporting start-ups. My personalised approach to support gives clients the confidence to implement ideas with the skills and resources to hand. My entrepreneurial mindset helps them identify a wider audience for their products or services.
In my last role I was the lead for Enterprise &amp; Innovation within a housing association. I helped to start and support over 300 businesses and social enterprises across the North-West of England. I ensured start-ups had access to funding, support and premises.
I am also the Director of a waste management company, an innovating and patent pending service that increases the capacity of communal bins with a mobile compacting service.
My ongoing mission is to provide professional entrepreneurial support and advice to individuals looking to start up or grow their business.

Business Start-up Consultant

Eric McBean

I started my first business at 17. Back in the 80&apos;s there was no internet, no support and I didn&apos;t have a network of friends or family that could help. Over the next 40 years I have started many more from a courier company to an in-flight catering business.
As I gained experience, I would willingly share it with others. Sometimes people just want to bounce ideas around with someone that has experience and knowledge that leave you motivated and better informed. Unfortunately,

The Small Business Sessions: Taking on the soggy tea bag entrepreneur style!

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