BackinBusiness

What are the prospects for our cities? We kick off the tour in Cardiff. The team is joined by David Williams who runs the Youth Development Agency and Keiron Phillips who owns Smart Push AI an automation and Artificial Intelligence business to discuss the impact of Covid-19 and Brexit on the city and what it will look like as it rebuilds.

In the first podcast of 2021 the BackinBusiness team and guests do some crystal ball gazing: what do the next 12 months hold for small businesses and freelancers.They're surprisingly optimistic on some fronts. Join the team with guests businessman Doug Henderson, who was MP for Newcastle upon Tyne North from 1987 to 2010 and Shadow Trade and Industry Minister under Neil Kinnock, Dr Roger Barker Director of Policy and Corporate Governance, at the Institute of Directors, and Tracey Dawson MD of Daletech Electronics in Pudsey Leeds.

The BackinBuisness team catches up with some of the small businesses people we met in 2020. How have they fared, where are they hoping to be this time next year and what support do they need to get there? We put the points raised to John Stephenson MP for Carlisle and chair of APPGs on family business and food and drink.Sam Harrison from Sam's Riverside restaurant in Hammersmith, West London, Amy Solon from Elements Hypnotherapy, Amit Puntambekar from Nisa store Fenstanton, Cambridgeshire, Anthony Jordan from Tama'Ra Events and Christian Kerr from AI Core join Mickey, Liz, Declan and Simon for the last podcast of 2020.Wishing you all a safe Christmas and an ever improving business outlook for 2021.

Chris Pond, BackinBuisness Chair, hears from Andy Clayton and Sara-Louise Ackrill, entrepreneurs with Autism. Running their own businesses give them control over their working environment and the privacy to operate at full potential.Andy is a Petra Coach, speaker, author, and entrepreneur who has built and sold businesses. His favourite thing is helping other entrepreneurs improve their lives and businesses, in that order. Sara-Louise is a social entrepreneur and founder of Wired Differently which offers therapy and coaching and much more. She set up her business in August.

Businesses need to know what's in the Brexit Box. Adam Payne has been writing about Brexit for years and here we are at the 11th hour and 59th second little the wiser. Alex Stewart has a healthy business that he'd like to keep that way but he's all at sea. With 17 days to go til the end of the transition period all small business owners want to know now is what to prepare for.  We can't promise that clarity, just great discussion. Join Adam Payne senior reporter on UK politics at Business Insider, and Alex Stewart owner of OneNine5 and the BackinBusiness team.

As if the Covid restrictions weren't enough to grapple with, business owners are watching incomes plummet, savings dwindle and having to use the household budget to try to keep the business afloat. There's a perfect storm of debt, loan repayments and tax demands brewing. Matt Hartley from the Money Advice Trust and Lowri Williams owner of Grazity Ltd discuss the issues and mounting concerns that even when the customers come back, businesses are in too deep to survive.

In the week that Arcadia and Debenhams collapsed we caught up with the Chair of the House of Commons Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee Darren Jones MP, and talked to him about the impact of Covid on small businesses and self employed people and what he thinks it will take to get the UK working again.

Will substantial meals, switching to online trading and the 5 days of Christmas get the beleaguered hospitality and retail sectors through til the vaccine is rolled out? Leah Lockwood owner of the Wentworth Arms in Maplewell and Hellen Stirling Baker owner of Small Stuff children's store in Sheffield, plus Hannah Essex Co-Executive director of the British Chambers of Commerce set out their stalls. Determined optimism in the face of realism is the order of the day.

The third of our Mental Wellbeing podcasts, featuring Chris Jay, founder of Bascule Disability Training, and Mark Esho, founder of Easy Internet Services.

The Chancellor is due to shake the magic money tree this week and decide on which department gets how much to spend over the next year. If there's nothing in the piggy bank for entrepreneurs their skills, innovation and expertise will be lost just when we need them most.