Thriving Three Counties

We're looking back at the motivation episode with Jack, who shares his experiences in business and what drives him to do what he does every day.

Jack Wratten is an entrepreneur and founder of Bloom Space in Malvern, and the Bloom Incubator, helping people plan, start and grow their businesses.

He has a ton of experience starting and scaling multiple businesses and he's passionate about helping other people succeed in their businesses.

He's a connector of people and someone who helped me in the early days of niching down my offering to industrial photography.

https://bloom.space

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackwratten/

https://www.instagram.com/bloomincubator

https://twitter.com/bloommalvern

It all has to start somewhere and this is the story of how Dan, our host, found himself at the helm of his own thriving business in the three counties - Dan Barker Studios.

From his days at Airbus in Bristol, to moving to Herefordshire and setting up his company, Dan talks about what he's learned along the way - like all the guests so far in this series.

Following 13 years as a stress engineer, Dan is now using that experience to help industrial businesses produce high quality visual content that aligns with their brand.

This week it's one of our best of episodes where we get the chance to bring you one of our favourites from the back catalogue of episodes so far...

Alan Clark of Exponential Coaching was episode 36, talking about how to gain optimum clarity.

After a 22-year leadership career with Boots UK and Boots Opticians, Alan left in the summer of 2017 to follow his passion and start his own business as a leadership and business coach

These days, he’s helping leaders and entrepreneurs to create deeper levels of clarity for themselves and their business, intended to fuel optimal actions that create desired outcomes.

He works across different industries with different size businesses and organisations, from CEO's and senior executives to small business owners, start up entrepreneurs and leaders within education and the church.

He also co-hosts a fantastic podcast called Mind Your Business, which seems to be building a lot of momentum.

He says that experiencing "different" opens up more learning opportunities which he ultimately uses to develop his work and client experience.

Website : https://www.exponentialcoaching.co.uk/

Linked In : https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-clark-a0258483

Twitter : @exponentialalan

Katie is an award winning social entrepreneur, innovator and global changemaker with a passion for creative ideas that deliver social impact.

At the age of 25, she founded Frank Water, a pioneering social enterprise based on the concept of water for water, whereby the profits from bottled water sales go to clean water projects.

Having raised over £5.5 Million since starting up, Frank Water’s impact reaches far and wide, whether it’s raising awareness of global issues, social enterprise, and reducing the reliance and use of single use plastic here in the UK, or changing the lives of thousands of people in India and Nepal.

Today's guest and her company Frank Water have won numerous local, national and international awards. In 2018 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Bristol University, and most recently received an MBE in the 2019 New Years Honours list.

 https://www.frankwater.com/

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/katie-alcott-mbe-034a89

https://www.instagram.com/frank_water_charity/

https://www.facebook.com/frankwatercharity/

https://twitter.com/frankwater

If you've listened to episode 52 of the podcast with Ian Woodley, the name of today's guest will be familiar to you.

Paul Holmes is Managing Director of PCH Business Consultants, based in Swindon and has almost 30 years business and engineering experience including a number of FTSE100 organisations. He's been involved with Manufacturing, Operations, £multimillion Capital Projects and strategic planning.

He's a Non exec director, advisor and business consultant.

He's also a partner in a relatively new venture, Veloci-tech Business accelerator, as well as working as a business advisor and expert for a wide range of Growth Hubs, particularly in Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire.

His business helps companies to plan and structure growth, particularly helping business owners to overcome overwhelm, using a structured process that designs the business for success and then helps make it happen.

We've heard what a great impact he's had on Ian Woodley and his business over the last 12 months, so it's fantastic to finally sit down and have a proper chat with the man himself.

www.pchbusinesssupport.co.uk

www.linkedin.com/in/paul-holmes-pch

@holmepc

Tom is a serial entrepreneur, who since 1997 has founded or co founded 5 start ups including a training company, a social network analytics company, an international clean water charity, a gourmet spice traders and most recently BlockMark Technologies - a high tech digital certificate company.

Since early 2018 he's been exploring NFT's, or Non-Fungible Tokens, and is considered by the NFT collectors community as an OG after creating and launching BlockMark Gems with business partner Dr Adrian Burden (or as we like to call him, episode 24).

Prior to this, he spent the 90’s sailing across the Atlantic, surfing around the world and working for Outward bound in Scotland, Wales and South Africa.

https://blockmarktech.com/

 https://twitter.com/blockmarktech

 https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomalcott/

 https://gems.blockmarktech.com/

 https://twitter.com/BlockMarkGems

 https://discord.gg/xXbmUECkcN

 https://opensea.io/collection/blockmarkgems

 https://www.tomalcott.com/

 https://medium.com/@tom-alcott

In 2012, Nick Tudor co-founded his company D-RisQ, based in Malvern, which produces automated formal methods verification tools for systems and software which support compliance to many standards. 

He was an RAF Officer Engineer for 20 years and has a BEng in Electrical Engineering.

In 2000, he gained a MSC in Software Engineering, and became the senior software advisor on multiple air programmes including JSF, Eurofighter, Chinook and Hawk.

Since leaving the RAF, he's been an active contributor to DO-178C (which will mean more to some than others!), he's a member of the Forum for Aeronautical Software, he's contributed to various papers, carried out a number of aerospace and autonomous systems projects in various sectors and was elected as Fellow of the IET in November 2021.

 https://www.drisq.com/

 https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-tudor-beng-msc-ceng-fiet-6375556/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/d-risq-ltd/

There are only a few full-time, professional magicians in the country and we tracked one down who's based in Gloucestershire.

Richard specialises in close up magic at weddings, corporate events, Christmas parties and Trade Shows.

In a career spanning over a decade his highlights include performing in Venice, Italy… Madrid, Spain and in 2019 on stage at the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham as part of the sell-out magic show ‘An Evening of Deception’.

Passing his audition in 2012 to join the world famous ‘Magic Circle’ he enjoys entertaining at over a 100 weddings a year and is well known in local venues. 

www.LinkedIn.com/in/corporatemagicianhire

https://www.gloucestershiremagician.co.uk/

www.Instagram.com/glosmagician

The first solo episode!

In this episode, Dan Barker discusses his thoughts and shares his experiences with finding and developing a niche for his video production and photography business.

www.danbarkerstudios.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/danbarkerstudios/

Scott is the founder of MoneyNerd, a personal finance website that helps people in financial difficulties.

In his previous life, he worked in financial technology where he was responsible for launching websites and mobile apps for loan and credit card products.

Last year he moved out of central London and now manages a remote team from his office in Great Malvern.

http://moneynerd.co.uk/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottnelsonuk/