The 4th Black & Asian Business Network was hosted by BSWN on the 9th October at MetroBank around the themes of business skills and professional entrepreneurial development. Dr. Barbara Brown from BSWN’s Board of Trustees started the event by introducing the new audience to the mission of the organisation and the context around the Network’s history and objectives.
Following the brief welcoming speech, BSWN Director Sado Jirde officially announced an ongoing partnership with NatWest aimed to deliver a pre-accelerator digital course, which will run from January to March to provide a platform where emerging entrepreneurs can develop all fundamental skills to start and/or scale up a business. Charly Patrick, Development Manager at NatWest, joined Sado to add more details around the partnership and the application process.
Imelda Fossu then took the floor as our first guest speaker taking the audience through her entrepreneurial journey since the early start at 19 years old and throughout various obstacles and challenges until the establishment of her current business, Fossu Ltd; a niche agency which specialises in delivering business support consultancy. Imelda highlighted the importance of recognising mistakes as part of every entrepreneur’s journey and recommended to focus on identifying learnings and opportunities even when facing adversities.
Imelda also shared invaluable advice with the room during the Q&A session, where she explained that an organic and consistent growth is more important than empty numbers when it comes to advertising in todays’ online space.
“Pick a platform that you feel comfortable with and use that. Eventually you can diversify. An engaged following of a thousand is better than a hundred thousand empty likes.”
She also mentioned how having a mentor who understands your own personal struggles could be an important advantage in the process of starting a business. Moreover, she recommended to: "start small and try and understand why you are building something. Set your own standards of what you want and be happy to start small."
As second guest speaker, BSWN was delighted to have Mursal Hedayat, who succeeded in establishing Chatterbox; a multi-award-winning language learning service, which employs refugees to teach their skills to people who want to learn.
After introducing her background and personal connection with the social issue she decided to address with her social enterprise, Mursal advised the aspiring business owners in the room to identify: "where is it that your perspective is unique, where do you have unique insights in solving problems” and to start from there.
Lastly, as per usual the Network closed with a business pitching exercise session led by Joyann Boyce, The Social Detail.
