About Us

Managing Director

After a successful and varied thirty-five year banking career which brought a broad range of experience in Leadership/People Management/Strategy/Sales and Marketing Joe left to form UK Business Mentoring. Based on the knowledge he had gained dealing with small to large businesses and his love of helping people to develop, Joe found his ‘Ikigai’ in business mentoring.

• Favourite Film: ‘Zulu’
• Favourite Book: ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’ “Death ends a life, not a relationship. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on- in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here.”
• Favourite Quote: “Its desire not ability that determines our success” The late Richard Denny
• Guilty pleasure: Power Ballads

Director

Chris is an experienced banking and financial services professional who has supported businesses and individuals for more than 30 years. Previously Chris held senior roles with NatWest Bank, the Financial Conduct Authority, Consumer Financial Education Body and the Money Advice Service before joining UK Business Mentoring in November 2015.

• Favourite Film: 12 Angry Men – it’s easy to follow the crowd. Be the voice of reason and back yourself.
• Favourite Book: Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed – it’s made me look at life in a different way by understanding that one of the most important factors is to learn when things go wrong and therefore to have no fear of failure.
• Guilty pleasure: I find it very difficult when I pay for fuel to walk away without a bar of Yorkie or Galaxy

Director

Experienced Business Mentor, with strategic and operational experience at a senior level within the banking industry. Strong personal impact with proven ability to mentor and coach SME businesses, utilising a highly developed business and professional network in the UK, especially North West England.

• Favourite Film: Top Gun’
• Favourite Quote: “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t–you’re right.” Henry Ford
• Guilty pleasure: Vimto

Director

After a varied and successful 30 years in banking and financial services supporting business owners, Graham decided the time was right to become one himself. Graham has led large people and customer-centric businesses gaining extensive “hands-on” knowledge and experience in People Management/Leadership /Strategy/Sales/Marketing/Financial Management and Customer Experience. Graham is a qualified Chartered Banker and gets a real buzz from supporting others to grow themselves and their business – becoming a mentor was an obvious choice.

• Favourite Film: Love Actually – you can’t beat a feel-good movie
• Favourite Book: The Speed of Trust by Stephen M. R. Covey. Trust is the one thing that changes everything!
• Favourite Quote: “Know yourself and you will win all battles” Sun Tzu
• Guilty pleasure: Craft Beer

Director

After a successful and varied career in financial services, Jim was looking for a role that allowed him to fulfil his passion for helping people to develop, grow and achieve their potential. He, therefore, decided the time was right to join UK Business Mentoring and support business owners with their challenges and to help them be successful.

Jim has over 30 years of experience in leading teams and developing leaders. He is qualified in Leadership Coaching and Executive Mentoring and has a broad range of experiences in Leadership/People Management/Sales and Marketing/Customer Experience/Continuous Improvement/Company Culture and Strategy.

• Favourite Film: Moneyball (a great film about leadership wrapped up in a baseball movie!)
• Favourite Book: What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School’ by Mark McCormack (my first book about people – first read it in 1984 and it’s still relevant today)
• Favourite Quote: ‘It’s hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse’ – Adlai Stevenson
• Guilty pleasure: Made in Chelsea and Yacht Rock

Director

Nigel is an entrepreneurial, motivational and vision-driven business professional with 30 years of repeated achievements throughout the UK & Europe. He has extremely broad commercial experience, with proven expertise in all business functions, including strategic planning, sales, marketing, finance, structure & process. Often referred to as a “catalyst for growth and change,” he has helped clients and employers ranging from FMCG brands to medical practices to small retailers.

His passion for understanding and helping businesses led him to UKBM, where their values are perfectly matched to his own.

• Favourite Film: I’ve just seen it – “The Gentlemen”, loved it!
• Favourite Book: Anything by Italian author Andrea Camilleri – his intelligence, humour and observations on Italian life help me switch off from the working day.
• Favourite Quote: “The important thing is this: be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.” Charles Dubois
• Guilty pleasure: Golf and red wine (not necessarily at the same time!)

Director

Anne spent 20 years in the corporate world primarily supporting businesses with various types of finance. Through this came a passion for the two things that dominated her career, helping people and enabling business growth. Anne is a strong leader and people manager with excellent sales and operations knowledge and she chose the route of business mentoring to make good use of her extensive experience and to satisfy the desire to help others succeed.

• Favourite Film: The Usual Suspects. Love a film with a clever twist.
• Favourite Book: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Love a book you can read again and again and every time it is like reading it for the first time.
• Favourite Quote: “That is the most difficult thing of all. It is far more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself correctly, then you are truly a man of wisdom.”
• Guilty pleasure: Salty liquorice (must be the Scandinavian genes)

Director

Mark has been instrumental in setting up and owning several successful businesses over the past 30 plus years. In this time he has accumulated a wealth of business knowledge, which compliments his natural entrepreneurial flair.

First-hand experience with international corporates to local S.M.E.’s gives him a vast range of trusted experience to share. His journey has given him great insight into the dynamics of how a high performing business should operate to succeed. Family businesses are a particular area of interest to him as well as helping others to realise their dreams.

• Favourite Film: The Shawshank Redemption.
• Favourite Book: Bird Song by Sebastian Faulks. A fine piece of literature with a powerful story.
• Favourite Quote: “A Comfort Zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there.”
• Guilty pleasure: Red wine from the Rhone accompanied by a bar of Cadburys dairy milk!

Director

Nick has more than 20 years of experience as Chief Financial Officer of a range of companies including listed and private equity backed businesses. Prior to that he qualified as a chartered accountant and spent 10 years at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

During his time as a CFO Nick has managed HR and Legal departments as well as finance and his achievements include working with management teams to successfully deliver high growth and increasing profits, raising debt and equity finance, and buying and selling companies.

• Favourite Film: Casablanca.
• Favourite Book: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
• Favourite Quote: “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you” (Dale Carnegie).
• Guilty pleasure: puddings.

Director

Steve has over thirty years experience in blue-chip FMCG retail businesses across senior strategy, commercial, marketing, sales and operations roles - both in the UK and internationally.

Throughout this journey Steve gained deep insight into the key requirements for sustained high performance, and acquired extensive hands-on knowledge in helping many businesses and teams towards achieving this.

Steve’s passion is to use his experience and enthusiasm to help SME owners develop themselves and their teams to achieve high performance and grow their business.

• Favourite Film: Hot Fuzz. Cop caper meets carnage in a country town. Top British action-comedy.
• Favourite Book: Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela. A story of hardship, resilience and triumph. A great leader.
• Favourite Quote: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” (Maya Angelou)
• Guilty pleasure: Biltong (South African cured meat)