Jem worked with me from the beginning of my business just over three years ago, when it was just an idea we were discussing around my kitchen table, to where it is now - a group of nurseries and childminders with £1m a year in turnover, 3 (soon to be 4) sites and 50+ staff. While it was my idea and was and is entirely driven by my vision of what high quality childcare for working parents should be, at every step of the way Jem and I worked together to overcome the dozens of challenges that came up almost every week in setting up a business from scratch, with no practical experience, in a heavily regulated sector.
I would highly recommend Jem to other people looking to start their own business. He is supportive, imaginative, reliable, trustworthy, resourceful and hard working - and you always feel that he is on your side! We would not have got where we are now half as quickly without him, and I would not have kept my sanity half as well as I have!
/ Caroline Curtis, founder and owner of Lucky Beans Childcare Limited, London / www.luckybeasnchildcare.co.uk
Jem has worked with me for nearly 10 years and in that time he has proved an invaluable help with my business. While he has mainly been responsible for public courses, conference exhibitions and setting up and running the online store that he developed as an adjunct to my consulting business, he has helped me out with many other aspects of the business over the years as I have asked. He has a real talent for quickly and inventively thinking up ways of overcoming the many obstacles that pop up in running your own business.
I value him for not just for this, although having someone to bounce ideas off and to leave to complete a task with minimal oversight is very valuable, but also for his happiness to take over and complete competently routine administrative tasks that free up my time to plan and deliver my consultancy. He will always try to help with whatever is causing me stress and worry and I would really recommend his services to anyone in my position.
/ SARAH LEWIS, founder and owner of APPRECIATING CHANGE, London / www.acukltd.com
Jem helped me and my partner with a large analytical challenge. We were building a business selling individual reports and the supporting one to one reviews to organisation, based on an analysis of data their members submitted online. We both had other jobs though so we needed someone reliable and intelligent to take the survey data, select what needed to go into the excel model where and then be able to interpret the resulting outputs and put them into the template report to create the individualised reports.
This was very tricky in that the spreadsheet was quite large and complex with dozens of inputs and outputs (which all needed to make sense for the final reports), but Jem handled it excellently, with a minimum of supervision.
It was a real weight off my mind and freed up my time to sell the programme and do my day job. I would recommend him to other people in my position who need some irregular or one off help with a part of their small business in the 'back office' (even if you don't have an office!).