In today’s episode of The Enterprise Doctor Business Show, my guest is Sarah Dhanda, who at the time was Head of Policy and Partnerships at Enginuity. Sarah has now retired – lucky her!

Enginuity is a charity dedicated to finding new ways to close skills gaps in UK engineering and manufacturing, and their website is at https://enginuity.org/ .

This was recorded during National Apprenticeship Week, and we discussed Enginuity’s concerns about a 4% fall in completion rates of overall apprenticeships, a warning that the higher education sector is going to struggle to meet the government’s target rate of 67% achievement, if the situation isn’t tackled.

Furthermore, of concern is that the Engineering and Manufacturing achievement rates in England for females, non-white ethnic minorities, and learners with disabilities are consistently lower than their corresponding groups.

If you want to connect with me, to talk about the mentoring and coaching I deliver to small businesses, or if you think you'd be a good guest on the show, please do let me know. You can do that via https://www.linkedin.com/in/enterprisedoctor/ .


To contribute to (or just read) conversations about this episode, please join the podcast's Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/enterprisedoctorbusinessshow/ .

And my website is at https://enterprisedoctor.co.uk/.

On the YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/user/EnterpriseDoctor you can hear clips of other episodes – please subscribe there!


And within your podcast app, remember to like this episode (if you like it!), leave us a great review, and please do subscribe there too, to ensure new episodes hit your app as soon as they're released.

These words and the content of the podcast are © Enterprise Doctor 2024.

Welcome to today’s episode of The Enterprise Doctor Business Show. My guest today is former Coronation Street star Sean Wilson, who knows all about taking a leap of faith and switching career.

He’s sharing his story of how he left acting behind and started his own cheese empire as almost 7 million people are looking to switch careers this year.

Sean, who’s now won awards for his new business, spoke his switch from soaps to cheddar and his tips for having the confidence to try something new. Along the way he extolled the virtues of the Association of Accounting Technicians, on whom you can see info at https://www.aat.org.uk/ , while Sean’s website is at https://www.artisan-farm.co.uk/ .

If you want to connect with me, to talk about the mentoring and coaching I deliver to small businesses, or if you think you'd be a good guest on the show, please do let me know. You can do that via https://www.linkedin.com/in/enterprisedoctor/ .


To contribute to (or just read) conversations about this episode, please join the podcast's Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/enterprisedoctorbusinessshow/ .

And my website is at https://enterprisedoctor.co.uk/.

On the YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/user/EnterpriseDoctor you can hear clips of other episodes – please subscribe there!


And within your podcast app, remember to like this episode (if you like it!), leave us a great review, and please do subscribe there too, to ensure new episodes hit your app as soon as they're released.

These words and the content of the podcast are © Enterprise Doctor 2024.

On The Business Show on Marlow FM on 25th April 2024, my guests were business finance expert Adam Cooper and professional organiser Helena McBride, who joined me to talk about their work, and to discuss a range of business news stories.

As I was recently in Hong Kong, my first music choice had to be Siouxsie and the Banshees with “Hong Kong Garden” – go to https://youtu.be/Y-l9GQJRl9Y?si=LBhIN97nkueoh05F to hear it.

Helena then spoke about her work as a professional organiser – it’s so much more than “a bit of a tidy up”! We included an update on a range of her marketing activities, not least appearing on “The Hotel Inspector” as the expert specially selected by Alex Polizzi.

Connect with Helena via https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenathespacemaker/ and her website is at https://thespacemaker.co.uk/ .

Adam then spoke about his work running at team of fractional Chief Finance Officers and the advantages to businesses of 10-50 employees of using their services in this way.

Connect with him at https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamfcooper/ and his website is at https://www.accfinancesolutions.com/ .

His music choice was “Running up that hill” by Kate Bush, because his family (in particular his son) love the track. You can hear it at https://youtu.be/wp43OdtAAkM?si=ktCmIYXRgoVQHN_t .

He then chose a story featured at https://bmmagazine.co.uk/in-business/smes-see-strong-start-to-2024-despite-hiring-caution-and-sustainability-concern/ - he wanted to highlight this positive news, but we did dig in to some of the negatives too.

We then played Helena’s choice of music – “Locked out of heaven”, by Bruno Mars. She chose it just because it’s such a great song! You can hear it at https://youtu.be/e-fA-gBCkj0?si=IVuurQ30W9q8LTOL to add to the billion plus views there.

She then chose for us the story at https://www.bucksfreepress.co.uk/news/24267297.tried-morrisons-good-go-bag-quality/ - is this a good way to deal with the financial risk of having to dispose of unsold goods?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68850766 was my story for us to discuss – was this the second great business pivot by Netflix, or was it their plan from day one?

The last song is for me inextricably linked with Australia, another country I recently visited. You can hear Midnight Oil with “Beds are burning” at https://youtu.be/ejorQVy3m8E?si=8o-MQjJmzYdUbZLb.

You can connect with me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/enterprisedoctor/ and join our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/enterprisedoctorbusinessshow/.

My website is at https://enterprisedoctor.co.uk/.

Clips of all episodes are at https://www.youtube.com/user/EnterpriseDoctor/ - please subscribe there, and within your podcast app!

Copyright Marlow FM Ltd 2024. Reproduced here by kind permission of Marlow FM Ltd.