Emma Jones CBE – Founder of Enterprise Nation
The team at Moon Executive Search has undertaken a project to meet great leaders and gain an insight into their business and growth journeys.
To date, we have been fortunate to have met business leaders with backgrounds across private equity, banking, legal, charity, fintech, blockchain and AI. These meetings are an in invaluable way for the Moon team to continue to develop our knowledge and understand the latest market news.
Recently, we were fortunate to be joined by Emma Jones CBE, Founder of Enterprise Nation. Emma is a business expert and best-selling author of business books such as Working 5 to 9 and The Spare Room StartUp. She is founder of Enterprise Nation, having launched the company back in 2005.
Enterprise Nation is a vibrant community of small businesses and business advisers that exist to shortcut the members’ route to a trusted business network. The Enterprise Nation model is a circle of support that has attracted partnership from organisations as varied as the Department for Work and Pensions, to Uber, and to Amazon.
Enterprise Nation has now grown to be a community of over 75,000 people, with 12,000 trusted advisers supporting over 500,000 businesses in the last year.
Emma is passionate about supporting people in Britain to start and grow their own successful business and representing their views to government and media.
Her Story
Following a degree in Law and Japanese, Emma joined international accounting firm Arthur Andersen, where she worked in London, Leeds and Manchester offices and set up the firm's Inward Investment practice that attracted overseas companies to locate in the UK. Emma spoke about the value of working for a company before becoming an entrepreneur. She found that learning whilst working for corporates provided her a salary, a network and training that gave her vital knowledge and confidence.
In 2000, bitten by the dot.com bug, Emma left the firm to start her first business, Techlocate. After 15 months, the company was successfully sold to Tenon plc. The experience of starting, growing and selling a business from a home base gave Emma the idea for Enterprise Nation which was launched in 2006 as the home business website.
In 2018, angel investment provided the funds to create the remarkable 40% year-on-year growth and the company has since expanded to become a small business membership community who benefit from events and support, both online and in person. Enterprise Nation also presents a campaigning voice to government and the media on behalf of its members. In 2021, Emma was awarded a CBE for services to small businesses and entrepreneurs.
Attract, Match, and Delight
Emma spoke about the need to attract businesses to Enterprise Nation by appearing in the start-up space, then matching them with the appropriate people for their network to help their business.
She spoke of the two types of business that join Enterprise Nation. One is a business that understands what it needs to grow and the other that are looking for external insight from both the community and the specialist advisers.
The matching of these businesses with the required expertise is a key aspect of the Enterprise Nation model. The final part of the customer journey is ensuring that they are delighted with their experience so that they return.
SMEs & Amazon
Amazon is the largest online shopping platform and the Amazon Small Business Accelerator is a free, online educational programme for anyone who wants to start a new online business or grow an existing one. The programme run by Enterprise Nation in partnership with Amazon and costs nothing to the SMEs.
The comprehensive tutoring of SMEs with a comprehensive curriculum covering website building, selling online, social media, marketing, managing cashflow, selling on Amazon, and identifying opportunities for growth. The community of small businesses and advisers from Enterprise Nation provides trusted business support to the businesses that need it.
Enterprise Nation provided vital support packages for more than 200,000 small businesses and start-ups during the tough times of the pandemic.
Vanessa Moon, founding Director of Moon said: ’It was so wonderful to hear Emma’s journey and how passionate she is about supporting business growth. If you run a small business and are interested in sustainable scaling, then the advice from the Enterprise Nation community will certainly help your venture succeed. Their ‘one stop’ advice and support that Enterprise Nation provides are absolutely invaluable.’
The team at Moon were incredibly grateful for Emma’s fascinating insights and we are delighted to share her story and incredible business to our network. We work with a range of businesses including ambitious and growing SME organisations, supporting their growth by connecting them with great leaders.
