 collaboration and probably more importantly now with COVID productivity. So hello to everyone. Thank you Andrew and I know again you're going to be here for quite a few of our webinars aren't you so we can call on your expertise in your specialisms that's absolutely brilliant thank you and enjoy Croatia I'm very very very jealous. Especially with the weather here today it's really really horrible grey and nasty so very lucky, very very lucky indeed thank you we'll chat to you later thank you very much. Thanks. So before we kind of get started I also just wanted to mention that OFCOM have done a really good study recently and they have found out that us as adults are now spending over a quarter of our day online. Now that doesn't sound very much but if you think about half of your day you're asleep I would say a quarter probably more for some of us to be quite honest I reckon I'd choke up about three quarters of my day online and also they've shown that there's been a 74 percent increase in spend for digital activity which is absolutely huge. So we've got absolutely every reason to want to adopt our digital technology so I think without further ado I'd like to welcome our first speaker and as we said before if you want to pop anything in the Q&A I'll try and take questions as we go along is that okay with everyone. So Nat I'd like to welcome Nat to you for FreedomWorks. Nat's been with FreedomWorks since its inception in 2016 she comes from a brilliant background of working with high gross startups and she's here today to tell us all about how digital technology has helped FreedomWorks scale up and actually it was Nat that wrote the application for this whole program so praise to Nat but over to you Nat. Hey everyone lovely to be here and lovely to meet everyone and see so many faces in here and I hope you've all enjoyed the experience of Remo because it's certainly new for me but it's great to be able to hop around the tables and see everyone. Bear with me just one second because I'm going to bring some slides up so let me and could I I don't know if someone could give me a thumbs up or just let me hear their voice to know whether you can see the slides or not that I've got in front of me. Beautiful thank you so hi everyone I'm really pleased and honoured to be here actually because I'm a massive fan and advocate for digital adoption and it's part of what I do at FreedomWorks and my role at FreedomWorks is looking at our systems and our processes to see how we can effectively grow and scale so just a quick introduction well firstly to myself that's my role at FreedomWorks and I've been working kind of on the corporate side and then also for startups just seeing how digital has transformed businesses going from you know offices with printers to now paperless offices and everything being done online and also just kind of the beauty of digital technology and how it does let you automate and become more streamlined and cost effective so a little bit about us at FreedomWorks as Cheryl mentioned we are responsible for part leading the series so that there's two series within these I think there's 28 webinars in total and FreedomWorks are running two of the series which is this one which we're kicking off today which is all about getting online as a business and then also the series three which is systems and and productivity so the tools and the tips that you can use to really become I think more automated and productive which is key as a business and so FreedomWorks we're a co-working and a flexible office space and we've got seven co-working spaces now dotted across the southeast and we started in 2016 as one office space in Worthing with our founder John Trigg running that so over the past five years we've grown pretty quickly so again digital adoption has been really key for us to be able to scale and we've got 2,500 members in our network across those seven spaces and let me tell you a little bit more to try and bring it to life for you so part of those seven spaces is we've got a space in Chichester, Gapwick, we've got a space in Hove which is a creative hub where we've got the basement which is dedicated to production facilities and a media suite which is perfect for the creatives or the big cluster of creatives in Brighton and Hove we've got a space in Southampton we've got a second space so we've got two spaces in Worthing now and then a couple more coming online this year in Lansing and also in Hastings and I hope you can see from the pictures kind of how we present ourselves so we are co-working so we work with entrepreneurs and freelancers but we also create a home from home for bigger businesses so you know you might be a three-man band or a ten-man band and we create a home for all all of our members and create a real kind of membership and co-working vibe so we've got beer free beer Fridays and we do a lot of lunches and then we also provide a lot of business support and this is kind of where we've dovetailed with West Sussex County Council to help bring these brilliant series of free webinars and I know as well on the call we've got Richard Butcher so Richard is our in-house coach so anyone that joins as a member will talk to Richard and Richard will help understand the business needs and then signpost you to all the wonderful free services that we've got at Freedom Works so that's a little bit about us so to go on and talk a bit more about Freedom Works and I guess our success story post the pandemic in terms of digital adoption lockdown has been really hard for us as a business as I know it has been for everyone on this call personally and also from a business perspective basically we saw sales and memberships drop off a cliff edge as as the first lockdown hit and for us being able to adopt digital technology has been really key to being able to weather the storm and now we're kind of coming out of the end of it we can almost see that the silver lining of actually how the pandemic has made us accelerate some of the digital processes that we've adopted so in terms of us as a business and as a co-working space we won't force to close it wasn't mandatory for us to close as a business so we still kept our doors open but as we all know the messaging from government was don't go into the office unless it was absolutely essential so you can imagine almost kind of overnight we just saw offices go from being packed and busy and buzzing to only one or two people coming in and we also struggled with a lot of our members being afraid to come back for a long time and we also had to navigate as a space the social distancing restrictions that by law we had to put in place and then we also had to juggle staff self-isolating as well which all in all created a really big impact on what is actually still quite a small startup team that we are so we had to kind of quickly think about what can we do to lessen the blow of this and the blow being that revenue was down and we also had a lot of team members off and we had to furlough a lot of the team so we started to think about how can we still keep the business running in the most cost effective way but making sure that we still retain the customers that we do have and once things eased how can we quickly open the doors and bounce back from this so there was two things that really I guess you could say saved our bacon one of the things that we did at FreedomWorks was we did a complete overhaul of our website so we did have a website and we did have an online presence but it was nothing more than a brochure to be fair where you could go and you could have a look and you could see what products and services we sold but there was no functionality behind it you couldn't buy or do anything on the website so what was really key for us was to be able to move everything online so that members could book products and services online and so that we could take out that human interaction side of things which I know is lovely and we still have our community managers on site but our business was no longer reliance on customers having to come in to book products and services and asked to have a member of staff sat at a desk to be able to book those products and services and handle the payments so we put all of our products and services up online and I'll tell you a little bit about the impact that had on the sales and the businesses shortly and we also had to have a think about what products and services could we make that were virtual and that were online because obviously there wasn't the same appetite from customers to come into a co-working space when we were in the thick of a pandemic and so we also started to put some virtual products online so we've got our virtual office packages which is where you can have a virtual address and you can have your virtual post and not your virtual post your post looked after by us and a virtual kind of reception desk and those products really took off so we saw them go from I think it was so minimal revenue we had for them was sort of £250 a month before and that kind of overnight went to 3k a month which was great for us that was a bit more revenue that was coming in and helping cover the costs and then we also made sure that all of our products that we did have were super super flexible so the one thing that we really immediately saw was that no one wanted to commit to anything long term because the future is so unpredictable and still is to a certain extent you know we don't know what's going to happen this winter so all of our products which were very flexible to start off with so people could could book for a month or have a month's membership now we've offered services where you can hop desk and just book a hop desk for a couple of hours or just book a meeting room for a couple of hours so it's kind of taken away that barrier or that blocker of people having to commit in uncertain times and what we've seen is we've seen the sales for those really flexible products has has tripled which has been fantastic and we've also seen traffic on our website go from I think it was a thousand views on the homepage per month to 3,000 views a month now on the homepage and also what people are doing on our website has really increased the people hanging around longer they're looking at things and obviously people are able to book and pay for things in the comfort of their own house at a time that suits them you know I know what it's like some I've got a three-year-old sometimes I'm up at 11 o'clock at night catching up on things and doing things so it's just made doing business with us a lot easier and it's helped us bounce back as well so these are all things that have been accelerated I think because of the pandemic it's really made us step on the front foot and do these things sooner rather than later and then the other piece of tech that we also enabled as a result of the pandemic is let me just click forward it's one button was a system called doorflow technology so as I mentioned a little bit earlier as a business we had to be really careful with social restrictions and social distancing and making sure that we manage the space really safely and that we may come members feel safe as well and there was also a restriction on headcounts and how many people we can have in the building in certain spaces so we implemented a technology called doorflow technology hysterically we had a fairly kind of dumb access control system with a key for doorflow technology now allows us to link members and the products that they've bought to their access to our spaces so if you're a dedicated member and you've got full access then you can come in when you want if you've maybe booked a meeting room just for two hours then you get a shorter window of access to one of our spaces but it allows us to track exactly who's in the space so we can keep an eye on numbers and make sure we stay safe and we also didn't realize at the time but it also enabled us to then sell another product which is 24-7 access which was yeah this was consequential I think but we can now allow people to come into the space 24-7 which we've realized that there has been a real uptake for because people like to come in late at night and especially when everyone's socially kind of distancing it just allows people to stay away or come in when the office is less busy so those two things have I think really transformed our business and I think yeah it's a success story in the way that you know the lockdown has forced us to find some success stories and then finally I'm going to end now but I just want to share this with you so both of those projects that we did to help with our digital transformation which made us more productive and able to increase sales we've had grants to do both of those things so I want to let everyone on this call know that there are grants out there to support you and there's one brilliant one that is open and out there at the moment it's called the business hot house grant and it's run by business hot house which is part of Chichester University and it's managed through invest for which falls under Brighton and Hove Council that's all too much information all you need to do is go on the website but basically you can have a very small grant so up to 5k or you can go for a bigger grant of you know several thousands of pounds and they're really itching to give this money away to businesses and it's for any business that can demonstrate a project that they want to work on that is going to enable and help them grow grow their sales and grow their productivity and what they do is you have to fund the project up front but then they will subsidize and give you the cash back so they'll subsidize 40% of your costs so this is a great one to know about I know some people are put off by grant funding because they think it's reams and reams and pages of applications if you're applying for a grant that's under 5k which were both of the grants we got for those two projects that I mentioned and both of those are kind of just a couple pages of details that you need to fill in it's not too onerous and there's wonderful support from the business hot house as well they run regular webinars on how to do the application process and on that note I'm just going to say thank you very much I hope everyone really enjoys this session today and hearing from the other speakers and also please do sign up for the rest of the series because there's some really great sessions in there thank you everyone Brilliant thank you so much Nat before you run away before you run away I'm just one short question and from the audience Andrew's asked are centralised office-based businesses moving more to having multiple local hubs so are businesses actually condensing and then having different office space at different places along the coast or throughout the region or yeah you know it's a really good shout actually and thanks for asking that question we've been really lucky because we have seen exactly that happen so all of the big corporates based in London or kind of in the major cities they've been empty and they've got these big properties and assets that sit on their balance sheets which are big costs and they're trying to get rid of it because no one's coming to the office anymore and work is never going to go back to how it was it's always going to be a hybrid working model so they're their offices and what they're doing is they're now setting up what's called hub and spoke models so they're setting up smaller offices in kind of regional areas particularly around kind of the commuter belts so that staff don't have to go into the London office for example but they could work from Crawley or they could work from Brighton and we're seeing a lot of interest from those organisations to come and you know find a home with freedom works yeah so it's absolutely true I think the world of work and how we've worked is never going to go back the way that it was but at the same time people don't want to spend the rest of their lives working from their kitchen or from their bedroom like we all have either we need somewhere that's a bit more conducive and where we can keep our social skills of talking to other people going I was going to say on that note freedom works still have their free beer Friday don't they so if you are in a freedom works office on a Friday John does open the fridge and it is a quite a nice social time and I think that's going to just grow and grow now everybody's back so it's brilliant thank you so much now really appreciate that and obviously that's going to stay with us during networking so we can bombard her with questions about freedom works and the program and the grant funding because not only it sounds like a real sales pitch doesn't it I feel like one of those selling channels but not only can we give you the support we can also help you find some money so you know chat with us about that as well but thanks ever so much Nat thank you thanks brilliant okay well um let's move on um let's move on to Bradley who's going to actually come and talk to us about Network My Club and how they fare during the pandemic obviously um Bradley you were networking through big venues the oval and AmEx and then suddenly everything was shut down overnight yeah that's a bit scary so yeah tell us about that thank you thank you very much I have just relocated as um as as always when you're just about to do something like this power drills from builders next door go ahead so um I've I've just relocated hopefully I'm coming through um coming through smoothly but I'm going to share my screen just a little bit about the Network My Club story because as as Cheryl alluded to there as a business network my club in a nutshell we are a business networking organization um we have membership organization based across the southeast uh and London and up until I'll take you back to uh up to the start of March 2020 uh last year um our business was was going smoothly uh built on bringing people together face to face uh at iconic sporting venues and overnight our business model became redundant um we couldn't bring people together face to face the stadiums were closed um so we had to find an alternative solution we had to find the digital solution ways to adopt digital which is the the topic of today's um first series and um for us we we as a membership organization we had an obligation to try and keep our members connected um and uh and and I'm just going to sort of talk you through that journey because 18 months on we have changed a hell of a lot of business I think my personal view is is that like a lot of other industries particularly networking though is what I can speak about is it's been fast forwarded about 10 15 years uh the way that things are doing with with the adoption of of online networking and great to see so many of you here adopting that and I'm sure you've spent many a many an hour on zoom calls and zoom networking events and that sort of thing but let me take you back to March 2020 um this is what Network My Club would look like back then um in-person events using iconic as a place to do it um and venues like the Amex Stadium in Brighton, Twickenham Stadium, the Oval Cricket Ground both in London and the Aegeus Bowl um Cricket Ground in Southampton as well as the likes of the Medeski Stadium in Reading, Portsmouth Football Club um our our business was built on bringing people together like this at stadiums like that so as you can imagine when the pandemic hit we were we were left with no other choice but to go online. Our first um decision was to do what everyone else did and we got a zoom account and uh this is a site that I'm sure a lot of you have become familiar with over the last 18 months might even be a few bones in the audience there having having become so excited of these um walls of faces as I like to call it but we did what everyone else did and we got a zoom account um just to keep our members connected and for us this was this was working okay probably for about a week or two before we as a team realised that this was not scalable it was not going to be um it was not good for for our business it was not fit for purpose because as a network that spread across the southeastern London not so much a localised network um you know we were trying to connect our members across all these different parts of of of the southeast and trying to manage it in a way that we weren't doing events with lots of people we kept them quite intimate and as a result as a as a team we would we were delivering so many of these events and we were getting zoom fatigue before it was even a um before it was even a common phrase and what what's become quite a well known phrase but um we as a team just realised that probably after about two or three weeks there must be a better solution and for us as a business thankfully we had the mindset um that the pandemic might not be something that was just going to last a couple of months we thought this could be a little bit longer so we started to explore other platforms we landed on RIMO um this is actually a screenshot from our first uh RIMO event back in April 2020 uh looks a little bit differently to to what it does now but this is what it what it um what it looked like and for us RIMO saved our business um I I recently did a talk with RIMO uh gave them a case study as well as as part of an interview and I said to them they won't get a better testimonial from anyone um than the me by by simply saying RIMO saved our business and what it allowed us to do was put together online events in a much more visually pleasing way um manufacturing a room to make it more suitable for networking the way that the platform works allowing people to move around different tables and have conversations with just those people on a table it just humanized the online experience and for us this was a real game changer for us so I also just want to share this is a picture of me taking a selfie of that that actual event and I think I posted this on LinkedIn saying um a a new experience for us on RIMO can't wait to see everyone in person in a couple of months time and that was uh yeah how wrong I was back then because uh 18 months down the line we then we we've only just got back to invest but we we persevered with RIMO and we really embraced it and this was the result for us this is of work on the RIMO we then designed and built our own network my club branded networking lounge this became a place where our members started to connect and meet on a weekly basis at our online events and it became a place that they became familiar with and we designed this room with networking in mind we had specific areas like private one-to-one tables where members could have those private one-to-one conversations during the main events and then just jumped straight back into the main action we had timeout seats where people could just take a couple of minutes out if they needed to with anything the doorbell might have gone the kids might have been banging on the door or the door you know timeout seats to be able to just move to another part of the room desks and a reception desk where they where members could come and see us and and get help if they need on the platform or just come and uh any if anyone was visiting the event they could come and meet some of the team so for us this really became a platform that saved the business and it became a place that our members started to realize that networking online can be as close to the real thing as as as as possible using using this platform and that's that was really the key thing for us is that we've been able to deliver events on RIMO pretty much to the same format that we were delivering them in in person you know with that open networking time guest speakers q and a's or and and just that that freedom for people to go back into a room and freely and move around the room and you add on to that the time that people were saving not traveling to in-person events the opportunities they're unearthing particularly for us and our membership we had members in Brighton and Sussex that were meeting members in London and the surrounding areas and then members in Southampton and Hampshire that were meeting people in all those different areas so for us you know the online has really connected our membership and a lot more than if we were to to have just carried on doing in-person events where there was a little bit of a little bit of that crossover in terms of regions but the online just just fast forwarded it it would be wrong of me not to talk about our digital adoption without talking about some of the events that we ran for other organizations so much like we are helping deliver the events in this and this series for freedom works and around last year I was approached by a number of organizations when lockdowns were getting pushed back and restrictions kept getting pushed back there were a lot of event organizers that had to keep pushing back their events and they saw the work that we were doing on Remo and they came to me and the team and they said we love what you're doing on Remo I've got this event concept can you bring it to life for us on Remo and we started to get all sorts of things like the county business clubs virtual awards which was a virtual business awards night for for businesses across Sussex and we delivered an awards night with their own with their own layout in an awards night themed in an awards night theme floor plan with sponsors sponsors private areas even you might see in the top right and top left hand corner there even bars that people could sit at obviously it was bring your own drink but visually people could see these these different layouts and visually it was just a lot more pleasing we also did a number of events with actually freedom works we're involved in some of the work we did with with the manor royal business district in in Crawley other events that we did we did a national awards night for the best business women awards again a new layout a new floor plan that people can can really enjoy even in this one we have a table of two in the shape of a piano you'll see there which again was just a bit of fun with private sponsor areas all these sort of things other events were actually this this was something that we launched in November last year we opened our own pub our own virtual pub called appropriately named network my pub and we what we did with this was back in the November lockdown I think that was lockdown number two I forget how many we've had now but back in lockdown number two we decided that we wanted to open our own virtual pub and open it every day at 4 p.m for people to come in and just socialize with one another it was working we had one simple rule at our pub and that was to leave your sales pitch at the door and it was just a fantastic place that people came into believe it or not we started to get regulars at network my pub and people that were straight at first in the door every every Friday at 4 p.m and and we ran that for a couple of months and and that really helped people particularly those in isolation maybe living on their own or working on their own it was just a social environment then we started to run like you're looking at here virtual pub for in this case it was for a bright and based business they run an annual pub quiz for a charity that they support every year they obviously couldn't do it so we ran it for them in our own pub and I think we raised over 1500 pounds for them during the night we had an auction we had raffles we had all sorts going on during the during the night so we had a lot of fun in our own pub we also did a this was another event we did in the pub for rocking horse children's charity this was a live cook along with celebrity chef Stephen Edwards again another experience that people could come into meet other people in the pub and then witness a live cook along and again trying to align that in person event feel because of our association with sport we also delivered a number of sporting themed events so this was working with Leicester Tigers rugby club here is me doing a Q&A with Barry Hearn and some of you if you're into your sport might may know who Barry Hearn is so we started to deliver events for sporting organisations and starting to get back to that association with sport you know I'm passionate about our team's passionate about and really trying to build that connection we delivered a global fans forum for Southampton football club having over 200 of their fans in all parts of the world coming together in their own Southampton football club branded lounge and we did a Q&A with their first team manager and some players and again another event that was potentially being postponed that we were able to deliver and make a lot more accessible for people around the world we worked with people like the rugby players association and also thelorious world sports academy and these are just a number of different examples of events that we've run and it would be wrong of me not to talk about this side of our business because this is something that I believe will continue in the long run because businesses and event organisers have realised how money that they are saving and more adding more convenience to their attendees while still being that experience but they will be coupling that with that in person experience as a sort of a blended schedule and that's really what we are going back to so September this year so just last week we relaunched the business I like to say in a way that is incorporating that in person event networking experience as well as that online experience so for us we've seen that real shift people realise the benefits of online they've realised you know the convenience of online but we also appreciate that people still want that in person experience so for us what we are doing moving forward is we are having a blended event schedule where one week we will have maybe any one in person event at one of the locations but on another day that week we'll have an online event and we will have a blended schedule just like that sort of on a week by week basis combining that online and in person experience so that's really been the network my club's story over the last 18 months I lose track now but that's what you can expect from network my club we've learned a hell of a lot over the last when it comes to digital adoption it's changed that business it's in business and for me when I said this maybe 12 months ago when I was probably at our lowest point it's made us a much more robust business it's made us more accessible it's made us more inclusive and as a business we are now able to relaunch this month it feels like a relaunch that sort of take it on so thank you very much and do do check us out and do do give us a follow on LinkedIn we're always sort of trying to help people as best as we can on on platforms like LinkedIn by sharing some really useful tips and tricks when it comes to networking in person online so that is network my club and hopefully that's proven giving you some insight into what our last yeah our last 18 months has been like absolutely brilliant thank you so much Bradley I don't think any of us would have quite believed if you know back 18 months ago if you just said you're going to be networking online you're going to be going to the pub online I don't think anybody would have quite believed each other that's probably been the the most common phrase I've used this year this year months is I never thought I'd be doing this and here we are but as I said at the start I think we've really fast-forwarded a lot of a lot of industries a lot of ways of working and particularly networking I think it's about 10 15 years being advanced so yeah no absolutely brilliant and a lovely story and I'm I'm kind of keen to see where all this goes with the hybrid you know online offline I think everybody's keen to get out and meet in person aren't they but then you know there'll be as you say the you can connect with people all over the world online so it's a great technology to have so thank you so much brilliant thanks guys and then moving on last but not least I'd like to introduce you to Steve Cousack who his title fascinates me he's joined chief food lover of Piglet's Pantry so I absolutely think that's a brilliant title Steve actually I'd like a title like that and I think that's when you run your own company you can make the title off as you go along absolutely I think might be Chief Potwasher but Steve and Piglet's Pantry have had an incredible journey haven't they throughout the pandemic and before that so you know over to you please please tell us all about that thank you thank you so let's just give this up there we go yeah basically the title came about because we don't like titles and so it was our company we decided we could call ourselves what we wanted to so I say joined chief food lover because it was my partner Joe who started the company 10 years ago so we're just coming out to our 10th anniversary so it's really basically how we've adapted and adopted and in some cases improved what we've done over lockdown and how we're coming out the other side so first thing is a little bit of history so 10 years there's a picture of my lovely good partner wife whatever you call her Joanna Hunter basically she started the company 10 years ago when she went along to buy the boys some season tickets from Brian Hovalbin and she was chatting along to one of the directors who said that they were going to put in a I won't mention the name but a well-recognized national pie company that you can get at petrol stations and Joe jokingly said well that's it I'm not going to buy the tickets for the boys it so the director turned around and said well okay do you think if you think you can do better and Joe said well uh yes I can my father used to be a pie maker so I'll come along some samples so long story shorty she came along and I think she basically fed the directors for about six months and while they were deciding which products and they were going to use and the fans pretty much said whatever you put in the stadium to eat and drink we will basically eat you dry drink you dry so it was selected that piglet's pantry would be the pie provider and Harveys were going to be the beer provider so Joe then went in we started producing at the stadium the chefs got very quickly fed up us and basically said every time they're in the fridge or a cupboard or they were finding stuff to do with pies it was a bit like ah you need to find a sign so we moved for our first site basically a 900 square foot site and started producing the pie so we grew a couple of years later we were then so started so 300,000 400,000 600,000 pounds and then we got up to in our latest unit just pre-COVID we were doing on track to do just over two million obviously it all kicked in with the COVID so we ended up doing about 1.7 million and that's 70 plus stadiums we've got a good mixture of predominantly sport including as I put in there football rugby cricket but we also do things like the NEC the O2 various different organizations and venues that predominantly have a male customer background we were a wholesale distributor so we didn't do anything online we had no e-commerce business we had no consumer business at all really we had a basic website we were pies but we did do a mixture of both savory and sweet but yeah again most people knew us for our our savory so we just started looking at the vegan range is how we could extend how we can do more ideas so we had a good mixture but of course so Friday the 13th of March it's a date not to forget we were having worked at Cheltenham we were there for the Gold Cup and we were due to have the game on Saturday with Brighton versus Arsenal our set of the manager got COVID they called the game we were then stuck with literally 10 000 pies which is basically what we have and we get a Brighton on a game by game basis and literally also we didn't know what was going to happen but we knew Brighton stopped and then literally day by day over the next three or four days we started to lose all our events a bit like Bradley was saying literally your business is all these stadiums they're all having fans suddenly no fans no product no business so we literally went from 250 300 000 a month to literally zero so we had a meeting we put something out on social media saying help we got various different people that came in through social media through the radio we had sky down there and we ended up with a literally a queue around the block outside our industrial unit for people coming to buy our pies so we quickly thought well obviously we can't survive like this I'm going what are we going to do so we had a portable till which we'd pinch from one of our stadiums and then it was a bit like okay we need to get on with this and we also need to approach closer capital help so we had to pivot the business which is a lovely phrase everybody's using that and so we went from being a wholesale to then look into suddenly how we could then go to online so six of us got together and we just brainstormed all the ideas we could do what could we do what could we sell how could we sell it how could get it out to everybody so as we've made so many of the various different items within as it were an afternoon tea we thought right okay it's coming out to Easter we needed something quickly for Easter so we came together with the idea of doing an Easter range and so it was the the sausage rolls we've made we've made a big version we made some quiches we made some scotch eggs we put them all together and so right what we're going to put them in so we found some cheesecake boxes so pretty much they're like smaller versions of pizza boxes so that's great so we can put them all in the boxes and we can put them inside a pack but okay how do we protect them so we need gel packs etc etc so the whole thing there was is how can we then get that out to the general public how do we mark it how do we automate it all the it's all new to us but all with this we had to be done with inside a week so we could get launched very quickly we set up and launched our website it was like right okay what are we going to do we need tech to support us so yeah again we had a website but there was no shop on it and so we quickly needed to build a shop sorry we spoke to our WooCommerce people in order to build the the back end to the shop we need to set up a payment system we'd been using they said they're going to take two weeks we said we don't have that time so we got striped they did it within that afternoon and then we looked at how we could repackage everything that we've been basically doing for the wholesale market how we could then do that for the online market as I said we then did the Easter hamper we put that out originally we had I think it was I mean as we said they're 3000 Facebook but that was broken down to predominantly Instagram that's right Twitter big bomb Joe used to talk to the the Brian fans on Twitter we had about 150 people on Instagram because we're old we don't know how to use that properly and think about 800 people on Facebook so it was literally how are we going to get this done so we had to look at getting online getting the products out and then looking at how we can get the production focused so we've got a warehouse management system which we wanted to get together and then we applied for the coast of capital grants which we were successful in getting so it was that very quick shift to online people sat at home nothing to do so people wanted to watch football so they could stay at home they could buy our products and we wanted to grow our females out of the market so we decided to do the afternoon tea which if any of you haven't had one or haven't heard of or seen this please contact me afterwards and I'll quite happily send you one then you can taste the products it was like and we wanted to mark that out to people so my daughter who is a lot younger than myself who was 17 in time said well we need to get on to all the social media so she contacted some of the people who in some of those pictures there you can see on the right um half of them I don't know if I'm honest I know from programs like Love Island made in Chelsea I've had to become a fan of some of them and to watch them and that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it and we then started selling them afternoon teas they were doing nothing they were literally sat at home they needed content I think the fact that we sent them an afternoon tea gave them something to post and that works and basically the result of that is that we now got a social media focus of over 60 000 people um we sold over as it happens as a figure we sold over 100 000 afternoon teas last week so we grew our business so on here is uh basically a video one of the guys who came down and did a review and it was all much very much about the pie so we were doing the male dominated pie side and then the afternoon version which was predominantly female by 96 percent female and predominantly 25 to 44 so yeah again we shifted both of our markets these are the elite pie level let's make a educated assessment of that pie lovers anyway it's one for you if you've had a good pie football child site could well have been one of the piglets pantry pies in the box particularly golden golden goodness we even got because the some of the football fans out there are not the sharpest tools in the boxes we even got labels on top i do 60 thousand pies here a week so basically that gives you an idea of how many we're doing and obviously that's a guy who's well known in the pie world didn't know him before but he did a great review on us so so technology so main thing is about technology um we had to rethink about everything we had to look at our basically our products our prices um that was very much about looking at new audiences how would he increase so we needed the e-commerce setup that's now become 50 percent of ourselves and it's growing um from our point of view is we're now looking at how we can then bring the two back together hence why we're now just moving to our new unit and it's very much about looking at how we could do the home delivery packaging we started off with our plain pink boxes i think you can see in the picture with my other influences there we've got the it's got the joy it's got the piglet slogan all over it it's been very much about how we can get all of that marketing done so therefore we can constantly promote ourselves we've also bought in warehouse control systems so we've had them packaging systems labelling systems and then also we've just bought in a new qr code which oh you better see the end of this presentation and link onto that so you can actually see all of our products are now online via the qr code so we're then all set up for Natasha's law so from my point of view sales doubled um we ended up doing just over three million last year so that was a great success story for us um come from zero to three million and there's a new growth in the business so anything's possible so if anybody's out there thinking i'm either a small company i'm looking to start my company we've managed to do it so there's absolutely no reason why you can't do it and this is the culmination of all of that effectively we started off a 900 square foot unit we were just in a 7 000 square foot unit and we're just about to finish completing i can't show you the pictures of the as it is now because there's literally people producing in there and uh there's there's lots of work going in there just to finish it off so we're now in a 28 thousand square foot unit we've got enough growth there for 10 years hopefully um the way things are going at the moment we might be there faster but really from my point of view technologies works we had a good product we had a good loyalty already but we've built a whole new market and uh technology certainly helps us with that so thank you very much brilliant steve thank you so much i absolutely love that i love that um i love that you're watching love island or we're watching love island um and the and you now know who the influencers are um but moreover i just love the fact that how the digital technology has made your business just absolutely fly so um and if i could have an afternoon tea box i'd love one thank you very much i promise you'll get addresses to me and i will send them out to you so there you go it's always in the eating we can set up we can sit here and walk along for ages about how good we are but at the end of the day it's all about the product and and that's what it is a good product any idiot like me can sell it um one very very quick question um andrew's ask was your business improvement planning luck trying out new things or a mix of everything yeah i'm gonna go with a mix of everything i mean planning i think when we sat down there and said okay you know six of us got together and literally sat around the table head in hands and said what are we gonna do so it was the planning then i mean it came up some ideas some of it was luck um but the um i think the the products as i kept saying we've made a really good range of products already but i think the sort of the idea is the planning was very much about putting them all together to come up with a package you know nobody at the time was doing afternoon teas and um from our point of view is the weedlets um on the internet and they were saying that over the first two or three months i think the search engines had said that there's something like a seven hundred and sixty four percent increase for the afternoon teams online so we clearly recognized that we'd hit a wave now it's great having a good product and it's great having the technology but then from that point of view is then using all that martin all that social media and then getting it out to everybody so without going about too much i think it was a mixture of everything yeah no absolutely and i think as you say quite right you say you need a good product you need some good business planning a little bit of luck but you need to know how to get it out there to people as well so that's what this whole series is about just a big up for andrew actually he's been very good he's mentored me through most of this for good and bad and um and obviously without joe who came up with the ideas in the first place we wouldn't have got anyway so good team effort and very much a family effort all of our family work in this business and that's for as good as it's bad um so they put up trees for you but they also moan about it so that's the looking about about it but no we've uh you know people are saying they're inspirational you know great success story i mean it is um you know luck hard work and planning brilliant thank you ever so much steve pleasure to have you with us today thank you thank you cheers thanks thank you um before we move on to our networking i do appreciate we are running a little bit late um so i hope everybody's okay to just stay with us um i just want to um quickly say hello to um rob lorenz who's also one of our coastal capital digital champions um that has joined and i'm so sorry rob i missed you out in the beginning so i don't know whether you just want to very quickly say hello if you want to pop your camera on your mic on you can pop up and and say hi rob that's gonna be possible no oh yep definitely joys of tech thank you rob i'm so sorry i missed you earlier that's okay i'm absolutely fine about it i must say those case studies were absolutely brilliant uh all right so i'm rob lorenz i'm a consultant leadership coach specializing in digital transformation that dreadful word um so i basically help people in three ways to help leadership teams understand where their organization is relative to their competitors in terms of digital capability help them identify the digital opportunities and threats in their market and then i help them to develop a strategy to develop their capabilities in that area and then put a roadmap together to actually make it happen um i'm also an author and i can't resist an opportunity in my book um to call get fit for digital business and it's really an attempt to take some of the jargon and gobbledygook out of digital transformation and talk about all the moving parts and how they they work together in a way that you can actually explain to your team and they won't fall asleep so that's me and i'm really looking forward to working with everybody thank you thank you so much rob and nice to have you along thank you um so before we move into our networking i hope you've all really enjoyed these case studies i think they've been fabulous and some really brilliant um you know case studies of of how using digital technology can move your business forward and grow your business um we have as i mentioned earlier got six uh webinars over the next few weeks every tuesday and thursday i would i was going to list them all off but i know we're short time so i won't but suffice to say that our next one on tuesday all about website development and run by digibubble um is absolutely fab because i've already seen the slides and it is well worth attending if you have a website and you must have a website um come along and hear some top tips to make sure that that website is doing everything it can for you and really bringing in the visitors so without further ado because i'm conscious of the clock i'm going to pass over to bradley who is going to just quickly um just run through how the networking is going to work and um please do come and chat with all of us on our tables digital champions me that all of our speakers and i really personally want to thank you all for coming and look forward to seeing you next week thank you thanks bradley thanks very much i'll keep this very brief guys um because i want to get you back into the room let me just share my screen just for one slide that you just saw and this is the room we will be going back into now just on the remote platform works when we go back into the room you will just need to turn your camera and microphone back on but you will be on a table with other attendees you'll see that you all the attendees appear as little circular icons that's how you see different people you can click on those icons you can see some virtual business cards pop up but then if you want to move around onto different tables all you need to do is double click on a table and you will move there straight away so there's no better way to to to get used to this than by trying so what i'm going to do now is i think she'll just wrapped up there so we can come out of the presentation mode will where you will land on a table just flick your camera and microphone back on if you want to carry on networking and just start jumping around the tables if you want to move onto a another table or move to a different conversation if you need any help just drop a message in the chat box will happily help um or jump onto a help desk which you'll see is on the left hand side of the room but um unless uh Cheryl comes back on in the next a few seconds i think that's a stun but uh as i say any you've you also on the right hand side of the room uh there's some remote tips in there to help you get the most out of it as well so just hover your mouse over there and you'll see some remote tips is that everything Cheryl yeah absolutely i just i literally hopped on to say no thank you and let's go networking brilliant thank you ever so much thank you for the presentation mode now