In October 2019 when the world was normal, Emma and I attended a 3 month 'Innovating For Growth' Programme at The British Library. It involved a lot of trips into the city and we became masters at TFL timetables and working out which end of the train to get on to minimise our travelling time.
In our cohort were 20 other small businesses and many of the workshops we had were in a group. It was great to hear what other wonderful businesses people had set up and to hear them all develop plans for the future (if only we had known then what we knew now!).
We gained access to lots of experts including branding, marketing, legal and research assistants and whilst it was exhausting it was great to be given the opportunity to take a step back and look at our business rather than constantly being 'in it' doing the day to day running of it.
The programme enabled us to see how far Stamptastic has come over the past 10 years. We started (and still do) work from Emma's kitchen table (rules permitting) but now we have a small team of consultants who help us with admin design, marketing, social media, manufacturing and fulfilment. We have come a long was and just by attending the course reignited our passion and love for Stamptastic.
So I was delighted to be invited by the British Library to be interviewed for their Start Up Day on 19th November. I was interviewed by the very lovely Karen Campbell who I have had the pleasure of getting to know over the past 18 months due to her involvement with the Small Awards (in which we won the Best Digital Business Category in 2019) and Small Business Saturday (in which we featured as a Top 100 Business in 2019).
Emma and I mananged to put a lot of new plans into place post the British Library programme and pre Covid and as you will see from the interview we have a lot to be thankful for and are EXTREMELY grateful to the British Library and their team for giving us the opportunity to attend the programme.
I really enjoyed chatting to Karen, it was great to be able to have the chance to wash and dry my hair 🤪 and get out of my lounge wear! I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I enjoyed doing it!
Thanks for watching!
Other blog posts you may enjoy:
Fran and Emma Stamptastic Meet Sir Vince Cable MP for Small Business Saturday
Fran Stamptastic Mentors Small Businesses on the Small Business Saturday
