Breakthrough Funding

BREAKTHROUGH FUNDING

Susie Warran-Smith, formerly Sue Nelson, grew up in inner city London to a very working class family. For the first year of her life her parents lived in a flat with no running water. Before her brother came along, they moved to a rented three room downstairs flat with running water (yay) but no bathroom and an outside toilet. She lived there until she was eight. She went to a mixed race school in Clapham before moving to Kent where she later attended Ashford Girls Grammar School.

Susie worked in corporates and charities after gaining a degree in graphic design, and while pregnant with her second child and with a 3 year old in tow, she studied in the evenings to get an MBA in finance and corporate strategy. Along the way she gave up her spare time (what spare time?) as a trustee, volunteer or non-executive for a range of charities in particular those that help disadvantaged people to set up their own businesses and make them a success.

Finally, after working for 35 years she decided to do it for herself with her best friend's daughter, Brady Last. They started in Susie's small conservatory on two laptops and with a large stash of Yorkshire tea bags. Her children left home and at 54 years old, she thought she should do something risky for once in her life. She put her entire savings into starting a business even though there were no clients in sight. She convinced Brady to join her in this one last hurrah.

They were both working at a consultancy firm but knew if they went on their own, they could reach so many more small businesses and help them gain the funding and advice they needed to thrive and ‘breakthrough’. That is why they named it Breakthrough Funding.

GETTING STARTED

They begun trading in April 2015. Susie developed the brand so that it would look and feel like no other tax service in the UK. Orange, green, ducks, eggs and mad professors dominated. She wrote the content for the website herself, doing away with jargon and developing the process systems in detail so that, despite the complexities, it would be easy for clients to understand and be guided through it. She developed the specification for the IT infrastructure, commissioned the client contracts and even agreed with Brady on what colour bins they fancied in a 'proper' office when they got that far. In the first month they had zero income, (as expected), although they did win the Best Website in the Kent Digital Awards just six weeks after they launched.

They started to get a lot of attention and a proper office was acquired just three months later along with their first staff appointments - Daisy, an incredibly bright admin assistant who had never been given a chance to shine at school or work and Dan, a window specialist (don't ask). The team began helping more and more small companies grow into great big ones by accessing valuable mentor schemes, business networks government grants and other forms of funding.

The brand was deliberately designed to champion the SME business owner and to make funding schemes more accessible. The use of jargon and confusing terms were banished. The brand was clearly differentiated from its accountancy background and business consultancy competitors and Susie begun to use innovative marketing techniques such as their radio show and magazine, as routes to market.

FOODTALK RADIO SHOW

The FoodTalk Radio Show was launched with the aim of allowing established food heroes or emerging innovators to shout about their work. The podcasts were instantly popular on Audible, Spotify, Stitcher, PlayerFM, TuneIn and on the Podcast app.

These channels created a great business network for Breakthrough Funding, giving not only credibility and recognition for small businesses in the food and agri sectors, but access to a steady stream of new clients. The team also begun to broadcast the TechTalk Show, with the same format but for tech companies. The FoodTalk Show went on to run weekly for six years with Susie as the lead presenter until she handed it over to Ollie Lloyd in 2023.

BREAKTHROUGH MAGAZINE

In the manufacturing/engineering sector, Breakthrough Magazine showcased sector innovation and gave potential clients a platform to promote their products and services. This again in turn led to new business from the companies being featured on the magazine's pages.

social impact

Breakthrough's commercial activity helped Susie to finance her social purpose projects. She also used some of the profits from the company to support her clients and partners.

Her projects helped them to get other funding, publicity or new business through her networks, awards, magazines, radio shows or partnership programmes. Susie saw it as their social purpose which is wrapped around the core aim of supporting small businesses to thrive and grow.

Susie pledged that her company should always be a responsible corporate citizen - business for good and profit for purpose. You can read about how she truly believes that kindness and quality are MORE likely to make a business successful in her book Swimming On My Own.

Image - helping Toast Ale promote their beer made from surplus bread.

SUPPORTING OTHER BUSINESSES

Since selling her company Susie spends much of her time supporting initiatives close to her heart, especially mentoring women entrepreneurs. Find out how you can get one-to-one mentoring with Susie here.

In 2017 Susie wrote and published FoodTech UK to make a case for the UK as the centre for foodtech innovation and to attract inward investment. She set up the FoodTech Group within the highly respected Tech London Advocates volunteer organisation. She is currently working with the following as a non-executive or in a voluntary capacity . . .

• Owner of ArtTalk Gallery, an initiative to make art and design more accessible.

• Non-Executive Director on the main board of His Majesty's Revenue & Customs (HMRC) advising on customer service and transformational change.

• Non-Executive Director on the Audit and Risk Board of The British Library, the national library of the UK, to advise on governance, recovery from cyber attack and financial reporting.

• Executive Director and Chair of Produced in Kent, to support small food producers and growers through COVID-19 and the cost of living crisis, and to promote local food and drink.
• Deputy Lieutenant of Kent to support the Lord Lieutenant in her role as the official representative of His Majesty The King in Kent.
• Member of The Good Food Fund investment committee, working with Guys and St. Thomas’ Charity to fund innovative food businesses to reduce childhood obesity
• Shareholder, official ambassador and board advisor to ForwardFooding (foodtech data experts and publishers of the annual world FoodTech500).
• Board advisor to FoodSquared (developers of alternative proteins).
• Official Ambassador for Mercato Metropolitano, London's first sustainable community market and advocates for ethical food production.

In addition, in 2016 Susie set up Breakthrough Women with Deborah Turner, a biannual event for businesswomen. It is now run by Deborah and Sue Hainsby, with a much wider programme supporting women entrepreneurs.