m: 07818 565432
e: jfcarter@tiscali.co.uk

Managing Director- Food Yorkshire
Food Manufacturing and Business Consultancy for food producers in Yorkshire

Professional Expertise

Following a degree in Hotel and Catering Management at Leeds Metropolitan University as a mature student, Linda has over 25 years experience in senior management positions in the catering and hospitality sector in the UK.

Linda’s career has involved roles in the hotel, contract catering, universities, and senior marketing professional for 4 years with British Gas and 14 years with the Meat & livestock Commission. Linda has a broad experience of senior management in the private and public sectors.

• Business Development – New Customers
• Sourcing new local suppliers to increase product ranges of local produce (when required)
• Up selling to existing customers and providing the company with a sales plan
• Finding working partners for Printing, Packaging, Website Development, PR, Compliance, Scores on the Doors, SALSA and BRC, Legal Labelling
• Organising events, attending exhibitions representing the company when required
• Presenting products to potential customers, buyers
• Finding routes to market through wholesalers, caterers and retailers as well as the independent sector
• Developing a power point presentation to present to potential customers, buyers when required and attending
• Meet the Buyer Days on the company’s behalf
• Working with the company to develop a sales plan, strategic plan, marketing plan for future growth
• Market research into product areas for future growth of local food and regional food
• New product development of products in savoury and sweet ranges
• Access to grants for rural business that are producing and sourcing local produce, Innovation Vouchers, Designing & Demand as well as the Rural Business Support Programme. Assist all the companies with access to funding for efficiencies
• Meat Training and specifications, process flow, sales, meeting KPI’s and efficiency targets.

Previous Positions held

• Trust Houses Forte - Departmental Manager
• Sheffield/London/Manchester Universities- Conference Manager/ Caterer
• Gardner Merchant- Catering Manager
• British Gas - Senior Marketing Manager - Food Equipment & Design
• Meat & Livestock Commission- Senior National Account Manager Red Meat Promotions and Development- working with John Christophe Novelli , Nigel Howarth, Paul Heathcote
• Regional Food Group – Regional Development Manager all Yorkshire Food, marketing, promotions, events

Gill Coverdale MPH, BSC (Hons), SCPHN, RNT, RN.

Professional Expertise

Gill is an experienced and enthusiastic health consultant. She has been both a Senior lecturer/Programme Manager for Specialist Community Public Health Nursing and a Lecturer/Researcher for Public Health and Primary Care. She has a Masters degree in Public Health and an Honours Degree in Specialist Community Public Health Nursing. Gill worked in the NHS for twenty years before moving into Higher Education. Gill has expertise and experience in setting up accessible services that are delivered by a range of agencies to meet the health needs of young people as efficiently as possible. br />

Gill has a wealth of experience in teaching and assessing and also managing projects and programmes, both face to face and online. She has worked at strategic level advising the UK and International governments on improving the health and well being of young people in the UK.

Her current work is as an Independent Consultant Nurse in the promotion of health and well-being; and as Lecturer/Researcher, Public Health and Primary Care, University of Leeds.

Gill works with either individual’s on a one to one basis, or organisations with small or large groups, within the health industry. Gill uses her vast experience in promoting healthy lifestyles and preventing ill health and building capacity and resilience in the people she works with, which will have a positive outcome for the individual and the organisation. Gill is enthusiastic about working with any organisation that is committed to the health of their workforce through bespoke programmes.

m: +44 7956 897 793
t: +44 1483 211 376
e: gilly@cuttsandcons.com

Professional Expertise

Counselling

People come to counselling for many reasons: difficulties and distress, dissatisfaction with life, loss of a sense of direction or purpose are some of them. More specifically these include lack of self esteem, feeling unloved, loss of relationship, loss of a loved one or losing a job or business. Counselling offers a way through such problems by facilitating choice or change, and reducing confusion. Gilly’s formally gained skills, including those as a grief counsellor and trainer with Cruse, work wonderfully alongside her finely honed intuition. Suspending judgement she listens deeply and empathically to her clients thus helping them to see things more clearly or from a different perspective. Through a deepening awareness of the source of their issue they often experience a sense of release and reduction of the associated emotional pain. This in itself restores self-respect, self esteem and creates a feeling of acceptance of who we are. Allowing us to reach our own conclusion and to travel our own path towards understanding ourselves is a vital part of her work.

In being given a safe and secure place to open up to our feelings we can begin to see the patterns in our lives that are holding us back. In Gilly’s safe and experienced hands and heart you will find your own guidance, your own way through to the other side.

Such talents are rare but we always know when we are in the presence of them.

Public Speaking

Gilly holds the highest qualification within the worldwide organisation Toastmasters International, that of Distinguished Toastmaster, something that takes many years and much application to achieve.

Therefore, when you combine her coaching and counselling skills with the subject of public speaking you get something exceptional. She is capable of helping anyone lose their fear of something most people rate higher than death itself! If you are a novice, she will help you become comfortable in front of an audience. If you are more experienced she will hone your skills to levels you never dreamt possible.

m: 07738 851873
e: valmonti@yahoo.com

Professional Expertise

Valerie Monti Holland offers a creative approach to transformation for individuals and groups.

Using metaphor as a backdrop for gaining perspective is a technique that hearkens back to Shakespeare – whatever was rotting in Denmark was certainly smelling in England! We see problems differently when given space and time for reflection. The metaphor of left luggage works as permission for people to set down their emotional and mental baggage for a while in order to view the world from another window, hopefully achieving insight in the process, and moving on from the ‘stuckness’ they were experiencing once they retrieve that baggage from the hold.

Problem solving is inherently a creative process and the use of action-based techniques to facilitate that process is a helpful one. By recognising the ability to address issues through their own creativity, people are empowered to think for themselves and take responsibility for their actions.

Each person is the protagonist in his/her own life, the central character from whom all decisions, attitudes and actions emanate. Yet, too frequently people refuse to take up this role in leading their own lives and succumb to forces around them, taking them up roads of malcontent and negativity. As an unhappy part of a system that necessarily involves other people, this lack of agency has an impact on the entire group, team, organisation or family that contains it.

Valerie seeks to help people become the central characters in their own lives and choose roles that are positive, nurturing towards others and active. Unlocking the potential, especially that of disadvantaged and marginalised people is the primary purpose of the company.

Valerie employs techniques such as Sociodrama, Forum Theatre, and various Action Methods that enable training and/or facilitation in the following areas:

• Review & Reflection
• Visioning
• Action Planning
• Creative Thinking
• Assertiveness and Decision-Making
• Business Planning
• Business Mentoring & Coaching
• Innovation Coaching
• Business & Enterprise Development, including work on Inception
• Partnership Improvement
• Team-Building

m: +44 7768 067 545
t: +44 1483 211 376
e: nigel@cuttsandcons.com

Professional Expertise

One of the most important qualities of any coach or mentor is experience. After more than forty years working in, running and building businesses of various sizes, including a substantial one of his own, this is something Nigel has in spades. Add to this a profound interest in people, a level of empathy rarely found in business and finely honed professional skills and you will go a long way before you find someone both as willing and able as he to support you on your path, be it personal or professional.

Nigel’s long experience at CEO level in international business means he truly understands the problems such people face daily on every level. He sees the key to unlocking leadership potential as people learning how to really listen to one another and in so doing create the space for them to genuinely think for themselves. No one knows better how to solve a problem or a challenge than the person facing it. Creating the time and space for someone to do that is an incredibly rare and valuable commodity. Using his combined skills as a business person with those of a Time to Think Consultant and Coach he allows you, as the client, to form your own opinions, come to your own judgements and take your own actions.

Here are just two areas where he can help:

· The quality of our thinking determines the quality of our actions. This is the way to winning and succeeding in business. Nigel can help you do both.

· Having the ideas is one thing, presenting them well another. Nigel can help you develop your presentation skills beyond measure. He is mentor to many public speakers but particularly to the four times finalist and twice winner of the UK and All Ireland International Speech Contest.

His book Love at Work (go to www.loveatwork.co.uk for more detail) contains much of his accumulated wisdom and is set to become a standard business school text if its early reviews are anything to go by.

m: 07728 712325
t: 0113 2008766
e:ian@opportunitymarketing.co.uk

Managing Director- Opportunity Marketing
Providing marketing consultancy and training.

Professional Expertise

Ian plugs the gap within organisations in helping them to understand the one discipline in business that most companies struggle with - marketing. This is achieved through taking companies through a logical process in helping them clearly define their business proposition, its position within the marketplace and identify its core target markets.

Ian is an experienced marketing consultant who has been helping businesses grow through effective marketing for over 14 years. Ian takes a strategic approach to marketing and understands that the fundamental strategy and supporting processes have to be correct before promotional activity will yield a return. Ian’s mission is to ensure every business he works with generates a return on investment from all marketing spend.

Ian has worked with clients of varying sizes across a variety of sectors including the Adare Printing Group, Watt Gilchrist, Baskind Promotions, Sisushi, Creative Emporium, Prestige Court, Hemingway Tailors, Ampleforth Abbey, Soccer City, Creative Installations, Trade Kitchens Direct, Newmediaboutique, AutoDrain, Dixon’s Vauxhall Spares, Cemart, Inline Health & Beauty, Next Level Business Development, Rebatt, School ICT Services and Alloy Towers.

Ian defines his values as:

• Be open and honest
• Be open and honest
• Build relationships
• Be commercial
• Be accountable
• Have integrity
• Continually strive for better

it’s these values which ensure Ian becomes a trusted extension of his clients’ business.

What others say

“Ian provides a logical and scientific process which has provided a number of my clients with clarity and enables them to market themselves far more effectively.”
Ian Hargreaves, Next Level Business Development

“From a standing start, Ian helped us reach 100% occupancy which significantly improved the financial health of the business, within the timescales promised.”
Pat Gilligan, Prestige Court Business Centre

“I would have no hesitation in recommending Ian to anyone who requires a clear marketing strategy that can add value to their business.”
Darren Cohen, Creative Emporium

m: 07506457766
t: 01274864707
e: dt@clear-results.org

Professional Expertise

An experienced sales, training and business development consultant who has helped increase and secure the sales of new business for every company he has worked with, by helping them –

• Decide what the key messages are to get buy-in from stakeholders
• Prepare the most appropriate materials/media to deliver those messages
• Improve the skills required to deliver those messages with confidence and certainty
• Increase the ability to close sales and deal with objections/questions

These companies include –

• Royal Bank of Scotland
• GlaxoSmithKline
• Bank of England
• Tarmac
• Invest Northern Ireland
• Guardian Media Group
• British Nuclear Fuel
• Co-operative Bank
• CIS Insurance
• Sanofi-Aventis
• NHS
• Volker Rail
• Focus PR
• 
Core Skills

Sales training deliverer – broad experience of delivering many effective training courses to both experienced and new salespeople

Sales pitch builder – has successfully developed sales pitches, including many £multi-million wins

Presentation coach – has helped many businesses achieve more from their presentations, and deliver with confidence, energy and certainty

Presentation content creator – has helped senior directors and sales experts to create presentation content that engages audiences, such that they buy-in to and act upon the presenters’ key messages

Sales Executive – has successfully secured new clients (including Bank of England and Guardian Media Group) and grown the accounts of existing clients (RBS, Praise PR, Emigration Group) in the last year

Management development coach – has helped develop the management capabilities of all levels of management, in a broad range of sectors including Financial Services and manufacturing, resulting in coachees achieving their goals i.e. promotion to director

What others say

“We won the £7million contract! Many thanks for all Damian’s support on this project; his input was instrumental in us winning this.”
Justin Isles, Event Marketing Solutions

“We won our largest pitch to date, following the help and advice given to us by Damian Thompson.”
Greg Pye, MD, Go Commando!

“After working with Damian Thompson, his coaching and advice helped me achieve promotion from Manager to Director.”
Chris Jones, Director, Sanofi Aventis

“Damian helped us win our largest contract ever, and one that we thought we had no chance of winning. We were up against all the major London agencies, yet still came out on top.”
Alaine Briggs, MD, Praise PR