FUNDED: Brilliant Entrepreneurs and Founders
At the heart of their towns and cities, wonderful local businesses and social enterprises are the vital spark in their communities. Our guests may all be brilliant but they're also real and relatable, with practical insights and tips to share.
All are united by one factor: they had a dream to grow, and used finance from the Business Enterprise Fund, a non-profit social enterprise, to make it happen. And our guests give us the inside story about their business journeys and all the lessons learned on the way in these fascinating and candid interviews with people facing the same business challenges you do.
FUNDED: Brilliant Entrepreneurs and Founders
Lyndsay Watterson: selling handmade walking sticks worldwide from York
Every box Lyndsay sends out to a customer changes someone's life. Few businesses could make such a claim, but this is what people tell her day in and out.
Her business, Neo Walk, now employs ten and has customers in 35 countries. American actresses Selma Blair and Christina Applegate have both become big advocates for Lyndsay's handmade walking sticks.
But it all started in her kitchen. After Lyndsay experienced a catastrophic MRSA infection, her left leg was amputated. "I knew that I needed a walking stick and I was just looking round at what there was out there. But nothing seemed to speak about me, nothing reflected me in the walking sticks I was seeing. So I literally decided just to make my own."
In this episode, Lyndsay covers:
• her journey from creating her first prototypes, to being stopped in the street by people wanting to get their own, to launching in 2013 as a one person business
• a tipping point in 2020 which caused a spike in growth and led to Lyndsay taking on staff
• the community Neo Walk has created
• what makes the walking sticks so unique and bespoke
• how she funded the business initially and why she sought external finance
• the process of applying to and securing £60,000 from BEF
• supporting MS (multiple sclerosis) charities in the US and UK
• the impact of winning awards including "Entrepreneur of Excellence" at the National Diversity Awards and one of Yorkshire's most exciting businesses
• Lyndsey's mission to see disability normalised and the importance of representation
What next?
• More about Lyndsay's business Neo Walk: https://www.neo-walk.com/about
• More about the Business Enterprise Fund (BEF): https://www.befund.org/about
FUNDED: Brilliant Entrepreneurs and Founders is a podcast by the Business Enterprise Fund a social enterprise dedicated to breaking the "finance shackles" faced by many small and medium-sized enterprises & social enterprises.
Find BEF online at https://www.befund.org and on LInkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/business-enterprise-fund/
• This podcast is produced and edited by Jamie Veitch https://www.jamieveitch.co.uk/
• The music is "Aerosol of my Love" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Artwork design by Research Retold https://www.researchretold.com
