Before I launched into events, I ran a full-service digital marketing agency called Sussex Pages. We specialised in high-end website design, social media management, and branding.

Before that, I worked for BT as a new media specialist, which meant I was driving all over from Brighton to Margate, and everywhere in between, clocking up more than 200 miles a day. My job was to train the sales force on how to market and sell BT’s own websites, and before that talk to businesses about the BT Phone book.

Eventually, I left BT to go solo. My first business was a disaster - I lost £16,000 in the first year. It was called Y365 Design, which was a bit of a mouthful.

At Y365, we focused heavily on creating CMS websites in Mambo, Joomla, Drupal and later WordPress, but this was in the days when things like keyword stuffing were rife. We avoided black hat tricks and stuck to white hat optimisation, but even then, it was becoming a minefield.

In the end, we chose to step back and outsource SEO to trusted agencies while continuing to build websites and manage people’s social media and manage content through freelance copywriters. I started with six freelancers (now I work with twelve). I shut it down and came back stronger a year later with Sussex Pages, which did much better.

Before we sold the business, we had over 250 clients, doing everything from web design to social media and marketing.

A little, yes. When we sold Sussex Pages, four clients just refused to leave! I raised my prices by 25%, thinking that would nudge them on. They stayed. To this day, I still work with them, but just a couple of hours a month doing social media and some SEO work. But my focus now is on events, even though marketing is still a passion of mine.

That’s part of our Entrepreneurs Blog. We’ve built four services under the Network Express umbrella: The Tigers Pen for startups, the Sussex Business Show for SMEs, the Directors Hub for directors, and the Entrepreneurs Blog which hosts guest writers. It’s great for SEO, and we all benefit from the shared links and insights.

We get great feedback from our exhibitors, and we have retention rates of around 35–40%. For example, Biamp (a huge audio-visual company), our headline sponsor in 2024, has already signed up for 2025.

Some people come to network, some come for the swag! But they’re brilliant for making real connections. You might only talk to five or six people at a networking event, but at a trade show, you can easily have 50 conversations.

It can be a long game. Most business happens three to six months down the line. Sometimes even a year later.

People remember how you made them feel. They remember the person on a stand who was really kind to them and might remember the great swag bag they took away. Trade Shows are just about relationship building.

Very! Merchandise is a form of subliminal advertising. Personally, I judge companies by the quality of their pens! If I pick up a rubbish pen, I’ll bin it, and to me, it reflects on the business, which has gone with cheap, low-quality merchandise. If it’s a good pen or a sturdy coaster, I’ll keep using it. That’s long-term brand visibility right there.

From an organiser’s point of view, trade shows are data goldmines. When people register, we collect information that feeds into the Directors Hub. It’s a great way to identify who we should be inviting.

It’s really taken off. We started with just two people eight years ago. Now we’ve got nearly 50 directors across seven hubs, and we’re expecting 150 next year. We’re adding new hubs in Chichester, Uckfield, Hastings, Lewes, and Rye, then into Hampshire, Surrey, and possibly Kent. The growth’s been organic. Someone joins from Worthing, then someone else from Eastbourne, and I think why not open a new hub for these towns, and they quickly fill up.

Because it’s not just networking, it’s peer-to-peer support. Our model is affordable and supportive. There aren’t that many peer groups like it. And I personally think that Sussex business owners deserve accessible, impactful support beyond basic networking.

While options like Vistage operate at a different echelon, and local mastermind groups are surprisingly limited in number, we bridge the gap. Our affordable peer-to-peer model creates a vital safe space for honest conversations and invaluable shared experiences which resonate with members across all of Sussex, and we’re now looking at Surrey too.

For me, the Directors Hub is a mental health outreach centre as much as a business network. Directors can’t always talk to their staff or their partners about what’s really going on. But they can offload in the Hub. It’s also great for business growth. Startups learn from scale-ups, and established firms get fresh ideas from younger entrepreneurs. So, why remain in isolation, when you can join the hub family?

I’ve built great partnerships with other event organisers like Josh Mitchell at the Hampshire Business Show, and Steve Page and Paul Bridgeland at the Surrey Business Expo. Rather than seeing them as competition, I invited them out for lunch and proposed a collaborative approach. Now we share ideas, cut venue and insurance costs together, and support each other’s events.

Obviously, someone like Richard Branson comes to mind. He’s had loads of failures, but also plenty of wins. He always said, “Say yes and figure it out later!”

People like Kyriakos Baxevanis (Nostos and Little Jasmine Therapies & Spa), Sam Thomas (Different Hats) and Gavin Willis from Search Seven are doing great things locally. My kids also inspire me no end! They will both be trailblazers in creative & tech. I also like listening to podcasts, particularly The Diary of a CEO by Steven Bartlett.

I’m actually quite reclusive. These days I only tend to go networking on Fridays to events like The Big Fat Greek Club, the Big Business Breakfast and First Friday Networking, but the Directors’ Hub has a new networking event arriving in Brighton in October, so stay tuned.

Otherwise, I’d rather be on the golf course! But it is nice to go to a networking event - you never know who you’ll meet, and it’s just as much social as it is business.

It’s unavoidable. Every business should fully embrace AI, but I personally feel that it’s a little out of sync, there are so many businesses claiming to be experts. I don’t think anyone can claim this when AI is still a learning model that has not even grasped what its core function is, let alone what it can offer every person potentially on the planet.
However, SMEs need to also think about an AI policy in the business. You’ve got to think about things like content liability, and that means extra legal costs too. I use AI to brainstorm and draft content, then add my own thoughts before sending it to a copywriter to humanise it. Copywriters are becoming copy editors, really.

Both. It’s like Judgment Day! If we control it, it’s a huge opportunity. If not… it could be scary. You see fake content all over social media. Recently I saw a lot of images of polar bears being cuddled by people! Clearly, they were AI generated, but when you look at the comments, so many people assumed they were genuine. It is scary that people can be so dumb, and this means AI is a worry.

It needs regulation, but how do you regulate an emerging technology without hampering its ability to grow and learn at speed. It’s a dilemma that will go un-answered for some time I feel. Ask AI Mary, she may know!

LinkedIn. Since Microsoft took over, it’s become more intuitive and user-friendly. It’s professional and interactive, you can give kudos, make recommendations, and there’s less fake nonsense.

TikTok’s just doom-scrolling for me. Instagram’s good for visuals. Facebook is more for personal interaction, but LinkedIn is where the real conversations happen. We’ve closed our X and TikTok accounts as they just didn’t work for us.

Don’t do it! But seriously, don’t try to be everything to everyone. Don’t be a generalist unless you’ve done your homework. When I started my agency, I ignored advice, went into premises and got stung as I didn’t speak to a solicitor about building rates, and lost £16k.

From a marketing point of view, get some biz cards printed up and just get out there and go networking. Meet people and listen to their points of view.

For my own business, the near term is strategically centred on capitalising on our current success and taking advantage of internal synergies. The focus will be on deepening relationships with our existing client base and cross selling our wide range of services successfully. I mean, why cold call and work harder, when you can warm call, and sell faster. The whole of business is about building relationships and keeping everything people centric. If you can do this effectively, you can build growth fast!

For the business, long term, we’ve just had a brand refresh which puts Network Xpress at the forefront of the business and the event services we offer are now part and parcel of the whole events offering. Making it easier for everyone to see what we do.

My focus is to grow the Directors’ Hub two-fold over the next twelve months and keep the other services of the Sussex Business Show and The Tiger’s Pen at the same size as we’ve achieved their targets for the year already, and now it’s about pushing the hub.