Liz Earle, the beauty and wellbeing entrepreneur and founder of the eponymous skin care brand, will offer one-to-one mentoring sessions with UK small business owners as part of BT and Google’s Get Mentored, Get Growing campaign.
Earle will team-up with Dragons' Den star and Caribbean cuisine entrepreneur Levi Roots to encourage small businesses to unlock the benefits of digital skills training to help drive post-pandemic growth and prosperity.
Research from BT shows almost half of UK small firms (49%) said they worried their business wouldn’t survive without external support.
Meanwhile, 64% said they’d be more likely to adopt new technologies if the IT and telecoms industry provided training.
BT and Google are offering small businesses the opportunity to win a one-to-one mentoring session with Earle and Roots, where they can learn from their experiences of building and scaling a brand as well as adapting to a digital-first world.
To enter, UK small businesses (with under 50 employees) can visit 'Sign Up: 1-to-1 Mentoring with BT and Google' to be mentored on one of the following topics: building your brand; building an online community; time management; or team collaboration.
Earle began her career as a health and beauty writer before co-founding the Liz Earle brand, now part of the Walgreens Boots Alliance portfolio.
She then returned to the wellbeing category with her own website, digital and print magazine, top-ranking podcast series and YouTube channel, earning an MBE for services to the beauty industry.
“When my beauty brand was launched more than twenty years ago, our mail order business was based around paper forms and payments by cheque. Today everything moves at a completely different pace,” said Earle.
“You have to act like a publisher on your social media channels and be super responsive to customers who want a real-time answer, not a letter in the post!
“With my later publishing brand, we had to learn a mass of digital skills super-fast and I encourage small businesses to grab all the available resources and training they can to help successfully navigate their way in the online world.”