What They Say:

Mission: Entrepreneurial Truth

Tony’s first major speech on enterprise and entrepreneurship was in 1984. As Chief Executive of Amway UK, he addressed 15,000 independent business owners at the Birmingham NEC.  As he is in the lowest 3% of the population for spatial awareness, his greatest challenge was not the size of the audience but avoiding a fall into the fountain on stage.

Tony is known as The Micro Business Champion and as a Founder and Co-Founder of nationally and government recognised entrepreneur support organisations such as the SFEDI Group, the Institute of Enterprise and Entrepreneurs, and the annual #MicroBizMatters Day. He has started and run his own businesses for three decades. Many of his clients, colleagues and friends are well known and successful entrepreneurs.

Tony firmly believes that leaders in all sizes of organisation can learn from the success and sustainability of ‘real entrepreneurs’ who have started and grown their own business from micro (0-9 employees) to small, medium and large, often global, enterprises.

Conference Keynote and Show

Keynote: Spirit of Enterprise – Do Not Bottle It!

The keynote is for leaders in all sizes and types of organisation. The keynote explains how to avoid career managers strangling the enterprise and instead harness the power of enterprise. Real entrepreneurs build businesses which last generations and they never retire – why is that?

All Tony’s clients have been larger than ‘micro’ size with many being global corporations and he has observed just how easy it is for executives to become separated from the reality of the enterprise. They can become distanced from the front line and miss changes in customer needs, market needs and disruptive technology – until it is too late!   Conversely, business owner led organisations, of all sizes in all sectors, often survive generations consistently adapting,  creating and seizing new opportunities.

Tony explains what should be learned and applied in the future from today’s successful entrepreneurs. He demonstrates the importance of not constraining the spirit of enterprise but rather inspiring it and letting it flow.

One hour Show: Micro is Beautiful: Business as if people cared. 

This updated show, which has toured the UK as the ‘Micro is Magic Show’, is primarily for prospective and existing independent business owners and all those who wish to support them or provide appropriate products and services to them.

The show is the futuristic version of EF Schumacher’s ‘Small is Beautiful – economics as if people mattered’. It explains what it takes for independent business owners to succeed and how they can contribute more to the economy, employment, innovation, communities and growth than any other sector.

Leaders in every size of organisation benefit from the inspiration and learning. The keynote and show provide essential enterprise truths from 20 years of research, 30 years as a business owner and over 2000 interviews with entrepreneurs. The ‘Micro is Beautiful Way’ of running a business is recommended as more successful, fulfilling and sustainable than the ‘American Way’.

Tony tips his fedora to many famous UK entrepreneurs he has worked with and many famous authors too including Dickens, Orwell, EF Schumacher’s ‘Small is Beautiful’, Barbara Ehrenreich’s ‘Smile or Die’, Oliver Burkeman’s ‘The Antidote’ and his own fictional satire ‘Freedom from Bosses Forever’. His story as a campaigner and advocate of an enterprise culture that is appropriate for the many, not the few, is interwoven with futuristic lessons and tips.   

To Watch the Live Broadcasts of #MicroBizMattersDay 2017, 2018 and 2019 GO HERE