I initially embarked upon a career in property approximately 16 years ago. I utilized a matured savings plan and bought my first property consisting of a small retail building, with upper offices. I refurbished this building converting the upstairs into a flat, and the downstairs into a commercial space which became a successful restaurant.

I realised the potential of the property and development market, and over the last 14 years I have utilized the economic opportunities to grow a substantial, successful property portfolio. I understand the complexities of property management, property development, refurbishments, and the conventional buy to let/ rental market.

Recently, I have found myself supporting and assisting young adults looking to establish a trade or career, and employing my networking skills, to facilitate their journey towards their chosen career path. I have found the role of mentor to be fulfilling, an opportunity for me to share my successful formula, and an opportunity for me to give back to the community within which I live.

My expertise is property and growth and I relish the opportunity to share my winning formula with you.

Testimonials

Barry Bennett is extremely knowledgeable and has many years of experience on the subject of Property and the business of Buy To Let.
He has a very approachable, friendly personality and has much to offer as a business man & mentor on the subject.
We have known Barry for over 10 years and have always found him to give excellent sound advice when making important and sometimes problem solving decisions concerning the Buy To Let/Rental Property Business. 

L. & P. Wisefield (L&P Properties)

I have known Barry Bennett for over 40 years. He is a devoted friend to all , I cherish his friendship. Barry Bennett is a man any person can truly rely on. After enjoying great success in his self made property business. Barry loves nothing more than advising any one he comes into contact with, that they too can be successful investors. In my case I enjoyed considerable profit with buy to let properties after consulting with Barry. And also my own son Paul, has made a career in the property business after speaking with this fine gentleman ! To my mind , I cannot praise my friend Barry Bennett any higher!  He is a property genius. And I love him!  Antony Hizer 

I have acted as the Accountant to Mr Barry Bennett since 2001. He manages and runs successfully a substantial property portfolio and has probably dealt with all the different areas of property investment and development that you could come across. I would place a high value on his judgement of people, practical matters and his own ability, always coming over as confident and has been efficient in dealing with all aspects of his business. I have been most impressed when we have attended meetings together and as a result of his excellent communication skills I am certain he will always be able to work well with other people.

Barry is able to comprehend relevant facts quickly, follow evidence and make decisions quickly he will have no problem imparting his knowledge over to colleagues and other individuals, and his main strength is to consider all matters carefully. His judgement has always appeared to be sound and he will be able to fully meet any commitments that may arise, having a high degree of integrity and honesty. Yours faithfully Stephen Lesser

Within 3 months he had discovered a niche Clothing underwear item “Mens Funky Boxer Shorts”, it sounded crazy. Over the next 3 years the business had made over £1 million pa ebitda in UK and Europe, he then took it to the USA, using his Far East suppliers for funding. The business developed from a cold start into the biggest Mens Underwear and Sleepwear licensing business in the US, carrying all the top known character brands. Not wishing to emigrate, Eddie exited the business on the way up, the business has sales today in the region of $250 million with over 100 staff!

Since that time Eddie has looked at “turnaround and distressed” retail situations and was leading a syndicate to buy Woolworths UK with a highly profitable turnaround exit strategy. The competition in this whole area from leading US Funds proved to be overwhelming and after being outbid several times he turned his hand to steering smaller businesses towards profitable expansion, which has proven to be a highly successful challenge using all the experience he has attained over his years in all aspects of the industry

Eddie has some key points when evaluating a business:

1. He views any business as he would his own, not becoming emotional and only caring for the success of that business and the board.
2. He believes that the key player/s must be totalling concentrated on driving the business and given the maximum support to get there as nothing should distract them or stand in the way of creating sales and profitability.
3. Margin margin margin, whatever it takes, profit is sanity as the clichés say.
4. Finding the incisive product for success and capitalise on it worldwide.
5. Brand potential.

Eddie believes most businesses are the same, the same hopes and opportunities and the same errors and failings and he has the ability to quickly recognize these and concentrate speedily upon addressing them. One of his favourite quotes being “I like to think I’m the man standing next to the Captain with a pair of expert binoculars, viewing what is way up ahead on the ocean, well before we get there”.

Key advice areas

International Trade, working with Hong Kong & China, International business development, sales & marketing, Business negotiation, joint ventures & Partnering, Financing / Capital Raising, IPO’s, productivity and cost control. Also not forgetting the bigger picture! – Work life balance productivity exit plan – selling your business Taxation and legal considerations.

After a highly successful career in UK investment banking – In 1994 relocated to vibrant Hong Kong to become a director of credit Suisse & Winterthur Swiss Insurance Groups supervised significant syndications financing and Insurances – major infrastructure projects such as HK Airport, & Financial services licenses with Government in China. Awarded Fellowship of Hong Kong Institute of Directors 1998 for services to commerce.

In 2000 was part of Snr Management team which Formed E security Group Gladstone Plc floated on AIM at £35 m Chairman for last 10 yrs of Sully Trust a private trust covering Hotels, Resorts, super yacht Marina’s, medical Tourism, commercial real estate shopping malls International Golf Courses, Investment Capital $5Billion.

Hobbies Squadron Leader War Birds Spitfire Squadron, Classic cars – Aston Martins, Scuba diving the great reefs at Sipidan Borneo and keeping fit cycle racing.

Enquire about Mark Reardon

His career started in advertising agencies in the late 90’s, and worked on a host of nationally & globally recognisable brands. BMW, Dell, Paul Smith, Direct Line, Mercedes, Vodafone, Boots…..the list goes on…..

This gave Richard a really good insight into the inner workings of how global brands run their marketing operations.

Richard always had a burning desire to put his marketing skills to the ultimate test by applying them to his own business. Late 2005 saw Richard quit the advertising industry, and satisfy his passion for food by opening his own café business concept with his wife Jill.

Within a year, they had won their first award, and within 3 years had gone from scratch to winning the national award of Best Sandwich Bar in Britain. Authoring a book, (written under Jills maiden name) then followed (click here), and they won the award again 2 years later. The only business to have ever won the award twice.

By 2012, with a couple of very young children in tow, the time to sell the food business was right, and now Richard concentrates his time back in the marketing world helping businesses refine their marketing plans and objectives.

His unique experience of large business marketing strategies, combined with knowing how to operate on a small budget make him an ideal mentor for any business looking to promote their products & services via off and online channels.

Enquire about Richard Willis

Richard was trained in Sales and Marketing in Unilever and J.Lyons and Co. before the desire to “work for himself” took over. Much to the consternation of his peer group colleagues at the time he resigned one Monday morning and took the plunge, only to regret he hadn’t done it years before.

Starting with others they formed the Purchasepoint Group Marketing Services Company which they developed very successfully working with high profile clients including Ford, DHL, Lever Bros, Johnson and Johnson, British Airways and Toyota with offices in UK, Scandinavia and USA.

Richard therefore gained a thorough in depth understanding of sales and marketing from both sides of the fence across a variety of companies and their widely different products.
Eventually Purchasepoint was sold to Lopex plc where Richard, as a main board Director had the experience of taking the company public.

For the past 10 years, Lopex having been sold to Havas in France, Richard has relocated to the East Midlands and has concentrated “putting something back” by Mentoring primarily to start up situations. Initially with the Prince’s Trust, but more recently with other organisations including Cambridge and Lincoln Universities. He also has helped prisoners about to be released from Lincoln prison to start up on their own.

As a consequence of his mentoring activities he has extended his experience into grant and matched funding and crowdfunding a bewildering field for emerging entrepreneurs to understand.

His main attributes are an ability to engage and understand quickly a mentees needs. He has learnt to listen, sometimes challenge but always to offer sound advice, encouragement always with good humour.

And by the way Richard is obsessed with cricket so not available during big matches at Trent Bridge!!

He has since served as Board Director for Doctors.net.uk, the country’s largest online network of doctors and founded Your Insight, a performance improvement consultancy. He is highly experienced in pharma and service companies, with particular expertise in providing support for leadership teams.

Erik Jan believes that work matters and therefore he wants to help making work better. That means to him working better together, being fully engaged and getting better results. His work is to support other leaders in their pursuit of high performance (their own and of their teams). That can also include working with their teams and fixing problems. Here’s what others say about working with him as that probably describes best what he does, how he does it and why.

“I cooperated with Erik Jan many times throughout the last few years (2009-2014) both at national and international HQ level. We worked together on a few leadership programmes covering the whole spectrum of behaviours needed to achieve success in the modern, sophisticated pharma environment. In most of the projects coaching was one of the most important aspects/methods.

I experienced Erik Jan as a very open minded, friendly and inspiring expert and leader, always willing to listen and adapt his approach to the given circumstances. He wants to create the best solution together with his customer, trying to understand the underlying complexity before jumping to any kind of conclusions. His personal style is very inclusive, based on sincere interaction and exchange of ideas. He skilfully brings his vast experience in form of coaching or sometimes mentoring, asking very insightful, helpful questions in an informal and easily acceptable way. Interaction with Erik Jan is a fascinating journey for both the coach and the coachee where authentic learning in both directions takes place.

All this makes the cooperation with Erik Jan a great experience, based on trust and friendship, which helps to develop long term solutions bringing added value both on business and personal level. Last, but definitely not least Erik Jan has developed a very high level of intercultural skills (partly thanks to his life experiences but also thanks to a natural talent), which make him very flexible in terms of working with people of different cultural backgrounds.

I can sincerely recommend Erik Jan as a coach, a mentor and a leader to any national or international organisation striving for improvement and excellence.”

Mirek Lubecki – General Manager

“I have worked with Erik Jan Scholten for the past 8 years. He provided consultancy on a number of people development and team management projects as well as on strategic issues. Over the last 5 years he has been a mentor/executive coach to me in the transition to a new position and on a wide range of issues regarding the management of the business. He is a valuable sounding board, who knows perfectly well when to give advise or when to continue probing for what people know themselves.

Erik Jan has a massive amount of business experience/knowledge, which he voluntarily shares with the people he mentors. He is genuinely interested in all aspects of the work, business and private issues of the people he coaches. Whenever possible he lets people find out for themselves how to solve their problems/issues/challenges through productive questioning. He is International Grandmaster level at active listening. Erik Jan is a creative and engaged partner who is really interested in the progress of your operation/project or your individual development. He has been instrumental in the set up of a local strategy (providing purpose) and of well functioning teams in my business. I can honestly state that his input was very effective and as an operational unit we have really benefited (award winning level!) from his approach.

He is 100% involved in all his projects and regularly sends update articles to his mentees on issues one is dealing with. Refreshing approach! He is always available to discuss whichever problem arises. His understanding of people and how to work with them and improve their functioning is phenomenal. The business I lead has thrived because of his involvement and enthusiasm; It really has become a vibrant and progressive organisation.

From my experience, I can honestly recommend Erik Jan to anyone for all types of mentoring, coaching or business consulting.

Piet A. A. Dury Managing Director, Istanbul, February 1st, 2015

“I’ve had the pleasure of working with Eric Jan on numerous assignments over the past 6 years. Eric Jan is passionate about continuous organizational improvement and team excellence. He has worked effectively with our senior management team and has mentored several of my direct reports who have achieved more than they thought possible. Erik Jan brings energy, passion, and a constant pursuit to add value to individuals both personally and professionally.”

Sebastian Stachowiak, Cubist (UK) LTD

“Erik Jan worked with my team on a consulting project to assist us in better defining our operating model for product launches and find ways to strengthen teamwork at different levels of the organisation. In the course of the project, he also became a great source of advice and coaching for me, about how to get alignment in organisations, how to lead people, and as a thoughtful sounding board for my own ideas and views.

He is a very experienced, well informed and pragmatic leader who can translate insights from his own experience into the situation of others. He works in a consultative and adaptive way to the situation he is working on, using both good questions as well as pragmatic suggestions to help solve problems. He believes strongly in the power of teams in organisations and knows what can make teams successful. He is also a pleasure to work with – everyone enjoys having him involved.”

Adam Pearson – General Manager South East Europe

Over 11 years as majority shareholder, built BigHand into a global leader in developing and delivering dictation, mobile and speech technologies, together with digital dictation hardware and a full suite of consultancy services to the professional services sector.

Exited the business through a successful MBO in 2006 and since then has inspired, invested in and consulted for many young entrepreneurial UK businesses.

He worked with the venture capital industry in the 80’s and became a “company doctor” involved with a variety of companies. In 1988 he was asked to turn round a failing cable television franchise and stayed in the cable television and telephone industry until 1996. He became Chief Executive Officer of Bell Cablemedia (the combined cable interests of Bell Canada and Jones Intercable), which later became part of Cable and Wireless Communications. In 1994 he became Chairman of the Cable Communications Association. He took responsibility for the $1billion NASDAQ flotation of Bell Cablemedia.

Alan is Chairman or non-executive Director of a number of early stage companies. He has floated 5 companies in the last 9 years on the LSE, AIM, OFEX and Nasdaq. He has also sold a number of companies that he chaired. He was a finalist in the Scottish Entrepreneur of the Year Awards 1999. He has been involved in most aspects of company development including mentoring, start-up, development, financing, acquisition, flotation and sale.

Enquire about Alan Bates