ABConnexions at 'Together We can Take on the World' Conference

Rarely do we get a chance to converse with successful entrepreneurs who have established $1 billion companies. Bilal Masood, our Projects & Engagements Lead met some of them this week at “Together We can Take on the World”, Entrepreneurs’ Forum autumn conference held right here in the North East at the Hilton Newcastle Gateshead.

Over 200 business leaders, innovators and change-makers came together under one room with four keynote speakers and a great panel discussion on mentoring. The event was articulately hosted by Charlie Charlton.

First-up was Steve Hewitt, former CEO/Chairman of Gymshark. Key takeaways from his inspiring talk were:

1. Trust is more important than performance when it comes to building teams.

2. Be consistent. Little things like making your bed after waking up in the morning can make you disciplined.

3. Celebrate win and mourn loses, but only for 24 hours.

4. Hire the “Right” CV, rather than the “Best” CV.

5. Create a feedback culture.

6. No stairwell conversations.

7. Work hard and stay humble.

8. “Community” is the new “family”.

9. Identify key strengths of people.

10. Cultural knowledge is vital.

Next speaker was Jessica Butcher MBE, co-founder of Blippar. She shared her incredible entrepreneurial journey form ‘Unicorn’ to Phoenix. Her experience of traveling to Western Kenya for six months and being a volunteer in community initiatives there, changed her life. She emphasised on the importance of enjoying journey rather than only the destination. She was of the view that being ambitious, comes with risks. However, that makes us strong and resilient. She advised to spend at least 10% of time in networking which greatly helped in her success. Not to mention, she touched audience when she spoke about her motherhood and mentorship roles.

Jessica was followed by Dr David Lee, Founder Sleep Unlimited, David expressed that happy people sleep well, unhappy don’t. In his talk, he explored common sleep problems, and the potentially harmful effects of insufficient and poor quality sleep. He offered key tip that if we work with our circadian rhythms and find our lows and highs, we can fix our sleeping schedule and become more efficient.

Lastly, Charles Rolls, co-founder of Fever-Tree shared his story and values-first leadership. He urged that if you feel about something strongly, go ahead and do it. Charles has also been playing a key role in his charity work for artists who encounter significant barriers to the art world due to health, disability, social circumstance, or isolation.

It was an excellent platform to reconnect with some of our supporters including Brewin Dolphin, UMI, Talentheads, Entrepreneurs’ Forum, Newcastle University Business School, and others. We also made some new friends.

As this conference highlighted the importance of taking on the world together and that we all are a community, we here at ABConnexions echo this sentiment by connecting, promoting and supporting all across the board to help make North East the most inclusive region of the UK by the end of 2025.

The connections we made in this conference will come a long way in a number of our upcoming inclusive initiatives including the ABC Awards 2025, Inclusion By Default Conference 2025, ABCurry Club events and Inclusion By Default roundtables. One of the easiest ways to join us with all these engaging opportunities is to become ABC Member. Let’s not wait any more and reach out now to bilal@abconnexions.org.