Sharpen Your Brand Launches 1-2-1 Growth Mentoring For Food And Drink Businesses

One of the most effective growth programmes for food and drinks brands in the UK, Sharpen Your Brand is a mentoring and coaching programme from award-winning PR & marketing agency Sharp Relations. It launched in 2020 and has already supported nearly 100 businesses over the past year.

Joining Sharpen Your Brand’s original Marketing Motivator programme is the new Growth Mentoring service, a 1-2-1 power hour with Sharp Relations Founder and entrepreneur AJ Sharp.

Over the last 20 years, AJ has worked with hundreds of food and drinks brands, including household names like Gaucho Restaurants, Discovery Foods, Macknade and OGGS®, all have seen incredible growth under her watchful eye.

AJ built her own agency into a success story, while raising young children - often alone, when her partner was away on military operations. She juggled multiple house moves (6 in 7 years) with many other day-today business challenges to boot. She understands exactly what a brand does and doesn’t need to do to be successful, as well as what is required to overcome the odds, prioritise what really matters along with the importance of the right mindset and setting the right goals.

The original Sharpen Your Brand Marketing Motivator product is an intense 90-min session with two members of the Sharp Relations team. The rapid-fire session works through all the elements of a business, from identifying objectives, to interrogating its target market and of course, practical solutions on how to reach that target market effectively. There’s a lot of emphasis on growth, as well as practical tips to make the day-to-day easier for business owners with the purpose being to ensure that when time and budget is finite, it’s being used most effectively.

How does a Growth Mentoring session work?

The idea behind the new Growth Mentoring sessions is to allow the client to set the agenda and pace. AJ explains, “You can ask me anything and together we will work through your individual challenges. I will help you to drill down into what it is you want from your business and how you might be able to achieve those goals and dreams.

“I’ve been offering 1-2-1 consultations for years, and we get asked all the time for a free-flow session, where the business owner or brand manager can just bring the biggest issues affecting them and I help them to work it through.

“I offer a lot of mindset work with the business owners I mentor. Diving deep into intrinsic motivations, causes of burn out feelings and overwhelm, imposter syndrome and how to avoid the negative self-belief. We won’t cover all these potential issues in a single session of course! But together we work through the challenges you feel are most pressing.”​

Perfect for local businesses and start-ups

“As Sharp Relations has grown rapidly over the past year or so, we really needed to make sure that we stayed true to our original mission, which has always been to shine a light on the food and drink businesses of Kent. We needed to make sure that we were offering products and services which suit businesses of all sizes and stages, not just the big national brands.” comments AJ Sharp, Managing Director of Sharp Relations. “Behind the scenes we’re developing our Brand Academy, which is an online course you can do in your own time.”

Here’s what some of the business who have experienced Sharpen Your Brand say about it:

“We engaged Sharp Relations to work with us to help us focus our strategy for the next couple of years. We weren’t quite sure how best to move forward.” Explains John Waddy, owner Kentish Soap Company. “In our one-to-one, AJ clearly understood our business needs, helped us prioritise what we should do and provided insightful advice using her experience working with other businesses. She gave us structure to our product ideas and really clear, achievable actions.

“We now feel we have a good handle on what we need to do, have moved from “overwhelmed” to “excited”, and are really looking forward to working with Sharp Relations again in the future.”

"Speaking to AJ Sharp was such a valuable use of an hour, I wish I'd done it earlier.” Explains Georgine Burrows, Sussex Eggspress. “Running a food delivery business means it can be hard to find the time to work on PR and marketing.

“AJ was so helpful, giving me lots of useful tips and pointers, and really got me thinking about where I want the business to go in the future. Her approach was strategic and smart, and I'd have no hesitation in recommending the company to any other food businesses looking to grow.”

All products are available from www.sharpenyourbrand.co.uk and PinK members get 10% discount. Contact hello@sharpenyourbrand.co.uk for a discount code.