Jo Moir (20 July 2016)

An entrepreneur with a strong love for maths, Jo Moir went ahead after A-levels to pursue a career in the accountancy world. After training and acquiring her certification with the ACCA, she worked for a motor company and over the course of 25 years she established herself as the Head of Finance, in charge of a £70m turnover company. In less than 6 years, under Jo’s innovative mindset and leadership qualities she took the company to greater heights by tripling their turnover.

The experience she obtained from her previous jobs gave her the confidence to pursue her dreams and commence her own businesses. Over the course of 3 years, Jo founded and ran three different enterprises. Style By Jo (est. 2010) was an image consultancy business which lasted 3 years. The following year, Jo established Cool Piggy, another consultancy firm with bright colours that stood out. In her words, Cool Piggy was an experience that allowed her to learn lessons on advertising, people management, etc. Gosh That’s Bright was founded in 2013 and lasted a year.  She currently is the Managing Director of her most recent consultancy firm, FD Confidential. The experience of her previous firms helped her to generate a turnover of £30,000 in the first year of the business.

As with all entrepreneurs, Jo had her fair share of difficulties. A few of the demanding issues were working long hours, getting clients over a period of time, taking up to two years to acquire them, and separating business from personal life. Some other challenges she faced included delegation and staff management. The delegation of tasks, as she explained, does not give any entrepreneur the right not to be responsible directly or indirectly for overseeing the work. Managing people was key for her because it built patience, firmness and understanding of the people she was working with.

Based on a report by Joshua Babatunde