Charlotte Pearce (15 February 2017)

Charlotte is an entrepreneur who clearly knows how to make effective use of the resources at her disposal in order to achieve her goals. That she managed to make contact with so many notable investors and business owners – most of whom many of us would think are uncontactable – demonstrates this. Her attitude of “Just ask! The worst that can happen is they say no” runs at the heart of how she operates. This has served her well in the networking her company Inkpact does at various events (which contributes roughly 90% of the company’s clients).  Inkpact offers handwritten communications that enable clients to attract, engage and retain customers.

Charlotte’s aim of reaching and changing the lives of 100,000 people, as well as her calling the business a ‘social enterprise’, clearly fit in with the changing trend we have seen over the last few years of companies trying to do more to appear socially responsible. The social awareness endeavours which the company works on, and which largely stem from Charlotte’s involvement in Enactus at university, all appear to offer genuine life-changing benefits to thousands of people in need, both at home in the UK, and overseas in countries such as India. As Charlotte said, “If we can make money at the same time as helping improve people’s lives, that’s brilliant!”.

Charlotte’s talk touched upon the many issues surrounding entrepreneurship. Her philosophy combines the principles that every entrepreneur hopes to aspire to follow: the focus on people skills and learning to place social interaction at the heart of every decision; subscribing to a “Just ask…” attitude; and making the absolute most of resources, not just at times when a business is forced to bootstrap, but at every point in a company’s development. These are all attributes that have taken Inkpact far, and will inevitable take it further. Indeed, the future looks bright for Inkpact as it heads into a year in which it has already smashed its quarterly target.

Based on a report by Connor Shotton-Oza