Jim’s clients benefit from his strong entrepreneurial, leadership, managerial and business development skills gained over a 27-year career in the food & drinks manufacturing industry.

For the last 15 years, he has focused on SME growth & development whilst recognising the importance of people and teams at the centre of successful & sustainable workplace based change.

Jim’s career started as a microbiologist with British Bakeries then quickly moved into operations, being thrown in at the deep end managing a production team on the shop floor. A whole series of promotions culminated in Jim running his first factory in Dundee, before being persuaded into a new sector, Soft Drinks, managing and leading factories with the Coop and Princes Group.

Again, Jim’s success (whilst achieving his MBA from Strathclyde Graduate Business School) attracted the attention of the J M Smucker Company, a large American food group, to establish from scratch then grow a new independent business in Livingston, supplying bake stable fruit fillings to bakery and cereal companies.

Having successfully built and grown this now SME size business, Jim launched an MBO in 2007 which failed, beaten by a large corporate group who offered Jim the opportunity to continue to run the business. However, the attraction of the entrepreneurial world resulted in Jim leaving the food industry and starting his own business improvement consultancy in 2007 which he still runs today.

Trained as a Shirlaws Business Coach of 10 years, Jim has extensive experience in coaching, consulting, mentoring & facilitating and is currently actively involved in delivering the Organisational Development Review programme & the Business Improvement Academy programme (non-manufacturing, behavioural change element) for Scottish Enterprise.

Jim is driven by the belief that if businesses can release their people potential they will grow faster – build people first then build the business. His expertise and experience in applying best in class business & management skills & systems on a day to day basis with Enterprise businesses, their leaders, management teams and emerging talent, enables delegates to achieve their expected objectives quickly and sustainably.

Jim has an MBA from Strathclyde Graduate Business School and a degree in Microbiology from The University of Glasgow.