Today Growth Platform welcomed the local business community to FACT Liverpool for the LCR Business Support Showcase 2025.
The event celebrated 12 months extension to UK Shared Prosperity Fund investment in Liverpool City Region (LCR) business support programmes, including a marketplace for businesses to connect directly with the partners.
Head of Business Growth at Growth Platform, Janice Mears, opened the event by encouraging businesses to connect with the opportunities available, and that Growth Platform and their partners were here to help the 70,000+ businesses across LCR to start, sustain and grow.
Keynote Delivered by Professor Deborah Leary OBE
Successful innovator and entrepreneur turned export expert and government adviser, Deborah Leary, delivered an inspiring keynote at the event.
Deborah talked enthusiastically about “listening to the universe” explaining how her first encounter with embracing opportunity came when she snuck into a conference in Canada with her partner, listened to law enforcement talks and made a random note about a piece of kit she had never heard of.
Coming back to the UK Deborah began her research with her first major piece of advice to the audience being “It is important to test the market. If no one wants your product or service. There is no market.”
Deborah did just that, sending her idea for ‘Forensic Pathways’ to every police force in the country, despite not yet having funds for a prototype.
To her surprise she got a call from one police force asking to speak to her ‘sales department’ and after putting them on hold to pretend to be the department they were seeking, Deborah was delighted to have them ask if they could purchase 50 units. After an honest conversation asking them if they could wait 18 months while the product was produced, Deborah had already started her journey to market.
A Smart Award helped her get £30k investment to deliver a prototype to Merseyside Police, and a bank loan of £60k helped Deborah take her idea forward, and gave her boldness to sign a lease on an office before making a single sale.
Since that start up and swift scale up journey, Deborah has continued to innovate, partnering with universities to explore other opportunities connected to forensics, data analysis and technology.
Deborah’s key tips included:
- Innovate – “You cannot live by one product alone. You can’t rest on your laurels. You have to innovate”.
- Collaborate – Deborah partnered with universities to tap into grants that would help her to develop tech and collaborations in forensics. She encouraged the crowd to look for opportunities to collaborate “even with your competition. Better to have a slice of the pie than none of the pie” she said.
- Network – “You’ve got to have eyes and ears everywhere” says Deborah, “Remember that the person in front of you may not be the person you need, but someone in their network might be.”
- Mentors – “Never underestimate the value of having a mentor. People are kind when you start up. But when you start to disrupt things people might not like that.” “You’ve got to have a toolkit of people who will support you and people who you can trust”
- Export – As Export Champion on behalf of the UK Government’s Dept for Business and Trade Deborah encouraged the businesses that if you are going to get involved in international trade, get in touch with the right people. Both the department for Business and Trade, and Growth Platform, to get the right advice.
- Embrace Change – “Get comfortable being uncomfortable” says Deborah, someone who has constantly looked for the next opportunity and seen success as a result.
Local Entrepreneur Talks Personal Branding for Growth
Founder of Quirky Digital and Associate Director of Tranmere Rovers Football Club, Liam Quirk, followed Deborah, talking about how he turned his back bedroom start up into a 7 figure, growing business. Liam spoke passionately about using AI to support processes and how personal branding has been central to the growth of their SEO business.
Liam’s tips included:
- Personal branding – Liam showed how he has taken every PR opportunity he can to get online coverage, which in turn has helped with SEO for their brand. He attributes the success of this to the fact he is still not having to invest in paid for marketing for the business. “Our website generates 40 to 50 leads a month” said Liam explaining the knock on effect.
- PR – part of personal branding is looking out for opportunities. Liam advocated searching #journorequest on Twitter/X where media post opportunities you can respond to in order to gain press coverage.
- Go Linkedin Crazy – Liam posts three or four times a week on Linkedin and has for the past five years. He says “About 30% of our business comes from Linkedin”.
- Podcasts – Liam has looked for opportunities to speak on numerous podcasts as part of their SEO and profiling strategy. Liam explained how this not only gives them coverage, but through editing clips of his appearances, he has gained lots of useful content to use on his own platforms.
UK Shared Prosperity Fund Business Support Panel
Host Ngunan Adamu brought together a panel of business support providers including:
Sarah Goulden – representing Gather
Elena Enciso – representing the Export Programme
Michael Banford – representing Edge Hill University Innovation Sprint Programme and Horizons
Janice Mears – Head of Business Growth at Growth Platform discussing the wider business support opportunities.
The key message from the panel, and Janice in summary was that there is support available to support businesses to harness their ambition. Whether it is export, supply chain, productivity, low carbon, social entrepreneurship, start up or growth that you are looking for support with, connect with Growth Platform, their local authority partners and specialist programmes to realise your business goals.