Enterprise Nation members air their views on small business growth at the Treasury

In a piece for the Telegraph on Tuesday morning, Liz Truss MP proclaimed "I aim to be the disrupter in chief". Later that day, a group of Enterprise Nation members and partners were in the chief disruptor's office to discuss small business growth.

"I want to challenge those who aim to block change, stop development and restrict success. I want to challenge the caution that strangles risk-takers and go-getters." the chief secretary to the Treasury wrote.

The perfect message for Enterprise Nation to take a delegation of inspiring and successful entrepreneurs who are out there challenging the norm and changing the world.

They were:

• Olly Olsen, The Office Group

• Matthew Reed, Equipsme

• Cat Gazzoli, Piccolo

• Rishi Gupta, Zero Waste Club

• Amy Cheadle, Northern Dough Co

• Chris Cheadle, Northern Dough Co

• Cemal Ezel, Change Please

• Dave White, White Bruce

• Richard Fifield, Realise Capital Partners

• Joy Foster, Tech Pixies

• Chris Forbes, Cheeky Panda

• Jacqui Ma, Good Ordering

• Kerry Flanagan, TShirtify

• Darren Upson, Soldo

• Alice Whiteley, Yawn

• Jennifer Daniels, Podraffi

• Jodie Cook, JC Social Media

• Nick Jaspan, Prolific North

• William Shropshire, Sulla Investments

• Rob O'Donovan, Charlie HR

The issues raised

Social enterprises

Cemal Ezel, who trains homeless people to be coffee baristas and sells coffee in supermarkets and large corporates, called for more support and celebration of businesses with a social or environmental focus.

His business, Change Please, saves the government £18,000 for each homeless person supported.

Ezel urged the encouragement of big companies to open up their supply chain to social enterprises and said the Social Value Act, which calls for the public to factor in economic, social and environmental well-being when awarding contracts, to be extended to products as well as services.

Funding

Rishi Gupta, who sells plastic free and organic groceries and essentials, said funding is his biggest challenge. He was denied funding by his university for being "too high risk".

Baby food entrepreneur Cat Gazzoli said she has had a very positive experience of investors and praised the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) which gives investors big tax breaks for backing small businesses. She has run businesses in the US and said the UK is a very good environment for running a company.

She called for more diversity of investors though. Her business, Piccolo, has 10% female investors and she could on more entrepreneurs to be more diverse when it comes to angels and venture capitalists.

Dave from White Bruce said the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS), providing tax breaks for investors in early stage companies, is "unfilled potential".

Chris Forbes said he has also benefited from SEIS and EIS and reached £1m turnover for his bamboo toilet paper company. Challenges for bank funding exist though, he said, because they insist on £6m turnover before getting favourable interest rates.

William Shropshire raised the idea of government and pension funds co-investing with private funds to invest in fast growth businesses, particularly those exiting accelerator programmes.

Manufacturing

Amy and Chris Cheadle said they face challenges growing their business because they can't find manufacturers willing to take them on.

When approaching factories for their pizza dough brand, they are told they are too small so the company, which is already stocked by Sainsbury's, Ocado and other big retailers, is unable to get new products over the line.

Amy called for incentives for large manufacturers to take on small contracts.

Employees

Matthew Reed from Equipsme, which provides health insurance for small companies, called for benefits such as that to be P11d exempt. Offering employee benefits, he said, allows smaller firms to compete for talent in the modern economy.

Liz Truss has called for more entrepreneurs to raise their heads above the parapet and talk about the positives of making a profit but Rob from Charlie HR said: "I'm not sure if we need more big ego entrepreneurs running around." What we need, he said, is more celebration of the first team members at a small business to encourage more people to consider a career at smaller firms.

"It annoys me when smart people take the same old jobs when they could work for an innovative small business", he added.

Jacqui from Goodordering called for more incentives to encourage women back to work. She also raised the issue of the cost of travel relating how she was shocked when her intern told her it costs £25 to travel by train to central London from Ascot.

Joy from Tech Pixies, who helps women returning from work learn digital skills, called for the government to close the pension gap.

Brexit

Alice from Yawn, who manufactures in India and Portugal and sells in countries including Germany and Ireland, said Brexit has raised costs and was concerned about how she was going to deal with the impact of Britain leaving the European Union.

Digital

Darren Upson from expenses management company Soldo said more businesses need to be encouraged to embrace digitisation of record keeping as it improves produces and reduces burdens.

"The challenge is inertia", he said. "Businesses don't know there is a way to do things better."

Business rates

For Olly Olsen, co-founder of co-working space firm The Office Group, rent and business rates is a massive issue. Human interaction for entrepreneurs is vital, he said, but it "has been upsetting" to see smaller businesses going to areas where rent and business rates are cheaper.

He set out to build a community where very small businesses could connect with the bigger ones and vice versa but high business rates in London, where most The Office Group, premises are located, make that challenging.

"It used to be that small businesses had to be near big businesses but now big businesses want to be near the small ones", Olsen added before suggesting the sharing economy is used to provide more cost effective workspaces.

Next generation of entrepreneurs

Richard Fifield has been working with children at a comprehensive school and said there is "a lack of confidence among kids to take risk decisions".

He suggested the government introduces some kind of "self-esteem" training to encourage the next generation of risk takers.

The North

Nick Jaspan said he has been in Manchester for 30 years and has "never seen it so booming".

He said Manchester is becoming a genuine alternative to London for business and investment but "we want HS3" [high speed rail lines across the north of England].