In partnership with
NATWEST
Two yogis, Gabi and Ash, quit their day jobs to help office workers through yoga and meditation.
The pair shared a passion for wellbeing and met at a yoga studio. From there, a partnership was formed.
Ash had already brought OpenMind Wellbeing into existence and Gabi had also set up a yoga community at her workplace.
But together, Ash and Gabi made the leap to quit their former jobs and focus solely on developing the business.
We caught up with OpenMind Wellbeing to congratulate them on taking home the Digital Innovation Award at the Mad World Summit. It seems a perfect opportunity to share the amazing things they’re achieving in the first of many business profiles featuring in the newsletter.
From just going live when they first joined the hub, OpenMind Wellbeing have continued to diversify their offering to develop workplace wellbeing through their online platform CARE.
They Connect organisations with wellbeing services and professionals, Administer the bookings end-to-end and provide workplaces with regular Reporting, all to enable the workplace to Evolve.
Their main activities include, but are not limited to, yoga, mindfulness and meditation. Centred around three core values of community, accessibility and responsibility, OpenMind continue to cultivate communities within businesses, providing detailed feedback and reports to demonstrate the value surrounding wellbeing programmes. This serves to create a sustainable wellbeing programme.
The team at their exhibition at the Mad World Summit. Gabi (left), Mark (centre) and Ash (right). Photo: Natwest
In their time in the Hub, OpenMind Wellbeing has worked with both our national partners and mentors. Hiscox provided them with discounted services and provide ongoing support with wording of insurance policies. Aen Turner, an active member of the mentor community, also supported the business by helping bottom out the focus on commercial models and sales to make it achievable.
Furthermore, intra-hub partnerships have also developed in joining up with LUX Rewards to allow corporate spending to fund wellbeing and help to breakdown accessibility barriers. Recently, the OpenMind Wellbeing team won the Digital Innovation Award at the Mad World Summit. Sure to be the first of many, the judges were particularly impressed by the solution as it is ‘simple, actionable, researched-backed, relatable, achievable and focuses on social interaction.’
Presented by Gabi, the pitch consisted of one slide that simply said CARE to present the platform, drawing attention to the community centred proposition with their well-balanced human centred approach. It’s a fantastic achievement with incredible feedback and support offered to the team. They hope for continued success in the future as focus shifts to sales, customers, brand awareness and raising £125,000. We wish them all the best and will keep an eye out for more of their successes!
If you have any contacts to introduce OpenMind Wellbeing in a workplace that is looking to build a sustainable wellbeing programme please contact them at:
Email: ash@openmindwellbeing.com
LinkedIn: OpenMindWellbeing
Twitter: @OM_OpenMind
About the NatWest Entrepreneur Accelerator
Entrepreneur Accelerator is NatWest's comprehensive programme of free mentoring, insight and bespoke coaching, specifically designed to meet the needs of entrepreneurs who want to grow and scale their businesses. We provide entrepreneurs with full wrap around care, connectivity and know-how that aims to help them make the most of their potential, and deal with any challenge they could face in the challenging initial phases of growth.
In November 2019, the programme was formally endorsed by the Scale Up Institute, a not for profit organisation which aims to make the UK the best place in the world for SMEs to scale up. This is a ringing endorsement that reflects the UK entrepreneurship community’s belief in our programme.
This year, NatWest launched its NextLevel proposition for the top 100 businesses on the core Accelerator. This programme provides them with an intensive level of 1-2-1 coaching, peer to peer learning, access to a broader network, private ecosystem events and an enhanced mentoring network. These businesses have an average turnover of £561,178, an average team size of 11 (with the largest business having 43 employees) and have benefitted from more than 900 introductions.
Supporting scale-ups is at the heart of NatWest's hub-based Accelerator programme, and it launched a digital-led Pre-Accelerator for early stage start-ups and established SMEs wanting to grow during the last quarter of 2018. In addition to supporting entrepreneurs not yet ready for the core Accelerator, the Pre-Accelerator has enabled NatWest to support thousands of entrepreneurs in locations where it does not have hubs – through its multiple modules focused on growth mindset, how to craft the perfect pitch, how to write a business plan, customer discovery and validation.
NatWest has had significant impact across all of its Accelerator programmes in 2019:
- 12,127 entrepreneurs through our core Accelerator programme, Pre-Accelerator and Entrepreneur Taster workshops
- 1,000 jobs created by businesses participating in Natwest's Entrepreneur Accelerator programme (*)
- 43 per cent female entrepreneurs supported across all of our Accelerator programmes
- £123 million total turnover of the businesses supported through our core Accelerator proposition
- £70.2 million investment raised by the businesses participating in the core Accelerator (investments include grants, investment and debt raised)
- 79 blended Net Promoter Score across all Accelerator events
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