Tina talks to... Today's Britons

In this episode I get to talk to two funeral directors: husband and wife team, Julie and Richard Haywood. They run their own business, the Julie Wesson Independent Funeral Directors, which they opened in Beeston about 14 years ago. At the start of the pandemic in 2020, they found themselves on the frontline as the first funeral company in Nottingham to deal with a COVID death, and like all other funeral directors have remained there since. Julie has worked in the funeral trade since she was a teenager and she tells us about her progress beginning on a YTS scheme, running the Beeston branch of a larger firm, and what led her and Richard to start their own business. Their story is a great example of how and why people succeed, and we get to learn from their approach (and that of the local bank manager who backed them from the start), just how much a business can achieve when the people who run it really care about and are vested in the people they seek to serve. More than anything, this conversation and their story demonstrates the power of local relationships – and just how much difference can be made, and more impactful the world of business could be, if more people on the ground had more decision-making power.