How Lloyds boss is helping single mother entrepreneur rise to the top

The banker, the baker and cupcake maker…they have a recipe for success
The right ingredients: Jennifer Tippin and Joanna Clarke (Picture: Alex Lentati)

Ten years ago Jennifer Tippin was heralded as “one of the 35 most powerful women in Britain under the age of 35”, alongside fashion designer Stella McCartney and shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper.

Now 40, the Oxford graduate admits with a grimace that she has “not quite fulfilled the potential of THAT list”, but as managing director of retail business banking at Lloyds Banking Group and one of three executives personally mentored by the CEO António Horta Osório, she is nevertheless one of the bank’s rising stars.

Mrs Tippin’s portfolio includes 100,000 start-ups and 750 social entrepreneurs. Among them are the 10 social entrepreneurs funded by Lloyds and the Cabinet Office as part of the Evening Standard’s Frontline London campaign to tackle gangs.

“It’s a fantastic initiative,” she said, meeting at Spitalfields Market to talk about why she was so keen to be part of the campaign. “You can blame my childhood for the way I am passionate about start-ups. My parents owned a corner shop selling groceries and they went on to buy a petrol station and a couple of garages before buying a private residential home for the elderly.

“I remember the smell of the garage from helping out behind the counter, and working weekends to help cook breakfast for residents at the care home, but most of all I remember how hard my parents worked to build their businesses from scratch.”

Mrs Tippin has been mentoring single mother Joanna Clarke. She is one of 10 young social entrepreneurs with challenging pasts chosen by Frontline London to receive an £8,000 start-up grant, a course by the School for Social Entrepreneurs and a Lloyds mentor.

Ms Clarke, 31, has founded not one business but two. Her cupcake firm, Jojo’s cakes, is already up and running, while her second enterprise, Rising Stars Raising Stars, to mentor young people to reach their potential, is in development. She also works as a part-time youth worker “to help pay the rent” and raises her 11-year-old son Kiano.

Her first mentoring session with Mrs Tippin — who has three children under the age of eight — was all about time management. “Jen’s advice has made a big difference,” she laughed, arriving for her latest session with a cakestand full of cupcakes.

“I was getting frazzled trying to juggle everything, but Jen got me to plan a week ahead and to agree to two days a week as a youth worker to free up the rest of the time for my business, so now I am more focused and productive.”

To meet Ms Clarke today — vital, energetic, bursting with enthusiasm — you would never guess that a challenging past involving depression, alcohol and falling in with a bad crowd lies a few years behind her.

Her next challenge, said Mrs Tippin, is to take her business plan to the next level, including getting the pricing right.

She is hugely admiring of the strides Ms Clarke has already made, especially her use of a Facebook page that has attracted 11,489 likes and more than £1,000 worth of business.

“I am self-taught and have always baked, but I never thought I could do it for a living until I baked for a friend’s birthday and set up a Facebook page and got 1,000 likes on the first weekend,” Ms Clarke said.

“After that I thought, wow, people really like cakes, I can do this! I went to a craft fair and sold out my entire stock in the first hour. My biggest problem at the moment is transporting and delivering the cakes, which sell for up to £36, via Royal Mail.

“I’ve had orders from customers as far away as Bristol, Birmingham and Ireland and I pride myself on giving people great value for money.”

Ms Clarke has secured a food and hygiene certificate allowing her to trade from her kitchen in Bromley.

She has also taken on her first Rising Stars Raising Stars recruit, a 15-year-old work experience trainee who she is teaching to bake.

Ms Clarke said at first she had doubts the mentor relationship would work, explaining: “I was worried Jen would be very corporate and talk all the time in banking language, but because she’s got children as well, she understands my challenges and I have found her normal and easy to talk to.”

Mrs Tippin, from Sevenoaks in Kent, has visited Ms Clarke in Bromley. She said: “For Joanna, being one of the 10 social entrepreneurs backed by the Evening Standard is a life-changing moment, but she will need all the help she can get. I hope the nuts and bolts support I can offer Joanna will help her realise her dream.”

What has impressed her most about Ms Clarke is her “catalytic passion”. “She just blows me away with her energy,” she said. “And I like her business model which is essentially to build the cupcake business first and use it to generate cashflow and fund her mentoring business.”

With thousands of start-up models crossing her desk, how does she rate Ms Clarke’s chances of success? “Joanna is hard-working and has heaps of potential. Her challenge is to have the confidence and the push to take her business to its next phase, but I believe in her and I think she will get there because she has the skill and the expertise and is totally determined.”

Ms Clarke beamed. “I went off the rails at college and totally lost my way, but when I had my son, something clicked and I realised I needed to change my ways. I am so happy with how my life has turned out. This is my big chance. I am going to make it work. One cupcake at a time!”

To order cakes from Joanna Clarke email admin@jojos-cakes.com or go to facebook.com/jojoc.cakes

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