Colin Crooks MBE – Social Entrepreneur, Author & Mentor Driving Purposeful Business Growth

Colin's down-to-earth approach helps owners get to the real problems they face

Colin Crooks MBE

A good listener who creates rapport and asks the right questions to identify the salient issues

colin@intentionality.co.uk

Qualified coach in enterprise and start-up development

Author of “How to make a million jobs – A Charter for Social Enterprise”

Green-Works Received the Queen’s Award for Enterprise (Sustainable Development) 2008

Colin Crooks MBE, is a serial social entrepreneur, lecturer and business coach. He has a proven track record of creating impactful and sustainable social enterprises, which together have employed over 1,000 long-term unemployed individuals and diverted more than 50,000 tonnes of material from landfills. With an MSc in Environmental Conservation from Greenwich University, he has founded five award-winning social enterprises. One of these, Green-Works, received the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Sustainable Development.

In 2012 he pooled the lessons from running these businesses into his first book ‘How to Make a Million Jobs, a charter for social enterprise’. Following that he founded a new social enterprise, Tree Shepherd, which supported hundreds of disadvantaged people to start their own business. In 2019 Colin was awarded an MBE for “services to disadvantaged people and the environment.” He currently supports multiple micro and small businesses as a business mentor, delivers the government’s Help to Grow programme, hosts his own business podcast called Stressing Values and has published his second book ‘Prosper with Purpose‘. This book is aimed at small business owners who want to grow their business more sustainably and with less stress.

I love helping people to get their ideas off the ground or to work through problems that they are struggling with in business. I find that listening really closely to what people say, and just as importantly what they don't say, really helps me understand the challenges they face.

Testimonials

Henry Stewart (Author, Award-Winning Founder, Speaker)

Colin is one of the most deeply principled business people I know. In Green-Works he has built a social enterprise that makes a real difference and a positive contribution to society.

William Hoyle (Not For Profit Trustee UK & International)

The name Colin Crooks is synonymous with the term social entrepreneur. Over the past seven years, I’ve been one of, I suspect, tens of fledgling social enterprise CEO’s that have benefited from Colin’s ideas, knowledge and experience.

Scott Keiller (Sustainability Manager At University For The Creative Arts)

I worked with Colin as a Director and then Chairman of Renew Trust. As CEO Colin was able to expertly balance the often very different objectives of multiple stakeholders to instigate and plan the successful development of what was a unique social enterprise. Colin is a passionate, creative and strategic thinker and a joy to work with.

Tony Golding (Retired Active Writer)

I worked directly with Colin for 8 years as a trustee of Green-Works, where Colin was CEO. Green-Works was a London-based social enterprise that sought to recycle office furniture and, in doing so, to provide employment to the long-term unemployed and socially disadvantaged. Colin was an effective leader who demonstrated his capabilities in the frequent crises that beset Green-Works as a social enterprise operating in an increasingly competitive commercial world.

We held monthly board meetings at which Colin was present. He always went to considerable lengths to ensure that we received comprehensive background material in good time so that, as a consequence, the actual discussion was of a high standard.