Connect with like-minded professionals, gain exclusive insights, unlock opportunities to grow business. Be part of a thriving community.

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Progressive Business Network Chelmsford is a place you can come to meet people who can enhance your journey, open doors and help grow your business. It's the intersection of people, progress and potential opportunities. If you’re building a business and want to surround yourself with people doing the same, this is where you need to be.

Whether you’re looking for new clients, collaboration partners, referrals or just a decent conversation with someone who gets it, this is where it starts. Progressive Business Network. It's not just who you know, but who helps you grow.

→  Expert Speaker  →

Chris is the founder of SME Success Group. A business growth, community and coaching company that supports small business owners in the start-up or scale-up phase.

After leaving school at 16 and heading straight into the construction sector, Chris went on to build a £3.5 million revenue business. Learning the ropes the hard way, he now coaches others to do it better. His goal is helping business owners systemise, scale and get financially rewarded for all the blood sweat and tears they’ve put in.

Chris brings real-world experience and straight-talking advice to everything he does. His clients trust him because he’s been where they are, not because he read about it in a book.

When he’s not working with clients or building out his programmes like the Business Growth Club or Business Success Accelerator, you’ll find him spending time with his wife and two daughters, or sneaking in a bit of below average golf.

Chris launched the Progressive Business Network to create something a little different. A place where business owners can build meaningful connections, share real opportunities, and get the kind of support that actually helps move them forward in life and business.

→  Expert Speaker  →

 I'm Charlie Norton. Director at VAMOS Business Transfer Limited.

We're an M&A brokerage that specialises in the bit most brokers quietly struggle with — the £1m to £50m deal. Not the mega-transactions that make the headlines. The ones where a founder has spent 20 years building something real, and now needs to sell it without getting short-changed.

I've spent years in this market. I've sat across the table from sellers who were told their business was worth half of what we eventually achieved. I've watched buyers walk away from poor advice. I've seen deals collapse not because of the business — but because of how they were handled by cowboy business brokers.

That experience shaped everything we do at VAMOS.

It also led me to build TrueValue — our own CRM and business valuation software, designed specifically around the way M&A actually works at this level. Not a generic tool. Something built from the ground up to give M&A practitioners a clearer, more powerful way to make an impact.

If you own a business and you're thinking about what comes next — whether that's a sale, a succession, or just understanding your options — I'm worth talking to. ((Business broker of the year 2026))