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“Don't do too much social stuff at the expense of building a strong business”
– Craig Dearden-Phillips
 Name: Craig Dearden-Phillips
Age: 30-something
Business: Speaking Up
Role: CEO
Where: Started in Cambridgeshire
Craig is founder and CEO of Speaking Up, which empowers people with learning difficulties, mental ill-health or other disabilities to have a voice and control their own lives. He also writes a column for Social Enterprise magazine called The Naked Entrepreneur.
Speaking Up delivers a range of services for disabled people including life-coaching, person-centred planning and professional advocacy. It funds itself through delivering consultancy, training and publications.
In 2002, Speaking Up was a struggling local voluntary organisation with 20 staff and a turnover of just £500,000. Then it started to trade using a social business approach and built up a successful advocacy services business, which provides consultancy and training to primary care trusts, local authorities and independent sector care homes across the UK. Speaking Up now works with 3,000 people a year.
www.speakingup.org
Craig tells us why he feels so strongly about individual liberty and why big is best
click here to read Craig's blog
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