UK-based Bermudian-British couple igniting inspiration amongst local business owners
Careers built on service, sacrifice and self-reflection
Jay Allen and Amanda Daniels-Allen did not begin their careers with the goal of becoming business coaches, but upon reflection would agree that their independent journeys into entrepreneurship laid a solid foundation for supporting others.
The husband and wife duo each run their own consulting firm, My TrueNORTH for Jay and Koogar for Amanda.
Jay, who spent nearly two decades in the British military as an Army medic, considers himself a ‘numbers man’ with a knack for systems and processes.
Following his stint within the MoD, he ventured into business ownership and purchased a pre-existing company.
Amanda, the daughter of famed hospitality veteran Michael Daniels, says that being of service to others is imprinted on her DNA—watching her father serve guests in some of Bermuda’s most iconic hotels and restaurants.
She found herself pivoting from the corporate world into web development in the mid-2000s, and says her strength rests in providing shape to the heart and spirit of an enterprise.
The ‘FUSION’ workshop blends their unique approaches to building financially-viable, socially impactful businesses. Ordinarily run as a single-day masterclass in the UK, the pair recently held a version in Bermuda spread over two half-days.
Speaking with Jay and Amanda post-workshop, they shared their insights on Bermuda’s business ecosystem: Where the country excels, what it could be doing better, and where they hope local business-owners find themselves in the future.
Assessing Bermuda’s business ecosystem and encouraging local entrepreneurs (Q&A)
- What are some key areas of growth (or unmet needs) within Bermuda’s business ecosystem that you’ve identified—either pertaining to the businessowners themselves, or the social / economic / cultural structure they operate in?
- Amanda: “This is a great question. Because there’s so much opportunity in Bermuda. As a Bermudian, I see the opportunity. I might not live on island, but I keep a very close and keen eye on my island. There is so much opportunity that people miss it because they’re so close to it. So what I would say is within the businesses themselves, it’s the connection and the collaboration that people don’t really take up on… Part of my role is to help people remember who they are and reclaim that so they can articulate it through their business, through their offers, their products and services. I think sometimes when I look at Bermuda, it seems we’ve forgotten who we are.”
- Culture versus Creativity: In Bermuda, compared to the UK, how do these two variables empower or restrict one another in terms of business development and entrepreneurship?
- Jay: “As somebody that’s come here to be able to offer support from an external viewpoint, I make regular comparisons on where we are in the UK. Although we are a significantly larger island, we are still an island. In the UK you could happily talk about the multicultural society—according to statistics, the UK is now the most multicultural society in Europe with a multitude of different ages, sexes, races, and religions, all working and living on an island together. Yet the reality I’ve witnessed over the last 5, 10, 15 years back in the UK is that there’s a lot of segmentation. As a small island, we are incredibly affluent compared to many other countries around the world… (Bermuda and Britain) could maximise on so much more if we said, ‘how do I contribute to a better Bermuda’, as opposed to, ‘what can Bermuda provide for me?’“
- Amanda: “What I see is there are a number of different Bermudas. There’s the Bermuda of the old days, then there’s the new Bermuda—people who come and live here from outside of Bermuda, then there’s the Bermudians. And when we talk specifically about Bermudians, we talk about community. But sometimes what I hear and what I see is that community is only done when people want it. Community is a collaboration. It’s a collective. Whether you’re a different colour, age, ability, gender, there’s just so many differences, and we need to pull all of that together. I think that we could make a stronger Bermuda if people remember that it’s Bermuda we’re wanting to thrive and we’re all here together. We all want to be moving in the same direction.”
- “We need to speak up. Our ancestors did not work as hard as they worked for us to be beaten by (a growing gap in social and economic inequality). My an ancestors didn’t work as hard as they worked for me to struggle. They had to struggle. My job is to get off the fence. My job is to stand up and speak about the things that make me passionate, make me angry, make me want to see change. And if Bermudians can do the same instead of saying, ‘oh, look at this gap getting bigger’. It’s like, what can we do about it? What can we do about it together? Because it doesn’t have to get bigger. Whether you choose to do something about it or not, not doing something is still a choice. And I think that some people forget that.”
- “What I would love to see is Bermuda just come back together and, you know, be like the old days. Everybody knows everybody. Everybody roots for everybody. It’s not like a ‘them and us’ competition situation. We’re all here together on this tiny little diamond in the middle of the Sargasso. Like, we can do this, but we have to stand up and speak. We have to say what we think, and shrink that gap at the same time.”
- Do you foresee any major changes (globally) coming down the pipeline that current and / or future business owners need to have on their radar? For example: artificial intelligence, war, a new pandemic with related travel restrictions, and economic chaos via tariffs could have been predicted 5-10 years ago.
- Jay: “COVID lockdowns demonstrated to the world just how reliant we are on each other, and yet the changing government—both in the UK and in America—have shown us how quickly that reliance can go from a positive force to a really challenging time, what with tariffs and the like. We’ve got to be able to understand that whilst we’re talking about building a community within Bermuda, that also comes at a cost of being able to say, have we got the resilience? Because as a country, you have an exceptional amount of mental resilience to be able to hold down as many jobs as people do. Bermuda, from my experience, has been an exceptionally hard-working country. People aren’t frightened of being able to get up early, go home late and do a day’s work, as it were.”
- “My concern is the fact that we, not just in Bermuda, but the world, has become so reliant on the superpowers that at a moment’s notice when there’s a change of government or a change of tide and things that were good for us are no longer good for us, that we’ve lost the ability to retain independence. And I think as we see with wars in the Middle East, wars in Europe, political clashes amongst many of the larger factions, that we’ve got to look internally to say, where is our resilience going to come from if the tide turns?“
- Amanda: “For me, I think it’s how we’re going to look after our planet. If we’re not careful, the resources that we have naturally are going to disappear. I’m talking about recycling, I’m talking about not buying things just because, but buying things because we need them… Bermuda’s really good at this because we are brought up in school to keep Bermuda beautiful, make sure that you put your rubbish in the bin, and look after what you have. This ripples out. If we’re not careful, we are going to run out of resources. We are going to run out of the trees that give us air. We’re going to run out of water.—In some places already, water is the is the currency. People need water to survive. I think we need to think about that kind of stuff when we are in business—how can we do it ethically and sustainably? That’s not just with material things. That’s with relationships. That’s with money itself.”
- “We have to look after ourselves because if we don’t, we aren’t going to survive. I know that sounds like the bigger picture—That’s not an ‘us’ thing, that’s a future thing. But actually it’s happening now. You can see it on the news. As business owners, we we have the potential and the opportunity to do something about that because of our unique way of life—being able to go to work and choosing what we can and cannot or do not want to do. We’ve got so much to give as entrepreneurs. We’ve got so much power in our hands to change ideas, and influence people in a good way.”
To get in contact with Jay and Amanda—click here (Amanda) or here (Jay)
