From the Diary of Sally Marshall

For experts who serve small businesses: why the owners who need you often don’t know it yet, and what a former House of Commons business manager has built so they can find you.

Inside a job, most of how a business runs is somebody else’s concern. Who handles the finances, who finds the customers, who does what and why: an employee rarely has to ask. The questions arrive on the day that employee becomes a business owner, and they arrive all at once. “For business owners who were previously employed, they often don’t realise what they need or what is causing their problem or challenge,” says Sally Marshall, who has worked with hundreds of small businesses in her training and coaching programmes. “When we’re employed, we take it all for granted and don’t question who does what and why.”

Hers is not a description of a few people. Government estimates put the UK’s private sector at 5.7 million businesses at the start of 2025, and three quarters of them, some 4.3 million, employed nobody aside from their owners. In a business like that, whoever owns it does all of it.

That owner is one half of the problem Sally works on. The other half is the expert who could solve it, and who needs to be the name that comes to mind when the owner finally goes looking. Sally is the founder of Steer Your Business, a print and digital magazine in which experts who serve small and medium-sized businesses write about the problems they solve. Around it she has built a podcast, virtual networking events every two weeks and a community platform, so that the two halves can find each other.

What an Article Does

The case Sally makes to experts starts with repetition. “Marketing your business is something you need to keep doing on different channels to find your audience and to remind them how you can help,” she says. Many businesses offer a variety of services, she points out, and their ideal clients “may not realise some of the solutions you offer.” Regular reminders, in her phrase, keep you on their radar.

“They won’t all need you instantly but when they do, your name needs to be the first person they think of.”

Sally Marshall, Founder, Steer Your Business

An article has a particular job in that effort. In her account it shows knowledge and expertise alongside the problem the writer solves, and it lasts: she calls articles “evergreen content which can be repurposed and promoted twenty-four hours a day to your own network.” It also reaches the owner who hasn’t yet put a name to what is wrong. “By having articles about the problem you solve, business owners often have a lightbulb moment and then book a call to discuss their challenges further,” she says.

One regular contributor, a client of Sally’s, wrote in a recommendation in December 2025 of meeting her through online networking: “I knew then that her magazine Steer Your Business would not only speak my language but also that of the business owners that I wanted to hear me.”

Sally’s own schooling in the numbers came from the public sector.

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A £20m Budget at the House of Commons

From October 2008 to October 2011 Sally was Business Manager in the Department for Information Services at the House of Commons. Her profile sets out the job: performance management and risk assessment, designing and using a Balanced Scorecard, and managing a departmental budget of around £20m. She coordinated the departmental business plan and the annual report, contributed financial information to the corporate business plan of the House, set budgets with the directors, and worked with staff across the department to make sure the data they provided was accurate and on time. She was part of the House mentoring scheme too, mentoring a member of staff from another department.

Asked what managing that budget taught her that a founder without the background would not know, she points to “knowing your numbers and where every penny is going.”

“So many business owners have no idea about their finances or the data that they already have but don’t look at.”

Sally, Founder, Steer Your Business

“Most businesses focus on sales and don’t spend any time on looking at what works, what doesn’t, the cashflow and expenditure,” she says. She calls it “such an important element of a business that many business owners have had no experience of,” and she is plain about where it led: “This is one of the reasons for starting Steer Your Business and supporting businesses in the way that we do.”

From Employed to Business Owner

Sally founded Steer Your Business in January 2018, and her profile lists her work as a business mentor from January 2019. It was in the Steer My Business training and coaching programmes, working with hundreds of SMEs, that she identified what she calls a gap among people who have, as she puts it on her profile, “gone from employed to self-employed to business owner.” They bring excellent technical skills, she writes, but their business skills and knowledge need supplementing, and they need a strong network of people around them. As the companies grow, “the same common problems slow them down and even stop their growth.”

A government survey offers one measure of that gap. In the Longitudinal Small Business Survey for 2022, 21% of businesses with no employees had a formal written business plan, against 39% of small and medium-sized employers.

Sally’s answer has taken several forms. She has written two books, Delegate to Elevate: 7 Steps to Success for Sole Traders and Know Your Numbers! How Is Your Business Performing?, and her profile says they provided the content and structure for the Steer Your Business workshops and coaching programmes. The first takes on the belief of many owners that they have to be a “Jack of all Trades.” The second is a guide to building a scorecard in Excel so that owners “see the red flags before it’s too late.” A scorecard is also what she designed and used at the House of Commons. “Knowing your numbers is not just about the financials,” the book’s description reads. “It includes customers, processes and training as well.”

The training is a structured three-month group programme. One-to-one coaching adds strategy, planning and performance, systems and processes, and an action and accountability plan. The same thinking runs through her recent posts. An e-book, The Money You Are Leaving In Your Business, deals with what she has written are “subtle drains” on a business, among them forgotten software subscriptions and “giving discounts instead of adding value.” Her example is a software tool at £19 a month, signed up for and forgotten three weeks later. Her suggestion is to take 15 minutes this week and audit the outgoings.

The magazine, she writes, is how she helps to fill the gap.

More Than a Magazine

Sally describes Steer Your Business as more than a magazine, and each part has a job. The magazine itself shares knowledge and showcases expertise for business owners as they grow. Her profile lists what readers get from it: knowledge on key aspects of running a business, legal issues and changes to legislation, success stories and case studies, and networking with service providers they can trust. The experts who write for it get what she calls “an authority positioning opportunity and access to their ideal clients.” Her profile puts the magazine’s reach at over 500,000.

The podcast, she says, “is another channel for your ideal client to find you.” It lets listeners hear more about a guest’s business and, in her words, “why you do what you do,” which she considers important in showing potential clients how you can help them. Virtual networking is “a great way to find new connections, collaborations and clients.” The community platform, she says, brings everything together: members share webinars and masterclasses there and promote their books on its bookshelf. A business directory sits alongside, so that members can be found when they are needed.

“By having articles about the problem you solve, business owners often have a lightbulb moment and then book a call to discuss their challenges further.”

Sally, Founder, Steer Your Business

She is also clear about why she is placed to run it. “We continually run Steer My Business training and coaching programmes,” she writes. “Hence, we are intimately in touch with the market, its trends and our reader’s needs.”

Where Sally Is Now

“The ecosystem is up and running,” Sally says. “The podcast is live, networking events happen every two weeks and the community platform is active.” The current issue of the magazine is September/October 2026. For the November/December issue she invited applications for a single Business Ecosystem Partner, a place that carries the front cover, the leading featured article, sponsorship of the podcast episodes and a banner on the website. She also writes a weekly LinkedIn newsletter, From The Beach, on business strategy for small businesses, which has more than 1,700 subscribers.

The people she wants to hear from are the ones the magazine was built around. In a recent post she addressed business owners seeking new suppliers, experts looking to write articles and businesses that want to list their services in the directory, and told all three that the community is there to support them. For an owner who wants to talk through the business itself, her profile offers a free 30-minute call.

Her argument for all of it, the magazine, the podcast and a networking call every fortnight, fits in one sentence of hers: “The more people you talk to, the more chance you have of finding your ideal clients.”

The Sally Marshall Playbook: Being Found When They Need You

Keep marketing on more than one channel. They won’t all need you now. Regular reminders keep you on their radar until they do.
Write about the problem you solve. An article can give an owner the lightbulb moment that leads to a call.
Know where every penny is going. Look at cashflow and expenditure, and at what works and what doesn’t, as well as at sales.
Use the data you already have. Build a scorecard so that you see the red flags before it’s too late.
Stop being a Jack of all Trades. Delegate, and find someone who can support you with the rest.