A social media marketing consultant has been named one Britain’s top 50 business advisers.

Janet Bebb, who offers business advice to help local early stage entrepreneurs, was picked from hundreds of advisers from around the UK for her work with start-ups, small to medium sized businesses and social enterprises.

Janet, who runs Social Progress Ltd from her office in Honley, said: “It’s a well known fact that 50% of businesses fail in the first year. But 37% are likely to survive beyond the fourth year. High risk businesses are independent restaurants and retail stores.”

She said: “It’s all too easy for an early stage business to get distracted and lose sight of what’s important and what they’re trying to achieve.

“There’s a strong risk that without good strategic advice you can wake up one day with a business that is under performing and has become a chore not a pleasure. And what’s worse, because you arrived there through a series of a hundred small compromises over several months, you didn’t see it coming.

“Good advice can help put simple systems and practices in place to make sure that your business stays on track and does what you wanted it to, and hoped it would.”

Janet has 10 years of experience as a business consultant.

The awards are run by small business network Enterprise Nation, which asked fledgling businesses to nominate an adviser who had helped them to build and grow a sustainable business.

The awards, which set out to highlight the work done behind the scenes by experts helping Britain’s army of small businesses to build and grow, revealed a rich vein of dedicated supporters for the UK’s expanding entrepreneurial culture.

Emma Jones, founder of Enterprise Nation, said: “These business advisers are the unsung heroes behind Britain’s booming small business culture. The awards have uncovered some incredible work that has helped fledgling firms take steps towards sustainability and growth by taking a strategic look at their business.

“Research shows that those firms that take advice do better than those that don’t – and it stands to reason that good advice can help avoid some of the damaging, early mistakes entrepreneurs can make that can often force them to give up.

“Thanks to the Government’s £30m Growth Voucher initiative, there is now an increasing interest in taking strategic advice to overcome some of these behavioural barriers and unlock growth potential.”

The 50 advisers were chosen from hundreds of entries from around the UK, with 10 outstanding experts picked out as the cream of the crop.

Janet’s top tips for growing a business are: Build a good strong network base around you and if you can, develop a mastermind team that supports one another to help grow both you and your business; Ask others you know who’ve started up what they wish they’d asked for with hindsight; Make sure you actually get around to running your business and don’t spend all your time talking about it.