About Lee Lam, Founder and CEO of Your StartUp Partner

Lee Lam founded Your StartUp Partner following a 20-year career in the City of London leading multi-million-pound projects for blue-chip companies.  She also brings 15 years’ experience combining both business consultancy and personal coaching.  Lee has helped hundreds of business owners beat the odds and build a thriving, sustainable business, and is passionate about supporting young entrepreneurs.

Lee Lam was named one of the UK’s top 50 business advisors in 2020 and is a business mentor for The Youth Group and Birmingham Enterprise Community. She has featured in the Metro, Telegraph, Business Daily on BBC and London TV.

“I believe that the status quo should be constantly challenged and validated, because I believe we can always be better.”

My career began and developed in Technology within Financial Services, where after 24 years I reached COO and Chief of Staff level positions.  During this time I have also run a coaching consultancy for 15 years, doing both business consultancy and personal coaching.  I enjoyed the mix of corporate acumen alongside using emotional intelligence and coaching methodologies - it meant that I could make a lot of things happen with people willingly getting involved, because they felt seen and appreciated. A real win-win!

The one thing that never reconciled well within the corporate environment however, was my entrepreneurial mindset. It made me resist conformity, challenge the status quo and constantly look for ways to do things differently. It was exhausting trying to fit in with the expectations of the business to just do the job the way they were asking for it to be done - and it was equally frustrating for them when I just couldn’t!

Eventually, I decided to leave the corporate world and run my own consultancy, to take what I had learned in big businesses and see what could be applied in small and young ones - and the answer is a lot! The practicalities of running a business are not the most exciting, but I had seen how even the biggest companies could be impacted by the basics not being right. I didn’t want start-ups and small businesses to have the same problem - because a minor blip on a balance sheet for a FTSE 100 company is bankruptcy and failure for those still trying to grow. And I realised I was also incredibly protective of small business owners - they were trying to make their dreams become a reality, but usually on an incredibly tight initial budget - there was no room for costly mistakes. Helping them think this through brought me a huge amount of personal fulfilment and was also helping them become stronger and more confident business owners and that for me is the real win-win I was after.