Simon Banks

Co-Owner – The Alternative Board Wakefield District

As co-owner of The Alternative Board in Wakefield for the last 4 years, Simon is currently working directly with 16 local SME owners and leaders, supporting them with 1-2-1 business coaching, mentoring, strategic planning, and facilitating their monthly peer advisory boards.

Simon has extensive experience in peer to peer support, coaching and mentoring, and has been involved with TAB for over a decade, joining as a member in 2013. He works at all SME levels, supporting micro-business owners right up to leaders of much larger organisations with teams of 100+ people.

As well as the work he does with Wakefield TAB members, he is MD and co-owner of Sampson Products Ltd in Batley, a timber processing and manufacturing business founded in 2012. Prior to this he was a co-owner of a large timber importer in East Yorkshire, where he began his career in B2B field sales way back in 1988.

Simon runs a very people-focused company that always looks locally first and has built a strong and successful team over the last decade, confidently stepping aside from the day-to-day in 2020 to focus his time and energy supporting business owners in Wakefield and the surrounding area through TAB.