How business mentoring with Boost and Beyond Business Solutions, helped Fraser and Tam of Ark Farm build the foundation their business deserves

A business unlike most others

Picture this. It is six in the morning somewhere in Bedfordshire. A trailer is being loaded with animals, carefully, methodically, with the kind of attention that comes from years of practice and care. A few hours later, that trailer will be parked on a school playing field somewhere, and a group of primary school children will be meeting a lamb, or a rabbit, or a donkey, possibly for the first time in their lives. The learning that happens in that moment, the curiosity, the connection, the sheer delight of it, is what Ark Farm exists to create.

Then the animals are carefully loaded back up, and the team drives home. They do this day after day, rotating the animals to ensure their welfare, through the school year, in all weathers, because they believe it matters.

Fraser and Tam founded Ark Farm in 2009. Over sixteen years they have built a distinctive business – mobile and on-site educational animal encounters for primary schools, colleges, care settings, and specialist educational providers.

On the mobile side, they take the farm to the children, removing the barriers of cost and logistics that prevent so many schools from accessing this kind of experience. On the educational side, Tam leads a programme of structured learning for college students. She writes lesson plans, produces reports, develops curriculum-aligned content, and delivers provision that directly supports learning outcomes. The effort and expertise that sits behind what Ark Farm does is considerable.

By the time Fraser reached out to me in late 2025, the business had a strong reputation, a loyal customer base, and a team of people who cared deeply about the work. It also had real financial pressure, a cash flow pattern that created serious stress through the quieter winter months, too much sitting with Fraser alone, and a set of longer-term questions about sustainability and the future that needed attention.

Finding a business mentor

Fraser found me through the Association of Business Mentors. His first email to me was one of the most honest I have received from a prospective client:

“Do I think I need a mentor? Probably not. Do I need a mentor? Probably yes. It was never about building something to sell on and retire. It was about building a sustainable source of employment and revenue for our children. We still want to achieve that but now, 16 years later, we also need to think about what we need and want from Ark Farm going forwards.”

That paragraph told me everything I needed to know about where Fraser was. He had spent sixteen years giving everything to a business built around a purpose bigger than profit. Now he needed to think about whether it was built to last, and he needed someone outside it to help him do that thinking.

Before he would commit to working together, though, there was one condition.

Wellies on the ground

Fraser needed me to visit the farm. Not a video call, not a document exchange, not a conversation about the business in the abstract. He needed me to come to Bedfordshire, walk the site, meet Tam, meet the team, and understand from the ground up what Ark Farm actually was. I respected that enormously, and I said yes without hesitation.

I spent the best part of a day with Fraser and Tam in January 2026. I saw the trailers, the animals, the setup, the operational reality of what it takes to do what they do every day. I got a sense of the care that runs through everything, from the way the animals are looked after to the way Tam approaches her educational work. And I came away with an understanding for what this business means to the people who run it, and what is at stake if it does not get the support it needs.

The visit helped me to understand my role in this relationship. This was not a business that needed fixing but it was a business that deserved better infrastructure, clearer financial control, and someone in Fraser’s corner asking the right questions at the right moments. It had already proven it could do extraordinary things. It just needed to be built to last.

It began with a strategy session

The framework I always use, where are you now, where do you want to be, how are you going to get there. For Fraser and Tam, the destination was clear. Financial stability, a sustainable income for the family members working in the business, a platform for the educational work to grow, and the beginnings of a succession plan that would allow Ark Farm to continue beyond them. Not a sale, or an exit but a legacy.

The immediate work focused on financial discipline and cash flow visibility, pricing that accurately reflected the cost of delivering different types of visits, and reducing the operational weight that Fraser was shouldering alone. The medium-term plan included a full website refresh to properly represent what Ark Farm offers, better process documentation, and a more deliberate focus on the educational programmes that represent the strongest and most distinctive part of what they do.

From the strategy session, we moved into monthly business mentoring sessions. Around 90 minutes online, every month, following wherever the business needs to go. Some sessions are about progress against the plan. Others deal with what is live and real right now which could be a pricing decision, a staffing question, a difficult conversation that needs thinking through before it happens. And some, increasingly, are about the bigger picture, what kind of business Fraser wants Ark Farm to be, and whether the decisions being made week to week are pointing in that direction.

Where things stand

We are five months in to the mentoring. The financial disciplines are holding. Fraser is making more confident decisions about pricing, and about which work to take on, and the cash position through this year has been meaningfully better than the same period last year. The website will be in development after the busy summer period and the educational programme is growing. Importantly, the team is being invested in.

I am most pleased to see Fraser more settled and carrying less stress. He has started joining the team on farm visits again, something he told me he would not have done last year because he was too overwhelmed to step away from his desk. He turns up to our sessions prepared, direct, and willing to be challenged. He pushes back when he disagrees with me which is great for a healthy discussion.

When I asked him at the close of a recent session how he felt about the mentoring, he said it was giving him what he had been looking for, a sounding board and someone to push back where it was needed.

That is my job. To be his person in his corner, far enough outside the business to see it clearly, close enough to it to have an informed view, and committed enough to still be there in a year’s time when the next challenge arrives.

Ark Farm is a business that enriches the lives of children and young people every single day. It deserves to be around for a long time, and I intend to help make sure it is.

Fraser’s testimonial for Debbie Frith

“When looking for a business mentor, we deliberately avoided choosing somebody who positioned themselves as an expert in our specific industry or purely as a financial consultant. Whilst we knew stronger financial controls and business structure were areas we needed to improve, what we really wanted was somebody who understood the realities of running a small family business day-to-day.

Debbie had very little direct experience of our sector, but that actually became one of the reasons we chose to work with her. What she did have was a wealth of hands-on experience dealing with the same types of pressures, challenges, decision-making, and responsibilities that come with operating a smaller owner-led business.

We wanted somebody who could genuinely relate to the realities we face — balancing growth with cash flow, managing people, carrying responsibility, and often feeling like everything ultimately sits with you. Debbie brought empathy, perspective, challenge, and structure without trying to force a ‘textbook’ approach onto a very unique business.

That balance of understanding the human side of business, whilst still being willing to challenge our thinking and hold us accountable, has been incredibly valuable to us.

As Ark Farm continues to develop, we very much hope Debbie will remain part of that journey and continue to support us through the next stages of our growth and development.”

About Ark Farm