Lee McQueen, a former winner of TV show The Apprentice, has seen his business go from strength to strength since winning the Local Enterprise Partnership New Business category of the Oxfordshire Business Awards.

His workforce at sales recruitment and training agency Raw Talent Academy, Watlington, has doubled in size to 18 with turnover also up 100 per cent to £550,000.

He said: “That growth is attributable to our client base. We have signed partnerships with recruitment companies and IT firms. It is not just small and medium companies — we also deal with corporate organisations like Byte and Capita. They keep coming to us every six to eight weeks for more staff.”

His business, with clients like Morgan Hunt, TechNET IT, Olympus KeyMed, Bytes Software Services and ADP, specialises in recruiting ‘raw talent' — people looking to start a sales career — and putting them through an 'academy' training programme designed for individual employers.

“We take second-jobbers or people straight out of university, or people who have been working in a different sector. For example, Olympus KeyMed, a medical device company, are looking for people with some sort of sales background, not necessarily in that sector, who have some experience, or they might have done a degree in biomedical science and they want to go into that field.

“We train three to ten people at a time. We put the academy together and manage the whole process. It is like an apprenticeship in that you are earning straight away.

“It might be a 12-week process and when you graduate into a sales role you might get on-the-job coaching and training and development.”

His own career started in recruitment and he ended up heading IT recruitment at Capita as sales and delivery manager in charge of 30 staff.

In 2008, he beat 20,000 candidates to land a role with Lord Sugar by winning The Apprentice.

He said: “I learnt so much from the gruelling 12-week process and to win it was outstanding. To set out your goals and achieve them is incredibly rewarding.

“The Apprentice tests you in every way — stamina, business acumen, team work, confidence. It was a great experience.”

He set up Raw Talent Academy in 2010 and now runs Apprentice-style sessions to recruit staff for other companies, helping candidates realise their potential and prepare for their new roles.

But did he need help himself when he decided to go it alone to run his own business?

“It has been tough. My background included managing a profit-and-loss account for Capita, but managing that is different when it is on your own head.

“The main issue when you set up your own business is cashflow, which trips a lot of people up. The banks do not want to know unless you have a track-record.

“When you make decisions like when to hire, you are on your own. Getting that right is difficult because you are putting your livelihood in their hands.

“You learn as you go along and the more people who come on board, the more support you have. I worked for Lord Sugar and I can pick up the phone to him and get coaching myself when I need to.”

He believes he is still on track to achieve his five-year plan of growing to about 35 employees and £1m operating profit on a turnover of £2.5m.

Last month he recruited Matthew Mollicone as finance director to strengthen the senior management team and help oversee the company's continued growth and development.

He said: "The award helped us to raise our profile and we have managed to do that not just locally but nationally.

“We have run 35 academies — one a month. When I look out of my window in Watlington the sun is shining and the future looks rosy.”