Bringing your ideas to life
Berkshire
The Team
Director - Lesley Adams
Coordinator - Juliana Monserrate
Outreach Worker East & West Berkshire (coaching) -
Zeljana Schonauer
Outreach Worker East & West Berkshire - Frazz Cox
Outreach Worker East & West Berkshire - Isabel King
Outreach Worker East & West Berkshire - Geof Thornton
Where to find us
Business Link
Crossbow House
40 Liverpool Road
Slough
Berkshire
SL1 4QZ
Call: 0845 600 9 006
Email: juliana.monserrate@businesslinkberkshire.co.uk
Building Business Confidence – The new five step programme
Our Building Business Confidence programme, taken over five steps, builds your confidence in personal and business skills through training, networking opportunities and one to one advice. The workshops are aimed at anyone who is thinking of becoming self employed or setting up a business. The workshops have been designed for people with no previous business knowledge or experience and are very informal and friendly.
Workshops are held throughout the year for a full list of dates please contact our Customer Service Team on Tel 0845 600 9 006 or email Juliana Monserrate Juliana.monserate@businesslinkberkshire.co.uk.
Step 1 – Personal Empowerment
Empower your enterprise! How to set goals, improve communication and confidence. The workshop covers; your personal starting point, where you want to go and how to get there, goal setting, communicating with confidence and finding your inspiration for business.
By the end of this workshop you will know how to find and use tools that will help you bring your ideas to life, and what your next steps are to become ready for business.
Step 2 – Beginners' Market Research workshop
Where do you start on market research? Attend this workshop and find out. The workshop covers; the essential starting questions to ask when exploring a business idea, what evidence to gather, how to test it and how to research the people that matter.
By the end of this workshop you will know how to go about finding facts and figures, and have gained know-how for practical research.
Step 3 – Starting your Business
This workshop will help you decide if running a business is for you – giving you the essential grounding you need. The workshop covers; what you want out of your business, defining your product or service, how to sell it, what makes up a business plan and defining your personal survival budget.
By the end of this workshop you will understand what is involved in starting and running a business, and have completed an individual workshop action plan detailing your next steps.
Step 4 – Tackling Tax
Tax straight-forward? It can be. Try 'Introduction to Tax' a no-nonsense tax workshop by HMRC. The workshop covers; tax, national insurance, VAT, record-keeping, when to pay and what types of things can be claimed as business expenses.
By the end of this workshop you will; understand what is involved in tax and self-employment, and know what next steps to take.
Step 5 – Business Confidence Network
A peer-to-peer network event for those individuals that have successfully completed the programme.
Please note
These workshops have a limited number of places so please book early to avoid disappointment. If you are unable to attend a workshop, please let us know so that we can offer your place to another client who might need it. Please note that no-shows affect our ability to provide this service and persistent no-shows may result in future places being refused.
Please contact our Customer Service Team on Tel 0845 600 9 006 to discuss your situation in confidence.
Other Events and Opportunities
1. Micro Business Events
Micro Business Exhibition – Small Business, Home Business, Self-employment and Community Enterprise.
- Tuesday 3rd November 2009 at Reading
- Tuesday 2nd March 2010 at Slough
If you are thinking of starting up a business from home, working for yourself or a group of people considering a Community Interest Company then this is the event for you. In collaboration with over 15 of our partners we are hosting four events across our region. Organisations such as HMRC, banks, Co Operatives, Local Authorities, specialist private and public companies will be available to provide information to help you start your business.
The event will include three seminars with limited seating. To ensure that you have a place contact our Customer Service Team Tel 0845 600 9 006 or email Juliana Monserrate Juliana.monserrate@businesslinkberkshire.co.uk.
2. Confidence with Problem Solving
Half-day workshop from 09.30 to 13.30.
Life is full of times when we wish we had better ways of handling the situations we face. We may be in business for the first time, facing difficult financial times or have important decisions to make about our futures and those of others.
This workshop will give you new confidence in facing these and other issues. The confidence will come through practically using tools that will help you see issues differently, see the real issues and see the way your personality influences how you tackle problems.
This is a fun, interactive, relevant and practical problem solving course for everyday use. This workshop gives you the chance to bring along a real problem that you face and take some serious steps to solving it (without sharing it).
By the end of the workshop you will know how to find and use tools that will help you bring your ideas to life, and what your next steps are to become ready for business.
Places are limited so book now to avoid disappointment. Call our Customer Service Team Tel 0845 600 9 006 or email Juliana Monserrate juliana.monserrate@businesslinkberkshire.co.uk.
3. Confidence with Colour workshop
Half-day workshop from 09.30 to 13.30.
This workshop promises to be a fun and engaging experience to bring you to the core of your individual self. A motivating journey of self development, which will in addition, unlock your unseen potential and bring positive and creative thoughts to help you in the process of setting up your business. Through this workshop you will be discovering how you can utilise everything about you to lay down the solid foundations of your small enterprise.
Participants will be encouraged to use group discussions and will learn how to build successful relationships. The group will be focusing on effective communication which will prevent energy draining situations in your personal and professional life. You will be able to identify and change unhelpful thinking and behavioural patterns to create affirmative and spirited attitudes.
An exercise of choosing the colours you relate to will bring about unique ideas to develop a successful colour scheme for your business. This will help you to not just design your business logo, website, marketing materials etc, but will have further positive impact in your dealings with your clients and business partners. At the same time, your colour scheme will be reflecting aspects of your personality, business style and your personal affirmations to achieve your goals.
Places are limited so book now to avoid disappointment. Call our Customer Service Team on Tel 0845 600 9 006 or email Juliana Monserrate juliana.monserrate@businesslinkberkshire.co.uk.
4. Community Enterprise Engagement Projects
Are you the leader of a Community Project, Faith Group or youth group? Whatever your community focus our 'Outreach Team' would like to talk to you to find out about your activities. The outreach team engage in community enterprise projects our proximity to the community affords us the opportunity to provide highly localised community engagement. We are particularly interested to learn and engage with your project. Please tell us about your activity and indicate which of our services we can use to help support you.
We might not be able to immediately provide support but within our network we come across many people, and community projects, and it is our understanding and knowledge that can sometimes help with organising, advising and sourcing finance.
Please phone our Customer Service Team on Tel 0845 600 9 006 for an informal appointment to discuss your project or email Juliana Monserrate Juliana.monserrate@businesslinkberkshire.co.uk.
5. Women's Community Projects
Are you a leader of a Women's group, Network, WI, Pre School Group or other community project aimed at supporting women? Interested in enterprise in the community? Then we would like to hear from you, in addition to the above services we can provide up to three hours a month on projects that will help you and your members achieve their enterprise objectives.
As with all services these are limited to available staff, so please contact us as soon as possible to allow us to source the help that's needed. There will be times when because of duplication of services or lack of available staff we will not be able to directly help, but we will always investigate alternatives for you. So to avoid disappointment please contact our Customer Service Team early on Tel 0845 600 9 006 or email Juliana Monserrate juliana.monserrate@businesslinkberkshire.co.uk.
Find additional support in your local area
- Introduction
- Berkshire
- East Kent
- East Sussex
- Milton Keynes and Oxfordshire
- North Hampshire & Surrey
- North Kent
- Portsmouth & South East Hampshire
- South Kent
- South West Hampshire and the Isle of Wight
- West Sussex
Business Link Helpline
0845 600 9 006
