Tony Parry, a director of the South West Business Council (southwestbusinesscouncil.co.uk) was on hand to add his years of expertise to the conversation, as a mentor in the Plymouth University Business School.
Cassie Roberts, chief executive of Open Doors International Language School (odils.com), explained that good language skills were absolutely key to getting businesses off the ground, and offered translation services to help, as well as English classes to everyone who needed them.
Dave Carter (david.carter@plymouth.ac.uk), a researcher from Plymouth University was interested in finding people who were currently in receipt of some benefit but who wanted to run their own business, to help understand some of the difficulties to overcome.
Graham Leigh is a key resource provider, working for Outset Plymouth, (outsetplymouth.co.uk) who provide fully funded business support, workshops and one to one consultancy to support start-ups in marketing, finance, HR, planning and growth.
Outset has funding in place itself to allow it to offer all this free of charge up until the end of 2019.
Jessica Dann represented Plymouth City Council. She explained that Plymouth was keen to be seen as a place of inclusivity, explaining that many refugees wanted to positively contribute to society and build towards a better tomorrow. Many come to the city with key skills, but need help to transition so these skills can benefit others.
There are other organisations in Plymouth that are invaluable for small businesses, Real Ideas Organisation, (realideas.org) has been very successful in bringing funded programmes to the South West to help set up, and grow new businesses, and Nudge Community (www.nudge.community) offer pop up facilities to trial a food or retail business to see if it is viable, even just for a day. And the POP+ team (info@plymouthoctopus.org) offer great business planning support and funding advice for those in the voluntary and community sector. There’s more than one way to run a business these days.
Jabo can be contacted on 07376790747 and can signpost you to any of the organisations mentioned above.
Next meeting dates at Toot Restaurant are on Wednesday October 31 and November 28 and run from 9am to 11.30am.
