Chronic Comforts & The Prince's Trust Enterprise course.

Todays post is to raise awareness and share my experiences of the princes trust. The Princes trust is an amazing organisation which helps 13-30 year olds who are unemployed or struggling in school. They were founded by HRH The Prince of Wales and have been running since 1976.

This week I was lucky enough to have a place on their Enterprise program. The Enterprise program helps young people (age 18-30) who have a business idea, learn about business, create a business plan and apply for funding. They run a 4 day training course that teaches:

• Skills to run a business
• Marketing and selling
• Pricing, book-keeping and cash flow forecasting
• Business plan topics and structure
• Mentoring.

There is then a 1:1 meeting with the training facilitator to go over anything, and discuss the next steps. You're provided with a business mentor who then helps you develop your business plan and ideas, they're available through email and face to face meetings. Finally you attend a business launch group where you pitch your business to two Prince's trust volunteers and they decide if your business is viable, they then decide whether to loan you funds to start your business. Once you have done all this you become a Princes Trust supported business.

Did I happen to mention that all this training and support is FREE!! Obviously the loan is repayable (6% APR after the first 6 months, £20 a month until then), but everything else is free.

This course was amazing. The trainers for each topics were all volunteers and included those that had set up their own business' those that sold services for very influential business', accountants and venture capitalists.

There is a workbook you work on throughout the course, completing this can give you a level 1 and 2 qualification in Exploring Enterprise.

Now I'm working on the business plan with a view to re-launching the Sending Spoons shop with a new name of Chronic Comforts and some exciting new products in the pipeline!

The Princes trust runs in several cities and towns across the UK, for more info contact 0800 842 842
or visit: princes-trust.org.uk,

If you want any more information, or have any questions feel free to leave a comment.

As always thanks for reading,

Laura :)