Enterprise Nation founder Emma Jones has set an ambitious goal for her latest campaign – Business in Bloom – to help 500,000 UK businesses start and grow in 2011.
Business in Bloom
Emma explains that unemployment is up and so are public sector cuts, but Business in Bloom wants to show people that there can be an entrepreneurial future for them – and that they can be their own boss.
Research suggests that small businesses will contribute to the UK’s growth and dynamism, but that entrepreneurialism needs to be encouraged and supported. Enterprise Nation is asking others from the world of business to come forward and help in its “Business in Bloom” campaign. They are calling on enterprise agencies, business support providers, corporate suppliers and small business owners to join “Business in Bloom” and help 500,000 businesses start and grow in 2011.
If you want to get involved you can pledge your support at www.businessinbloom.co.uk.
Emma isn’t just sitting back and letting others do all the work, already she has launched The Start-Up Kit, as well as Bitsy a B2B marketplace.
The Start-Up Kit
The Start-Up Kit is a book covering all aspects of starting up – from developing a business idea and setting up a company to marketing your new business, getting that first sale and making the most of the latest technology developments.
Split into three parts Emma provides all the essentials you would need to start a new business – how to 1) Prepare, 2) Launch and 3) Grow. Importantly the book shows how you don’t need a big budget or huge resources to be successful and there are also over £400 worth of offers from top brands to help you get started. These range from free adwords on Google, business cards from Moo and 200 free sales contacts from Experian.
The Start-Up Kit even includes 1 month’s free businessworld membership at Regus and a 60 day trial from GoToMeeting, so you can hold business meetings for free either in professional premises or online.
Bitsy
Bitsy, which is billed as “The friendliest B2B marketplace on the web”, is the prefect place to find people to help your business grow and let other businesses find you too.
Bitsy is not only the place to buy and sell your business services, but there is also a small business blog covering sales and marketing, IT efficiency, productivity and motivation.
One Response
It is certainly true that there are many business opportunities that can be developed with limited finance. But I would question if there are potentially 500,000 of them across the country. I would be willing to bet that if 500,000 such “mini-businesses” were to be set up within 2 years probably 400,000 of them will have been declared Bankrupt. A lot of the small scale businesses are already being covered. So any new comer is competing with the existing businesses. They may be lucky and identify a niche that is not being covered or a market that is not being covered particularly well. But in most cases they will have to fight to compete and while some will survive and grow there will be many who fail and could find themselves in a worse mess than they are now. Of course if they do fail those who have dreamed up this campaign and the Politicians will be conspicuous by their absence and of course there will be little or no help available for them from anybody except perhaps the Citizens Advice Bureau.