°ËØÔ±¬ÁÏ

The program kicks off with a free information session in local areas where you’ll learn how the Princes Trust will support you and if you're still keen, they’ll invite you onto their four-day interactive workshop.

Over four days you'll get to meet like-minded people. You'll also have the chance to tap into a business adviser, who will cover everything from business planning and marketing to sales, budgeting and tax.

After the workshop it's time to start building your business and you’ll be provided with a mentor to support you as you plan and test your ideas. You'll even have the opportunity to apply for funding.

Before launch, you'll present your business plan to the Business Launch Group. Their job is to ensure that your idea is viable and sustainable. Don’t worry, there are no dragons here. It’s designed to be a positive experience – and to ensure that there are no weak points in your plan. There’s also additional start-up finance support if you need it.

I’m a Chemist by training, so when I set up my business, Roisin’s Water Kefir, I needed expert business support to help me to plan properly and to develop a strategy that would allow my business to grow. Accessing the free Business Hothouse workshop sessions put me firmly into business owner mode, I booked onto the 1-2-1 support sessions and business planning sessions where I was helped to develop a 3-year cash forecast plan, which was great! The Hothouse experts had so many suggestions and I felt that they genuinely wanted to understand my business and that they wanted to help me to think through every detail of running a business.

Crucially, they also helped me to successfully apply for a start-up cash award from the Invest4 Grant Fund which meant that I could afford to employ a sales & marketing consultant to promote my product and increase my customer base. This consultant has also helped me to develop my branding and messaging, a professional touch that has helped me to compete with larger beverage manufacturers.

I produce and sell Water Kefir and encourage people to live a healthier lifestyle through what they consume. Water Kefir which could be considered to be the original fizzy drink as it naturally carbonates during the fermentation process. It’s the vegan cousin of milk kefir and is a caffeine-free cousin of kombucha. I offer free delivery to shops, restaurants, pubs and cafes along the south coast and to the East and West of Brighton & Hove. I sell online and at festivals and events and offer a paid-for delivery service to areas where I’m able to deliver for free.

My customers are people who want a healthy, non- alcoholic, alternative drink and my future business plans include setting up a community of like-minded businesses whose mission it is to offer the best Sussex-produced food and drink. I aim to bring these businesses physically together in one setting, so that we become a destination for people who want to buy healthy products and to know their provenance.

Business is doing well, I’ve recently moved into my new brewery, which I’ve named ‘The Potion Shed’, located at the heart of the South Downs National Park. This new premises has allowed me to order my first larger fermenting vessel, which will quadruple the production of my Water Kefir and allow me launch a new flavour this summer.

You can find me on on Instagram @roisinslivelarder and you can find out all about my product at .

I’m an engineer by training with a specialism in sustainability and industrial manufacturing. I ran a specialist consultancy for ten years before launching My Room Outside, but because that was such a massive change in direction for me, I decided that it would be a good idea to seek out some business support.

My Room Outside designs, manufactures and installs affordable outdoor rooms to specifications that don’t need planning permission. We only use responsibly, locally sourced and recyclable materials and our buildings are created for use throughout the full twelve months of the year. Our main customer base is professional people who want a workspace designed around their needs that isn’t located within their home.

Before I could even consider launching My Room Outside, I needed to find business grant funding. I joined a boot camp run by The Business Hothouse, which across three sessions helped me to define my product and my customer, write a business plan with a financial forecast and apply for cash to the Invest4 Grant Fund.

My grant funding application was approved and I was awarded cash for my marketing expenses which meant that I could afford to have a logo, a website and a sales brochure designed and produced.

Business is doing well, I’ve now moved into a light industrial unit and set up a workshop within it. My website has launched and is attracting more customers, who see what we produce through Social Media campaigns and then click-thru onto our website to find out more about us.

I’d like to stress that without guidance from The Business Hothouse, I would have struggled to launch my business. Before contacting them I knew the “what’ and the “why’ but I was stuck in terms of the “how�. Their expert advice helped me to define exactly how I could move my idea to a launch-ready entity and for that I will be forever grateful.

You can find out more about my business at  and you can connect with me on Facebook and Instagram @myroomoutside.

Joining The Business Hothouse’s How to Start a Start-up boot camp at the beginning of the first lockdown in 2020 was a lifeline for me. The course came at a critical time - my business had been doing well, but lockdown meant that hat-wearing events like weddings and horseracing were cancelled. I knew that I needed to re-evaluate my business and consider developing new product offerings, but I needed an experienced business expert to provide me with the knowledge and support to guide me, and I'm delighted to say that I got all of this and more from Paul Dallibar, who runs the boot camp.

After completing the boot camp, alongside my bespoke hats and headpieces, I was inspired develop a range of handcrafted hair accessories that provide my customers with a touch of every day luxury and because they can be used every day, sales have been buoyant throughout the lockdowns. It’s been thrilling to see celebrities including, Charlotte Hawkins, the Radio and T.V. presenter and Verity Hardcastle, T.V.’s ‘Pooch Perfect’ judge wearing hair accessories from my new range.

I love collaborating with local creative community and The Business Hothouse boot camp inspired me to use paintings and illustrations created by local artists and illustrators to develop original fabrics which form the basis for one of my product lines - a range of versatile multi-way bands. These bands can be worn in different ways and for a range of purposes including as snoods, running buffs, headbands and face coverings. It’s been a great way of raising awareness about the quality of our artists’ work and has expanded my customer base, because both the multi-way bands and hair accessories are ideal gifts.

I am delighted to share that business is going so well, I am opening a millinery studio in Arundel on the first floor of Retroseque, located in The Old Print Works shopping arcade on Tarrant Street. I am so excited and my head is brimming with new ideas such as hat hire and the introduction of a range of custom ties and dog bandanas crafted to complement our headwear designs.

To find out more and follow the development of my business, pop over to my website: or email me on hello@isabellajosie.com.

Prior to setting up my company, I had no experience of working for myself, so reaching out to The Business Hothouse for start-up support was a no-brainer for me. The free workshop programmes they run are really engaging and helpful. My main objective for attending the programme was to get the support that I needed to make my application to the Invest4 Grant Fund.

My company, Juice Up, manufactures and distributes eco-friendly healthy drinks. We sell fresh, raw, cold-pressed juices in glass bottles that we deliver in cooler bags complete with an ice-pack. We subsequently collect and re-use these items because our mission is to create a great product whilst leaving minimal waste. Our customers range from local residents to coffee shops, local companies to schools and we also sell our products at local events and markets and via our website, where you can place and pay for your order.

Before and during the lockdowns, business had been growing so fast that I realized that the only way for me to fulfill all of the orders coming in was to find a way to buy a Commercial Cold Press Juicer. The investment was a heavy one and this is what led me to apply for a cash award from the Invest4 Grant Fund.

With the help of The Business Hothouse’s Invest4 Grant Application workshops and 1-2-1 mentoring sessions, I completed the application form and the other required documentation and submitted these to the Invest4 Grant Fund Manager. I was delighted when he responded to say that I had been successful in gaining the funding, which would cover 40% of the cost of my new commercial-grade machine, making it a far more affordable prospect.

The new machine has enabled me to produce better quality juice in higher volumes and because it extracts more juice from the fruit and vegetables than my previous machine did, it has reduced my costs. So I now have a better quality product at a lower cost-per-bottle and less waste; and because I can fulfil so many more orders now, I will soon be at the point where I need to employ someone to help me on a day-to-day basis as well as at the events and festivals that Juice Up will take stalls at this year.

You can find out more about Juice Up via our website is and you can connect with us on our Instagram account @juiceup1974.