Be Your Own Boss
Are you a young person in Kent or Medway, aged between 18 and 24?
Do you want to run your own business but aren't sure where to start?
Or would you like to learn new business skills to support your career plans?
Then why not sign up for our Be Your Own Boss youth entrepreneurship programme?
Our team will help you learn the skills you'll need to achieve your goals.
What is Be Your Own Boss?
Be Your Own Boss is our youth entrepreneurship programme. It aims to support young adults (aged 18 to 24) in exploring what it means to run their own business, in a supportive group of like-minded individuals.
Our team, alongside local charities and community interest companies, provide participants with sessions covering the essential aspects of entrepreneurship including:
- Developing a low-cost business idea
- Understanding your customers
- Building your brand & marketing
- Balancing revenue and costs
- Planning a product launch event
Each session is structured around a group business project: developing a sustainable, plant-based product. This will help you understand how each session applies to the real-world and makes Be Your Own Boss feel more comfortable than a classroom environment.
Who are our Partners?
These sessions are delivered with charities and community interest companies located in the hearts of their respective communities, providing a warm and welcoming environment.
For Be Your Own Boss - Margate, we partnered with The Perfect Place to Grow, a café and training kitchen in Margate, designed to help young people in Thanet into full-time employment.
Our next programme will be Be Your Own Boss - Medway, delivered in partnership with The Sunlight Development Trust, a local charity who work closely with the community to improve wellbeing.
What Should I Expect?
Our pilot programme, Be Your Own Boss - Margate, was delivered over six weeks with The Perfect Place to Grow. Six individuals signed up, each participating in weekly sessions covering a range of business skills.
Each Monday morning, our team covered one of these skills and explained how they applied to our group business project, developing a plant-based burger, and our participants' own business ideas.
After lunch, the participants headed into The Perfect Place to Grow's kitchen to experiment with our plant-based burger's recipe, developing a product they'd be proud to serve to their friends and family.
On the final day of the programme, the participants hosted a showcase event at The Perfect Place to Grow, inviting their friends, family, and members of the community to hear their stories and try their product.
How do I get Involved?
If you'd like to be a part of Be Your Own Boss, or would like to find out more information about the programme, then our team would love to hear from you.
The next programme is Be Your Own Boss - Medway. This will be run in collaboration with The Sunlight Development Trust in Gillingham and starts on 27th February 2025. Please contact [email protected], or use the Contact page on this website, by 20th February 2025 for further information or to sign up.
We understand that some potential participants may find this step difficult. Please let us know how you'd prefer to be contacted and if you have any accessibility requirements; our team are happy to help!
