Start Up Britain

Get on the bus and cause no fuss? Oh, I meant to.  The Start Up Britain bus visited Nottingham a few week's ago. I was fully aware of the irony of dragging my award-winning-entrepreneur husband away from his start up to mind the kids.  Still, I wandered blindly onto a bus filled with experts on starting up new businesses and people in the midst of starting.   I was there to support my good friend and the Nottingham stop organiser, Di of Buggy Tug, and I was still very much, at that point, there for the ride.

But everyone was so lovely, and before I knew it I had performed my first random act of kindness and  volunteered as official photographer for the stop (see above).  More on my second act of kindness later.

I was soon chatting away to the people behind Nottingham's start ups, many of whom, like Painted Ghost, create fab products for children.   Her glowing reports on the advice received from the experts on board the bus encouraged me to come forth and discuss a business idea that is, not even as they say 'embryonic', in fact it is probably best described as just a glint in it's mother's eye.  A glint however, that has been there for a very long time.

After a tiny taster (I was driving) of Percy's mighty fine vodka tea (another Nottingham based start up) I managed to pick the brains of 4 PR experts and a tax consultant.  Okay, so I admit, my second random act of kindness was to kidnap two of them in my car under the guise of a lift to the train station.  

There's something to be said for having to explain your ideas to strangers, because the more I talked about it the more my dreams of being a freelance writer seemed achievable.  Hard work to crack, but achievable.

Start Up Britain is a national campaign to encourage more people to start a business and support existing businesses to grow. The bus visits Brighton, Hampshire, Suffolk, Wolverhampton, Shropshire, Sheffield, York throughout September.  If you have a start up, a business idea or need help getting to the next stage do go along if you can.  The team are incredibly friendly, even if, like me, you only decided on the bus that you had a start up in you.

Following my random acts of kindness, I became the inspiration for this article by Michael Hayman, one of the PR experts, and so my schemes are in print.  Michael has mentioned writing content for parenting brands and magazines, but my other specialist subjects are the arts, media, children's media, drama, theatre and education.  Anyone needing content, or random acts of kindness, please contact me.

Any advice, contacts, random acts of kindness etc. all gratefully received too.