Building success by engaging with enterprise

With the Prime Minister David Cameron announcing that he predicts the next few years to be some of the most dynamic and entrepreneurial in our history and an estimated 40,000 new businesses expected to be set up by 2013, Suffolk Chamber, supported by the Suffolk County Council's Transforming Suffolk Innovation fund, will be as active as ever in providing free support to new businesses in the Suffolk area during 2012 onwards.

The Chamber's mentoring scheme was launched at the end of November with over 30 mentors meeting their mentees for the first time.  “It was great to see so many mentors interested in supporting new and aspiring businesses,” said Ruth Cheesley from Virya Technologies who has experienced the scheme.  “It is a clear sign that Suffolk is the place to be for SMEs.” 

The aims of the scheme are to help start-up businesses to grow by providing much needed advice, support, networking opportunities and mentoring, the mentoring scheme provides new business owners with an opportunity to connect with flexible, experience driven advice from established business owners who have been in a similar position.

Business start-ups participating in the initiative are paired up with an existing Chamber Member who are in a similar business sector.  Although the scheme is unpaid, mentors are given the opportunity to demonstrate a philanthropic attitude to business, which fits in with many companies’ goal of corporate social responsibility within a business strategy; they are also able to contribute to economic development within Suffolk.

So far the relatively new initiative has been extremely popular.

“Mentoring wasn’t a demanding process, but kept me on my toes due to the many questions and ideas that Ross had and wanted to share!” said Christine Lock, the Managing Director of CPW Computing Ltd who worked with Ross Dean from Ross Dean Photography.

“Mentoring isn’t just a one way street –it is very much a ‘win win’ situation as both parties benefit from the new business relationship in many ways, including actually doing business together and the referral of leads being exchanged,” she added.

“As a new business, it's so important to surround yourself with proactive, likeminded people,” said Ross.  “In the early days I found networking events helped me to achieve just that, but what I really needed was to 'check in' with someone every now and then to hold me accountable to my goals, bounce off ideas and to just be there to celebrate my achievements and guide me through my challenges.”