start your own business course

jjll

has anyone been on this course with the enterprise board.... is it good? worthwhile?

rightoldpickle

depends on the trainer tbh - I did it and the course content was great but the actual trainer was a little dated, I have since done 2 follow up courses with a different trainer and found them to be great.

unklerosco

I did one just over a year ago, found it very good.. Great advice and made some great contacts from it..

mikefm

Similar experience - depends on the trainer and we were lucky to have a good one. Lots of practical advice

jjll

did anyone set up a business and did the job facilitator give you the letter to give to social welfare to keep some of your benefits

HellFireClub

If you ever want to get a business in this country off the ground, my advice to anyone so minded is to stay as far away from your local County Enterprise Board as you possibly can.

abakan

what basis do you have to say such a statement?

Surely the local boards are there to educate potential startups and then you take what you want from the course or their advise

HellFireClub

abakan wrote: »

what basis do you have to say such a statement?

Surely the local boards are there to educate potential startups and then you take what you want from the course or their advise

Firstly, I'm talking from personal experience here. County Enterprise Boards exist for one reason and one reason only and that is to keep politically appointed idiots in handy little jobs for the boys. I went to one a while back and the guy I spoke with told me that they didn't have a cent to lend to any business as seed capital.

That's grand, but if you are not in a position to perform your mandate, then what's the purpose behind keeping the doors open and keeping the CEO of each Enterprise Board on a 100K plus expenses salary???

Lately these organisations have turned their whole direction towards training and giving courses, because surprise surprise, this way they don't need to get into the delicate little matter of having no money to help start up businesses with seed capital requirements.

At the end of the day, there is only so much training, learning and courses you can do when it comes to taking on a business start-up. Eventually you have to jump into the pond and the CEB's are obsessed at this stage with offering courses, but when it comes to providing the actual seed capital loans, etc, they will freely admit that they haven't a cent, unless of course you are someone like Sean Gallagher with political connections, then they might help you get off the ground.

I believe that every day you spend in a classroom, is another day you are away from getting your business off the ground, but the CEB's are absolutely central to one of the biggest nod and wink jobs that has ever gone down in this country in recent times, pretending to be supporting business start-ups but the real agenda is one of absolute self preservation. Make no mistake about it, the attitude within these CEB's is a public sector fuelled attitude of protecting the insiders who exist within their own organisations, if you go near them, you will be hit with petty rules and a steel wall of beaurocracy that will be used to knock down your business idea in terms of the financial support you are seeking, while at the same time, trying to manouvre you onto this course or that course.

They wouldn't even take an application of me, because according to themselves, I wasn't "manufacturing" something, I got support with the idea somewhere else and got on with it.

DashCams.ie

+1.

abakan

ok - thats a better explanation .

Fully with you and take your points.

Is the best way to go setting up a business is to take these types of courses and get the fundamentals and then go to the next step.

be it business angels or crowdsourcing would be a good way to go rather than through the enterprise board. use the enterprise boards for information rather then getting money of them

goldair

@ HellFireClub completely agree with you on this and its great to hear someone articulate something which usually makes me go. "Arrrrrrrraghhhhhh" @ abakan "use the enterprise boards for information rather then getting money of them" this is a sound strategy - they do have a lot of useful info on their sites.

For me the best thing about any business courses is talking with and hearing the experiences of other business owners/start up - what the trainer tells me I can get for free and much better on Youtube

HellFireClub

Just to give you a bit of a background to my own partiulcar "qualification" to talk about this subject, within the last 3 years, I found myself on the dole for half that time, I tried finding a job but I had previously worked for myself and this was something that I wanted to try again. I couldn't find a job, in fact, I couldn't even get a reply about a job I had applied for.

I spent about a year trying to work with state agencies, from FAS to the CEB's, Dept of Enterprise Trade and Innovation, Dept of Social Protection (who had an "enterprise" program, I went to them all, and I got absolute and utter rings ran around me. I had a mountain of paperwork, from each of the above agencies, trying to fob me off to the other agency. Then when I went to the ministers of each of these departments, unkowningly, I had just added another layer of mind boggling beaurocracy to the problem that I had.

Now this wasn't me looking for a six digit figure to get a business off the ground, I needed 1.5K to get off the ground, WHICH I ultimately secured from a family member and have been self employed since.

The lesson I learnt from all of this, and it was a hard lesson to learn for me, was that if you want to start a business in this country at the moment, you need to accept that you are 200% on your own. All those ads on the TV (AIB in particular), that play with your mind because they say that they are supporting new businesses, this is pure lies.

If you watch any of the political programs on the TV at night (FrontLine, Vincent Browne, PrimeTime, etc), when the minister comes out and says, "we are supporting small businesses", you need to be able to look into the television, look that minister in the eye and say to yourself, "that c*nt is lying to me and to everyone who is watching this show tonight"...

All you need to accept if you want to get a business off the ground, is that you are on your own, in terms of funding it or getting seed capital. I can't speak for private investment opportunities that may be out there such as investment angels, etc, because I haven't tried them.

But make no mistake about it, if you think you are going to get any support from any state agency or from any Irish bank for that matter, you are only deluding yourself. I think one of the greatest injustices that is going on at the moment is the constant lying that is going on here with this. It's only wasting people's valuable time and energy trying to work with these agencies who will generate any amount of paperwork for you to bamboozle you with beaurocracy, to the point where you will just give up!

I remember talking to the CEB (County Enterprise Board), at the time, I was looking for 1.5K, with a 1.5K option to borrow if I needed to buy more stock, they said they would match the funds I was looking for if I found 1.5K-3K!!!

I ask ye, if I had 1.5K-3K, do you think I'd be here looking for a loan for 1.5K-3K?!?!?!?!?!? I kid you not, this is what you are up against in this country when it comes to a business start-up at the moment...