Prince’s Trust (by sarah)
Last Friday I went to a meeting with two mentors from the Prince's Trust to talk to them about my business plans. I have been making websites and setting up blogs for people for a while now and I thought I should move forward with this and turn it into a proper business.
So I spent Thursday last week writing out my business plan which was a good thing to do anyway and made me realise how far ahead with things I actually am. The Prince's Trust was something that Flo initially told me about back before the pregnancy and I had been toying with the idea of starting a craft business but I got cuaght up a) being ill and b) blogging about the craft on Salaric Crafts but the blogging led to writing and that led to websites for people I met through writing and wham - here I am.
I think I have a niche and am excited though in some ways I wish it had all started to kick off last year (which it couldn't due to the flood) or that they had waited just a bit longer to get around to contacting me so that I wasn't in the middle of having to write essays on the formation of the moon and the such like.
I don't know if I can't get the financial help from them but even if I can't I want to have the business tutoring as I feel that will be most helpful.
The Prince's Trust help poeple under 30 set up their business's which is cool and hopefully will help me sort our lives out. Unfortunatly I am asking for just over the amount that you get without having to 'Go to Panel' . I need servers and I need to have them in a data centre so I am asking £2000 which is basically the servers etc.... my hardware costs :'( The panel is apparently something that looks like Dragons Den but they say they are friendlier - well they couldn't be less friendly could they!
They got excited about my 'mind map' that I had drawn in Jean's feltips for added colour in a typically me way - I thought it was a flow diagram and thought mind maps where what Carinia was calling the things she was drawing for her PhD stuff. So now I am wondering if mind maps is a sort of catch all for things I term: Brain storming, flow diagrams and spider diagrams.
I probably should investigate this at some point.
One of the things that I am having to do at the moment is heavily prioritize what I spend my time on and sadly this means that for the last two months I have done no art or craft but then this is my ultra busy term.
I have a list of homework from the Prince's Trust as well as from college but I am afraid playing with Jean still comes highest on my agender. She is being quiet mischevious at the moment as well - unfortunalty she has developed sciencetific method for finding out exactly what she can and can't get away with.
The funniest thing she does though is wait for me to get up from the laptop then she climbs into my seat and says, 'Can I do your work now Mummy?' and she sits just like Alaric poised to start a heavey programming session.
Well here I go again....
Sat 25th Oct 2008 10:14 am 
Subscribe
By David Cantrell, Mon 27th Oct 2008 @ 2:08 pm
Two grand seems like an awful lot for servers and hosting. Yes, you'll need it once things take off, but can you not get started on hired equipment? I'm sure that Alaric knows some good hosting companies you could use temporarily, and only spend the big bucks once you've got a decent number of paying customers.
By Matthew, Mon 27th Oct 2008 @ 7:45 pm
godaddy.com are pretty good - thinking about off-shoring my server to them
http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/hosting/landing.asp?ci=8971
By Sarah, Thu 6th Nov 2008 @ 2:18 am
Al suggested I get servers of my own - mainly as I am in danger of taking his servers to capacity and have had to slow business growth to prevent this from happening.
Though on the plus side friends are now offering me space on their servers so.... maybe I can hold off for a bit on actually getting servers but to get the funding and support it all still needs to go in the business plan as it will come up again - hopefully sooner rather than latter.
Thankyou
Sarah