There is a lot of business support about once you find out where to look. It’s often free and some is tailored specifically for creative businesses.
Coventry & Warwickshire Reinvestment Trust offer support, training and loans. At time of writing they offer free Jumpstart and Creative Springboard sessions, and it is worth getting in touch with them to see what else they offer – there may well be help not immediately evident from their website.
Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce offers business support at all stages.
Coventry and Warwickshire Growth Hub offers information, advice and support for businesses.
Rugby First and Rugby Borough Council are working together on town centre regeneration.
Eventbrite is a good place to look for business support, information and training sessions locally and online. It’s possible to refine your search to only free courses. It can take a bit of searching, however, to find a course that’s UK based and without restrictive eligibility criteria.
Podcasts can be a good free source of information too. Jewellers Academy has a lot of business advice and tips on selling online, email marketing, promotion through Pinterest, and more, as well as interviews with jewellers. A lot of the information would work as well for other disciplines, but you can also search for your own discipline or for any other topic. I use the Spotify app (but there are others) on my phone to search for podcasts and then download some to listen to offline.
Networking groups, either face to face or online, are a good way to get business tips, information and contacts. Around Rugby there are Socially Shared (for women), Athena (for women), Rugby Independent Business Network, and there may be more. On Facebook you can search for “business networks near me”. Also check out the page on this website for Groups and Societies.
Rugby Artists and Makers 