Business guru pens advice tome

A WOBURN business adviser has written a timely book designed to help people losing their jobs in austerity cuts to start their own enterprises.

Kim Hills Spedding helped  more than 4,500 companies start up and develop during a 24-year career as a business adviser and trainer and has now written The Really Practical Guide to Starting Up Your Own Business.

The book takes people step-by-step through things they need to consider and act on for planning, starting up and running their own business.

It details the help that’s available through enterprise agencies, small business organisations, government bodies and books, journals and online resources.

It is also peppered with insights garnered from the real-life experience of guiding thousands of entrepreneurs through this ever-growing maze, helping them first become self-sufficient and then go on to create wealth.

Mr Hills Spedding said: “Setting up in business can be a minefield of unexpected surprises. Apparently straightforward tasks can become frustratingly cumbersome and time-consuming, while the maze of financial and fiscal reporting requirements can bewilder the unwary.”

The author said he found that would be entrepreneurs lacked  a guidebook advising not just on the theory of what to do but also on the practical realities of how to go about doing it. 

Mr Hills Spedding spent 10 years running an enterprise agency in Oxfordshire, and together with his team helped the county achieve a first-year survival rate of more than 90 per cent for new businesses.

During the following 14 years, he has been a self-employed independent business adviser, trainer,  counsellor and mentor, providing advice on a one-to-one basis as well as through training courses in  business planning and other business skills in Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Oxfordshire.

He ran three-day business start up courses and some one to one business counselling sessions for clients of Bedfordshire & Luton Chamber of Commerce at both Luton and Bedford from 2000 until a couple of years ago.

He also ran similar courses for the Berkshire Enterprise Agency at Aylesbury from 1998 until about 2002 and latterly some Business Link Business Start Up courses on behalf of the North Bucks and Milton Keynes Chamber, occasionally at Aylesbury.

In addition to helping people to launch businesses, he has assisted existing businesses to develop and grow, enabling them to achieve similarly  high rates of survival.

> The Really Practical Guide to Starting Up Your Own Business, by Kim Hills Spedding is priced at £12.99.

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