SOUTH WEST Hamp-shire Enterprise Agencies are leading the field in counselling, training and mentoring successful businesses of tomorrow - mostly for free!

Full-time, part-time and volunteer counsellors are all committed to helping the new business get off to a good start.

Clients visit the agency, sometimes with just an embryo of an idea and often somewhat apprehensive of taking the final step into running their own business. Others want to be self employed but, at this early stage, have no clear business objective. It is the role of the agency counsellors to assist them in the clarification of their aims and help them realise an ambition.

Delegates attending the latest business management programme, funded by Hampshire Training and Enterprise Council, are typical of the well motivated, innovative and committed entrepreneurs who embark in their entrepreneurial journey. A mobile kitchen providing hot soup, cleaning contractors specialising in stair wells, a recruitment consultant and a successful musical group forming their own record label were among the enterprising ventures represented.

Chief executive Neil Hendricks, said: "Thanks to the sponsorship of local businesses and banks and with Business Link funding some of our one day courses, plus the dedication and wide business experience if our counsellors, we are able to do our bit towards the government's aim to encourage an entrepreneurial culture.''

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