Member Article

Winchester City Council partners with Southern Entrepreneurs to offer business advice

Winchester City Council is working with Southern Entrepreneurs to offer small business owners and sole traders in the Winchester District business advice and assistance.

This business support service called Southern Entrepreneurs is free to join and its mission is to provide accessible support to local businesses and help them learn, network, connect and grow.

Southern Entrepreneurs is provided by Eastleigh Borough Council and offers a wide range of services and resources to help improve local business.

These include discounted and subsidised training programmes, free business events, free networking events, executive club membership, free monthly business magazine subscription and one-to-one support and guidance from in-house experts.

Membership numbers have risen to over 1,000, with over 250 members based in the Winchester District, in only a few years.

Winchester City Council’s Leader, Cllr Robert Humby, said: We are delighted to support the provision of this service in the Winchester area.

“The Southern Entrepreneurs service is one of many business support initiatives introduced by my administration to help business in the Winchester District to thrive and prosper.

“We also offer a package of grants for businesses and employees entering the work place, support for the District’s market towns and signposting to various services, support and advice organisations.

Rob Grover, from the Winchester-based business Yuno Media, said: “Southern Entrepreneurs is where we started as a business.

“We were looking for free networking events, which seemed to be hard to come across. As a start-up company we had a very limited budget for any marketing.

“Their team helped us out a huge amount with their great knowledge and experience in business.

“The guest speakers have all been fantastic and from a start-up point of view, we have learned so much, from marketing to motivation.

“Within two months of networking with Southern Entrepreneurs we moved into our first office space as we had the confidence that we had the start of a brilliant brand.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ellen Forster .