As Business Mentor volunteer you will provide valuable support by sharing your skills, professional experience and time with our participants who are interested in self-employment.

This support will be in two parts. The first is focused early in the self-employment journey, helping people to think about their business and what would be involved, drawing on your experience of being self-employed or running your own business.

This initial session (conducted online) will help people to:

• Understand how self-employment differs to being employed by someone.
• Talk through their business/self-employment idea to help establish if self-employment is an appropriate route for the individual and that they have a good understanding of the local business landscape.
• Set realistic and practical next steps.
• Identify if it is appropriate to refer the individual to Shaw Trust’s specialist partner to further develop their idea and support them to go self-employed.