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Revolutionary start-up training company, PopUp Business School aims to start over fifty new businesses in Maidstone. The PopUp Business School will be popping up at Tovil Community Centre in partnership with Golding Homes and West Kent Housing Association to teach aspiring entrepreneurs how to start their own business.

Since 2011, PopUp Business School has been travelling around the United Kingdom teaching aspiring entrepreneurs how to start their own businesses. However, unlike other enterprise support companies their advice is the polar opposite of the status quo. They don’t believe in business plans, financial projections or loans. Instead they start their students off with sales and proving a demand in their businesses first.

At a recent event in Reading The PopUp Business School helped start over 120 businesses, of which 89% are still trading 18 months after finishing the course.

The two-week long free workshop, which starts on 3rd April at the Tovil Community Centre, will teach Kent residents everything they need to know from how to start a business without any money, how to generate sales from social media to making a website without any technical skills.

About PopUp Business School

Frustrated by the traditional approach to starting up, co-founders Alan Donegan and Simon Paine, decided to challenge the system when they set up five years ago. Forget suits, ties and briefcases. PopUp Business School is all about offering BIG opportunities to every member of society, including lone parents, the unemployed, people with disability, ex-offenders and other disadvantaged members of the community.

PopUp Business School is the polar opposite of tried and tested approaches to enterprise support. Rather than preach the importance of business plans, company structures and loan funding, Donegan and Paine turn this model on its head to achieve far greater results. Using a combination of the latest online business models and a rapid approach to sales, PopUp Business School is fast, smart and seriously hard-hitting and their results speak for themselves.

Co-founder, Alan Donegan, says what he most likes about teaching aspiring entrepreneurs is “changing people’s perceptions of what is possible for them, altering the way they look at business and helping them to see a brighter future that they can take charge of.”

Co-founder, Simon Paine said he founded the PopUp Business School because: “Business shouldn’t be an exclusive club for those people with cash or who know how to write a business plan. I want to make it possible for everyone – that’s why we developed our approach.”

The Tovil event is jointly sponsored by housing associations Golding Homes and West Kent.

Caroline McBride, Head of Community Development at Golding Homes said: “We are really excited to be bringing the Pop up Business School to Maidstone, and helping local people get their business ideas off the ground and launched online.  This is the first partnership of this kind for us and it’s great to be at the forefront of this new initiative to help get people into work.”

Keeley Atkinson, Integration Manager in West Kent’s Communities team said: “We’re delighted to be involved again in delivering this exciting programme in Kent. Previous events have successfully launched a number of innovative small businesses, realising the dream of self-employment for residents.”