The Prince's Trust

The year was 1976 and Prince Charles, first in line to the throne, left active service in the Royal Navy and set about defining his legacy. He did this by boldly founding the Prince's Trust....

The registered charity set about to give young people that could be categorised as “disadvantaged” an opportunity to improve their lives not by giving handouts but by providing specific and specialised support to help them deliver on their own ambitions and make a better life for themselves. Each year the Trust works with around 50,000 young people providing a wide range of support opportunities including training, mentoring and in some cases financial support and a quick watch of this video will give you an indication of the successes this important and worthwhile initiative has had.

In 1983 a new aspect to the Prince’s Trust was born called the Enterprise Programme and this sought to support those ambitious enough to come up with a business idea of their own and a wish to make it a reality. Since staring the Enterprise Programme as helped over 80,000 young people start their own business, some very successfully. Supported through an exceptional week long training course where the candidate can begin to understand what is involved in running your own business including the consequences of being self-employed, how to write a business plan, how to budget and cash flow forecast, basic accounting principles, the importance of taxation etc. and what a sales journey looks like it really is an impressive programme. 

So what has this got to do with Elements? Well early in 2016 our managing director Darren Williams will begin work as a business mentor for the Trust in its 40th year. This unpaid volunteer work involves the mentor being allocated a young person with a business idea that has been approved by a selection panel and then them undertaking regular and documented review meetings as well as being a constant source of opinion and advice on the phone and by e-mail. The young person remains entirely responsible for the business operation i.e. it’s trading activity, funding methods, marketing etc. with the mentor providing invaluable experience, knowledge and guidance along the way and focusing on these five specific areas

• Listening: Be a sounding board for their research helping them to build their business with confidence
• Supporting: Encourage them to be everything they can be
• Highlighting: Be there to think of some of the finer details that they might not have considered, such as cash flow and income projections
• Focusing: Help them maintain an overview of their business goals at all times
• Measuring: Support with budgeting, sales conversion rates and website traffic statistics

Darren said of the role…

“I’m really excited about this. Having supported a couple of small fledgling businesses in the past I can’t think of much that would be more fulfilling to me”

...he went on to say…

“I’ve always felt a need to be supportive of the wider community and had that social responsibility thing in the back of my head. The Prince’s Trust gives me and Elements a great opportunity to contribute a small amount to a great cause doing something I am personally very passionate about…running a well-structured and successful business”

LISTEN > SUPPORT > HIGHLIGHT > FOCUS > MEASURE

Mentoring is defined as a personal developmental relationship in which a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps to guide a less experienced or less knowledgeable person. It is a learning and development partnership between someone with vast experience and someone who wants to learn.
 

At Elements we offer a commercial version of the work he will be doing for the Prince’s Trust. If you feel that your line management teams would benefit from having an experienced individual meeting with them periodically to look at ways to improve their business stream for the long term contact us via the e-mail address below and we’ll be happy to talk through how we can help and provide you an idea of the materials we use at a surpisingly low cost