Have you ever been interested in starting your own business? Have a project or business idea but need a place and the resources to get it running?
Senior Business Development Officer and ASPIRE manager, Rebecca Smith, sat down with us to talk about ASPIRE, Kent’s entrepreneurship hub and they support our students.
What are some of the core services ASPIRE offers to students?
ASPIRE, which is a place that students and graduates can come and get help and support if they want to start their own business. We run a huge variety of programmes, workshops, and opportunities — including funding — that really help students to take advantage of their ambition to start a business, whether they’ve got an idea or not. It takes them all the way through that process, with them actually launching a business at the end.
ASPIRE has supported literally hundreds of students over the 10 years that we’ve been established. Today, they’re working in all sorts of different fields: technology, food, fashion, fragrance, healthcare, anything that you can imagine! Students come to us with their ideas, and we’re able to support them to develop and take it forward to launch.
Why is ASPIRE such an important programme for students, and what benefits can a student expect from being part of it?
I think that ASPIRE is really an essential part of what KBS is about: developing ambition in entrepreneurial students who can take those skills and mindsets into anything they choose to do, while they’re at university and after they graduate. It’s a great opportunity to develop core entrepreneurial skills, which I really believe can help you in any career. You’ll be getting access to all areas of different business knowledge: While your course might be in marketing, here you’ll get to understand all the different areas of starting a business. Other skills which we’re helping you to develop through ASPIRE are communication, presentation, teamwork and leadership.
All these things are so essential to an entrepreneur or someone starting their own business, but they’re also going to help you when you go into your career. So even if you don’t think you want to start your own business right now or maybe even ever, I would say still come experience the stuff that we’re doing, the workshops that we’re offering. We also have access to funding, so if you’ve got a great idea and you need some money to help make it happen, come to us and we can talk about how we can get you a grant.
If you are committed to starting your own business though, a fantastic opportunity which Kemp Business School has is what we call the SELFIE year!
What’s a SELFIE year?
A SELFIE year is a pathway in the traditional Year in Industry. Where regularly you would go and work in a company for a year, with a selfie year you’ll work for yourself. You’ll start your own business supported by ASPIRE, and it’d be assessed in exactly the same way as your Year in Industry, but you get to explore and really deep dive into your idea and develop your business while you’re still a student here. For some students, they say it was really transformational. They’re running successful businesses now, but it all began in that selfie year where they had that opportunity.
Can you tell us about some of the projects and people who have come out of the programme?
One student who really stands out to me is Nadia. Nadia Simpson came to us in her first year and did the Business Start-up Journey: This is our series of workshops that take you through the process of starting a business. She took her idea and pitched at the pitching finals, and while she didn’t win, she just kept going! In her second year, she pivoted her idea — a really important part of business — into providing hair and beauty products. And during her SELFIE year, she was able to run that business for a year, supported by ASPIRE. During those 12 months, she was able to really understand her customer, really develop her products, and access funding through ASPIRE.
And that set her on the path to knowing that she wanted to be a full-time entrepreneur when she left university. Nadia is now on her third business: an amazing fragrance brand called From Amora, where she creates and designs her own fragrances! When I think about the Nadia I knew in first year and where she is now as a businesswoman, the journey that she’s been on is just incredible. I do think that SELFIE year was transformational for Nadia. And it’s an opportunity which not a lot of universities in the UK offer, there’s only a few of us. If you’re really dedicated towards starting your own business, it’s a really good opportunity to take up.
Interested in learning more about our SELFIE year and all ASPIRE has to offer? Learn more here.