Billy Stevenson, 43 is the founder of Film Crew 4u whose aim is to make film-making accessible to people who are experiencing difficulties in life, like mental health issues,  physical disabilities or recovering from addiction. Based in Portsmouth, Film Crew 4u wants to give people within the community a chance to learn the various aspects of film and media production as well have the opportunity to be involved in film making from beginning to end using basic and accessible equipment.

Billy’s journey with Film Crew 4u began back in 2016 after he relocated to Portsmouth while recovering from alcohol dependency. Billy saw this as an opportunity to make a fresh start and try and do something different. Exploring various volunteer positions, Billy was given the chance to do some hours with the Portsmouth Film Society. Having never worked in the film industry Billy quickly became involved with the Portsmouth Film Society and enrolled on their film production course. Having found something he was passionate about Billy made the decision to pursue this as a career.

Using some basic equipment and some free software Billy began to make short films. Initially with family members and then producing short promotional business videos for people within the recovery community. From this that he discovered that maybe he could start his own small project or business.

On benefits and unsure where to look with starting a small business Billy was encouraged by a friend and previous Inspiring Enterprise participant to enrol on some upcoming workshops in Winchester. Billy attended the three workshops and engaged with mentoring where he learnt all aspects of setting up a social enterprise, how to best structure his business. Learning more about Community Interest Company’s made him believe that this was the best way he could give back and building his skills and confidence helped him find the courage to transition off benefits.

“I loved the course, loved hearing others ideas and sharing this journey with them.  I feel I am on the path I’m meant to be on” said Billy. He goes onto say that he found the mentoring really valuable especially the Virtual Coffee Meeting during lockdown, being part of the Inspiring Enterprise programme has filled him with confidence, knowing that the has the right support behind him to help support him in his own business as well as encourage other participants to continue on their social enterprise journey.

Having successfully launched his CIC with a business partner, a volunteer he met at the Portmouth Film Society, he has secured funding, generated income and been accepted on to this years School of Social Entrepreneurs. Billy is really excited about his future and the opportunities that lay ahead and has an increased confidence in himself and his abilities to continue and develop a sustainable social enterprise. He hopes to continue to grow the company so that he can increase the capacity to employ more people and support others through film.

Great news for young entrepreneur and Inspiring Enterprise participant Abbie Hills this week, as she has made the finals of The Great British Entrepreneur Awards 2020 in the South-East Entrepreneurial Spirit Award category for her work in pioneering and founding local Talent Agency and Production Company, The Dazey Hills Company. The awards will be taking place virtually on 23rd September 2020 (https://www.greatbritishentrepreneurawards.com) with Abbie and The Dazey Hills Company in the running with 51 other entrepreneurs from the South East, but with 3 others in her category of Entrepreneurial Spirit. “It really is a pleasure to be in the finals of such an established award, with so many other influential businesses in my region. I have always been up for a challenge, and pushing myself to be the best I can be, and I think starting my own Talent Agency has helped me find my confidence as an entrepreneur. Being a woman in business with a difficult journey, but also an exciting one.”

Overcoming obstacles is no problem for Abbie, she has grown up with managing Cerebral Palsy , while also trying to navigate her way into the industry of Film and TV, and after starting The Dazey Hills Company in January 2019 – she hasn’t looked back. Wanting to change the way the Film and TV world was perceived in Hampshire, Abbie started out with a few business cards and some loose change from a fluffy piggy bank in a bid to find Actors and Production Crew in Hampshire. Fast forward to now, and she has an impressive roster of clients on her books who are regularly getting work within Film and TV, alongside her award winning Production Company with success locally, at the New Forest Film Festival 2019, and internationally, as far as Kenya. at the Rock n’ Roll Film Festival 2019.

Covid-19 has affected the Film and TV industry in a big way, but it seems that The Dazey Hills Company have taken it in their stride, as they prepare and crowdfund for their next feature film ‘Follow Me Down’ which will all be shot in Southampton and the New Forest, with Talent from those areas on both sides of the camera. Abbie is keen to use her brand, name and skills to really bring this project back to the community, and encourages the locals to get involved. She hopes for success at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards later this year, and to put The Dazey Hills Company on the map for all to see.

The best tablets are more powerful than some budget laptops, but is a tablet really a suitable substitute for a traditional portable computer?

Input Method: You Can Do More With Laptops

Tablets rely solely on a touchscreen interface for input, which can present challenges when you need to input text. Since tablets have no keyboard, you must type on virtual keyboards that have varying layouts and designs. 2-in-1 tablets come with a detachable keyboard, but these models still fall short of the laptop experience because of their smaller size and more restrictive designs. If you add an external Bluetooth keyboard, you’ll add costs and peripherals that must be carried with the tablet, making it less portable. Laptops are better for people who type a lot.

Size: Tablets Are More Portable

Most tablets weigh under two pounds. Even the smallest laptops, like the Apple MacBook Air 11, weighs more and has a profile larger than most tablets. The main reason for the larger profile is that the keyboard and trackpad take up additional space. Laptops that include more powerful components require additional cooling, which adds to the size. Because of their smaller size and weight, a tablet is much easier to carry around than a laptop, especially for travel.

Battery Life: Tablets Last Longer

Because of the low power requirements of their hardware components, tablets are designed for efficiency. In fact, most of a tablet’s interior is taken up by the battery. Laptops, on the other hand, use more powerful hardware. The battery within a laptop takes up a far smaller percentage of the space needed for its internal components. Thus, even with the higher capacity battery offered by laptops, they don’t run as long as tablets. Many tablets can support up to ten hours of web usage before requiring a charge. In comparison, the average laptop only runs for about four to eight hours.

Some premium laptops running ARM-based processors achieve battery lives competitive with tablets, but some key software won’t run on ARM-based platforms.

Storage Capacity: Laptops Have More Space

In order to keep the size and costs of tablets down, manufacturers rely on solid-state storage memory to store programs and data. This technology has one major disadvantage: the amount of data it can store. Most tablets allow between 16 and 128 gigabytes of storage. By comparison, most laptops still use conventional hard drives that hold much more. The average budget laptop comes with a 500 GB hard drive, although some laptops have moved to solid-state drives as well. Both laptops and tablets include features like USB ports or microSD cards that make it possible to add external storage.

Performance: Laptops Are More Powerful

For tasks like email, web browsing, or playing video or audio, both platforms will work equally well since these activities don’t require much processing power. Things get more complicated once you start performing more demanding tasks that involve multitasking or HD graphics. In these cases, laptops typically perform better. There are exceptions, though, such as for video editing. Some high-end tablets can actually outperform laptops thanks to specialized hardware.

Software: Tablet Apps Are Restrictive

The same software running on a laptop versus a tablet can be vastly different in terms of capabilities. If a tablet is running Windows, it can theoretically run the same software as a laptop, but it will likely be slower. There are some exceptions to this rule, such as the Microsoft Surface Pro, a tablet that you can deploy as a primary laptop with the same software used in a work environment.

The two other major tablet platforms right now are Android and IOS,  both of which require applications specific to their operating systems. There are many apps available for each of these platforms, and many will perform most of the basic tasks as a laptop. However, they still lack input devices, and hardware limitations mean that some more advanced features supplied by laptop programs may have to be dropped to fit into the tablet environment.

Cost: It’s a Toss -up

There are 3 tiers of tablets on the market. The majority of them are budget models that cost less than £100 and are ideal for simple tasks. Models in the middle tier cost between £200 to £400 and do most tasks just fine (as a comparison, budget laptops start at around £200) Primary tier tablets cost from around £500 to more than £1000. They may provide the best performance but at these prices they tend to provide worse performance than a laptop for the same cost.

Final Verdict.

Laptops still offer greater flexibility for mobile computing. They may not have the same level of portability, running times or ease of use as a tablet but there are still a number of technical limitations that tablets must resolve before they replace laptops. If you already have a laptop, a tablet may be a great add on for those times when you just want to read, play games or browse the web

Blog by Suzanne Hodnett

Cast your mind back however many years you need to, to the time when your days in school were coming to an end and you had that dreaded decision to make of what you were going to be.  If those school days were in the UK then it’s likely you had a careers department available to help you but you could only choose one vocation and then you had to stick with it!  At 16 or 18, not many of us are equipped to make such a good decision in that area.

But life has probably dealt you a few more cards by now and the mist may be clearing on what you want to do.  Added to that, lockdown may have shown you a better work/life balance or a financial vulnerability and a new or greater desire for better financial resilience, self-sufficiency and independence. How you earn a living is one of the biggest areas to analyse in satisfying all of those things.

So, where do you go from here?  It is certainly very true that lockdown changed the financial landscape for employed and self-employed people alike so you may be looking at those options and seeing a weakness in both models, and you would be correct.  But what is emerging from the results of the last 5 months of lockdown is the resilience enjoyed by those with a ‘portfolio career’.  This can be defined as someone who operates within a diverse range of industries, contract types and with a range of skills for adaptability so that they can change their focus and offering quickly as something causes market demand to change.  Adaptability is actually a very simple and very necessary business tactic but it is also something we need to be able to do ourselves. After all, our skills are a service and the work market is our target whether that be as an employed or self-employed person.

Whatever your situation was at the beginning of the year, if you are now unemployed and are evaluating where you go from here to come back stronger with a better work/life balance, a role you enjoy and a more secure income, get in touch with the Inspiring Enterprise team. We can help you with, business planning and/or employment planning, 1-2-1 mentoring, training, resources, 3^rd party funding sources, networking and some key contacts to help you keep going even after you leave us.

For more information please contact donna.chant@inspiringenterprise.org.uk or call 0800 140 4537

Opening a business in 2020 is going to be a real challenge. Potential business owners must now deal with the coronavirus pandemic that has plagued the world since December 2019.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has caused major changes in the economy and it has drastically altered the world that we live in. These two factors now influence how businesses open and operate.

• YOUR BUSINESS MUST BE PANDEMIC READY

The 2020 pandemic has changed how businesses operate. All businesses (regardless of industry) must be safe for customers and employees and be able to prevent people from getting and spreading this disease. One of the biggest problems with the pandemic is the transmission of the coronavirus through public gatherings.

Up until March of 2020, people could meet inside business premises, but the pandemic no longer makes this possible. Since the coronavirus is a viral disease, it has the potential to spread quickly from person to person. Also, you are aware by now that many people who have the coronavirus might not even know they have it and can transmit this disease to others without ever knowing they have been affected.

The law now requires businesses to have protections in place such as wearing face masks, hand sanitizer stations and frequent cleaning procedures. Businesses have also been required to reduce the number of people they can have inside of their business at any one time and you should check regarding your business and coronavirus laws and regulations.

•  STARTING THE RIGHT TYPE OF BUSINESS IN 2020

The Coved 19 crisis has exposed the close connection between people’s health and the economy. People who live in a society where the fear of illness and potential death is high, generally will not feel confident about venturing out into public. Remember, up until March of 2020 people were used to going out into society and interacting with each other and this fear of illness or death was not unknown.

Businesses were open. Restaurants were serving clients, sporting events were packed with spectators, cinemas had lots of visitors, and conferences had lots of attendees. Once the virus arrived; all the bars had to shut down, hairdressers could no longer operate, people couldn’t gather at the shops and even the local markets had to close.

Anyone trying to start a business must be very selective about what type of business they will run. Many businesses have been closed as a result of COVID-19. The service, retail, and hospitality industries have been severely affected by the forced closures that the coronavirus caused.

At least half of all businesses that operate within these industries before the pandemic hit, are no longer open and the forced closures and social distancing measures have made them impractical.

Tech businesses are thriving and continue to grow during the pandemic. Medical suppliers, cleaning services and even food shops have fared well during the coronavirus situation.

Ultimately, all businesses must be able to run effectively in a pandemic world.

If you start a business that is very suspectable to the negative factors of COVID-19, chances are you won’t be around for long.

• MAKE A BUSINESS PLAN

Having a business plan in place has always made good business sense and a business plan is essential to the start of a new business. Without one, you are seriously harming on how successful your company will be. A good business plan is needed to help guide your organization.

• START A BUSINESS THAT MATCHES YOUR SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE

Of course, you can start a business in any field that you want to, and no one is limited to starting a business in their area of expertise. However, you should think about the type of business that you want to work in before you start.

Again, you can jump into any type of business that you fancy but if you don’t have skills in that area; you either won’t stick with it, perform poorly, or create a lot of problems for yourself.

• GENERAL BUSINESS ACUMEN IS NECESSARY

Having general business expertise is critical. Regardless of the type of business you start, there are some important aspects of business you must understand. For example, you should know about cash flow and how to balance your books etc.

These are but a few considerations that every business owner should be familiar with. If you don’t have a general knowledge of business, you could run into problems with many things, such as paying tax, VAT, operational rules and regulations, and knowing how to effectively dress your shop window.

• ACCOUNTABILITY AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Accountability, and I’m not talking tax or vat here, is a huge problem because very few people want to be held accountable for anything. But many people want to hold lots of businesses accountable in today’s environment and you will be held accountable for what you (and your employees) say and do.

Social media makes it easy for critics to hold businesses accountable. People can log onto their social media account and put out bad information about businesses and can also use blog sites, videos and even podcasts to cause mayhem so you 

 must make sure that you are operating with knowledge and in a way to keep your business reputable and respectful.

Treat customers with care and don’t engage in shady or dodgy business deals.

Even your own personal social media accounts should not have anything bad or questionable on them. Accountability is very serious in the modern age and your business could suffer greatly if you don’t take it seriously.

• GET INVOLVED WITH YOUR COMMUNITY

Your business should be community orientated. When you can give back to people within your neighbourhood and town, people there will know that you like to help, that you care, and they will be more willing to do business with you.

Opening a small business in 2020 will be challenging but you will have a better chance to succeed once you know what to do and how to do it.

With thanks to Christy Bella, Blogger by passion.