Carole Smith and Sue Gibbs are already enjoying the benefits of operating their own business. They’ve been running Jigsaw Training And Development Services for nine months now. Their story began when they attended the One Day Business Start-up Course in May last year. They joined the Over 50’s Start Me Up programme, with Fiona as their business mentor, and they went into business two months later, offering Ofqual regulated courses.
“Our training is based around safety,” says Sue, Jigsaw’s Training and Development Manager. “The three main things we cover are first aid, food safety and safeguarding. We provide bespoke advice and support to all types of businesses and groups. Carole’s main area of experience is in education and mine is in retail, hospitality and training.”
Although they both had retail experience in the past, running a training business has been a new start for Carole and Sue.
“Being our own boss feels fantastic,” Sue says. “It’s a bit frightening sometimes but if we have an idea we don’t need to jump through any hoops. We can try things immediately and be creative. Fiona has been brilliant as a mentor. She’s a great listener and asks us really important questions. She’s also fantastic at coming back to us with help and information. It’s also been great to swap ideas with other people on the programme who are developing their own businesses. We support other new businesses whenever we can. Networking has been really important in growing our business. We feel like we’re all developing together.”
Creating a business from scratch means Carole and Sue can do things their way, including working in the community.
“We’re not a big training company and we’re happy to work for smaller numbers of delegates,” Carole says. “Our approach is personal and relevant to our customer, whether it’s a church or volunteer group or a more traditional business. I think the reason I struggled to find work after redundancy was because I was over 50. We don’t feel we’re over 50 though.”
Sue agrees and says that being over 50 definitely has benefits.
“We feel a lot more confident now,” Sue says. “We have lots of experience in work. We’re pretty grounded and we won’t make mistakes that we might have made when we were younger. We’re in control and we’re very proud of what we’ve achieved already.”
