Sorry if this doesn't belong here, I searched around for more specific subreddits but can't find any that are really appropriate for this kind of post. I feel it isn't specific enough for r/askuk and r/unitedkingdom rejected it.My girlfriend and I are really discontent with the wage slave + give-half-your-income-to-landlords rental lifestyle which is making saving for a house while having any kind of life during our prime years very hard, and want to make the leap of starting our own business in an area we are passionate about.We have an idea for a shop, it's not super original but we strongly believe there is an opening for one in our area which has about 150,000 people within 20 minutes drive. There is a similar one in the closest city (40 mins drive) but we have heard a lot of grumblings that people wish there was one closer, and I strongly believe it's going to be a growing market soon and something people will be regularly spending money at, and ones that have opened in other places in the UK seem to be doing pretty well for themselves. The one closest had a Kickstarter to help fund the business and it smashed its goal (Tripled in the end) so this was one avenue we considered, we were going to try and survey the local area to see if there would be interest in this, the locations people would prefer most etc.I work in accounting so I have a good knowledge of the tax/company system so we are off to a strong start in this area as I'm very confident in handling the accounting/bookkeeping side of things and advising on tax is my day to day job, so again I can do this all in house.We are aware of Princes Trust and the loans available to start up, and I'm well aware starting a business takes an unexpected amount of money to get going and can take years before any profits are made so you need to take into account your own living costs as well. I can just about support us both on my salary so the plan was for me to continue working while doing this in my own time, with her doing it full time, until we were in a position where I could leave my job.We have very little in savings but have been looking at options for financing it to begin with - Our families would likely be able to loan/invest money into us, Kickstarter as above and any business support we can get like through the startup loans, all 3 through which we were hoping we could raise around £25-30k total to get going.On the Princes Trust, if anyone has used them, I have a few questions:- Are the startup loans very hard to get? I believe it's up to £5,000 per person in the business and they are government backed but I assume they aren't going to hand these out willy nilly and you'll probably need a decent business plan. I'm assuming if we could get a decent amount of survey data back this would help reinforce our plan?- Are the mentors/Princes Trust in general good for general business advice on getting going? I'm not really sure the depth they go to, or if it's something some business owners sign up for to have the prestige of calling themselves a mentor but in reality they don't really do all that much aside from answer a few questions here and there.Finally are there many other similar resources out there to look at for help with a small business? Be it guides or help from others, or grants/loans to apply for? Are there any entrepreneurs here who would have anything recent/up to date to share or getting started, things to plan for/look out for etc?We are aware it's super early days and we have a long way to go but we are serious about getting as much of a plan as possible in place so even if we don't start during the pandemic we can get going afterwards. see hubwealthy.com/wealthy
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