Advice on starting your own business

Do you want to start your own business? Discuss this with your Customer Director. The customer director will ask you questions about this. For example about the reason that you would like to do this. And about how much you already know about the administration associated with working as a self-employed person. If you and the client director are confident and you have received permission, you will get a new client director who knows a lot about doing business in benefits. This customer director asks you for a Mini Business Plan to make. He or she will review your plan and discuss with you whether you can register with Entrepreneurial Advice. After that you can yourself Register with Entrepreneurial Advice. After you register you will receive a case number. You use that case number to complete an online registration form and upload your business plan.

You will then receive an invitation for an initial meeting with a business advisor. You will have regular conversations with the advisor for about 6 weeks. The advisor determines whether your plan has a chance of success. An outcome may be that you start business from the benefit or that you start working completely as an entrepreneur.

Full-time business

From your social assistance benefit you move on to the Bbz2004. This is the Decree on assistance for the self-employed. A business advisor will then discuss this with you and guide you in this.

Part-time business

Part-time entrepreneurship is working as an independent entrepreneur for a maximum of 23.5 hours per week. You keep (part of) your social assistance benefit. We supplement the income you have from your company up to the social assistance standard. This means that your benefit may be less high, but your total monthly income will remain the same.

If you are going to be an entrepreneur part-time, you have to deal with the following rules:

• You must register with the Chamber of Commerce. This way you are officially registered as an entrepreneur.
• You must cooperate with the guidance of the business advisor. You have conversations about how your company is doing.
• You submit a form to Work and Income every month on which you enter your income, costs and hours worked.

Every year there is an evaluation moment why you and your client director check whether you meet the conditions to continue with part-time business, such as submitting the monthly forms and looking for and accepting paid work for the remaining hours.

The goal is to get you started as a self-employed person. It is important that you have a realistic plan. In addition, the expectation must be that your company will be a success.

This, of course, depends on how far along you are with your plan and how big (or small) your future venture is. Please discuss this with your advisor.

For anyone with or without benefits who has a realistic plan to start up their own business. If you think this might suit you, please contact your client director to discuss this. Together you look (broadly speaking) what your plans are and whether they are feasible. If you determine together that it is a good idea, your client director will arrange a meeting with the Entrepreneurial Advice team.

First you make a mini business plan. Your client director will send this to Ondernemersadvies together with your application. You will then be invited for a consultation within two weeks. In this conversation you can explain what your plans are for your (future) company.

The advisor then checks whether:

• • your idea is feasible
  • there is a demand for the service/product with which you want to enter the market
  • your (investment) costs are in proportion to the income you will get from your company
  • you use rates in your plan that fit the market you are in
  • you have sufficient knowledge and skills to make the company a success. Think of the skills you need when recruiting customers/assignments, doing the administration and of course creativity!
  • you want to become a full-time or part-time entrepreneur

The aim of the help of the business advisors is that at the end of the process there is a concrete and financially well-founded business plan. This allows us to estimate whether starting a business is realistic.