Grad2Director Updates – Rhian Barton
We recently shared some updates from York St John graduates Alice, James and Alex, who have all started their own businesses through our Grad2Director programme, but it doesn’t stop there.
“Drive, Support, Confidence”
We recently had the chance to sit down with York St John graduate, Rhian Barton. Rhian signed up to our Grad2Director programme in 2017 and with support from the University became the Director of her very own company at the start of 2018.
Rhian’s company, RBarton Limited, provides a copywriting and proofreading service to a wide range of companies and industries, and has already been working with a charity to provide copy for their website, and with Dr John Park’s own company, Disruptek, on producing copy for his app.
So when did Rhian begin to develop her business idea? ‘I studied English language and linguistics at York St John, and was initially interested in working in speech and language therapy, but during my final year I decided it wasn’t something I wanted to pursue. Over the summer after completing my studies the idea of starting my own business began to really grew, towards the end of the summer I received an e-mail with some information about the Grad2Director programme at York St John and thought it seemed like a great thing to do while I was undertaking my graduate internship.’
As part of the programme, Rhian had access to wide range of materials through the online module as well as the opportunity to utilise the experience and expertise of Dr John Park, ‘I initially started by looking through the online materials and then after a few weeks I had a chance to speak to John and we arranged a 1:1 session, this gave me the opportunity to share my thoughts with John and he was able to help explain more about the benefits of both proceeding as a freelancer and incorporation, after that I took some time to think about what I wanted to do before deciding to go down the incorporation route.’
Rhian is currently working as a Senior Admin Assistant in the DVCAdmin team at York St John, which means that time to focus on her company is limited, but she plans to continue to build the company up alongside her full time job, ’I’m currently looking at having a website designed and building up a small client base, I have no plan to give up full time employment at the moment though and will look to continue with my business alongside this.’
We asked Rhian what three words she would use to describe what Grad2Director has done for her or given her, and what advice she would give current students thinking about starting their own businesses, ‘I would say drive, as the programme gave me the kick I needed to get everything starts. Support, because the 1:1 sessions with John were incredibly helpful as well as being realistic. And confidence, because of the way the programme gave me the belief to go out there and do it. For anyone thinking of signing up to Grad2Directior I would say go for it and don’t doubt yourself! It doesn’t cost anything and helps you develop some really useful skills and knowledge into how businesses operate.’
