AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Welcome to Teach Yourself Your Evening Class - Starting a Small Business. Perhaps you have recently taken the plunge of branching out on your own, or with one or two other people. Perhaps you are about to do so. You are about to become a small entrepreneur.
Authors Vera Hughes and David Weller come from different, but complementary backgrounds. A modern language graduate from London University, Vera’s first job was in the law, while David was learning his trade as a successful young actor in weekly repertory theatre, following the first few years of his working life in the soft furnishing department of a multiple furnishings business. During a conscious break from the world of professional theatre, David, as Training Manager, and Vera as Assistant Training Manager, first worked together setting up and running the training department in a large supermarket chain. Again their paths diverged for a while, David becoming a self-employed trainer and Vera a training adviser in the Manpower Services Commission, where she wrote her first title in the Teach Yourself series - Teach Yourself Word Processing.
The two authors then jointly set up ‘DEVA Training Services’, working in a wide variety of organisations and businesses, and gaining experience of the different work practices and cultures of their very varied clients. At the same time they were experiencing the joys and traumas (fortunately very few) of running their own small business, which lasted for some twenty-five years. Their best-selling joint publication, ‘Teach Yourself Setting Up a Small Business’, now in its fourth edition, has sold over 50,000 (update?) copies.
For the last ten years they have reverted to their first love, the theatre. They write, stage and perform six very varied presentations, mostly to clubs and societies, but also in small festivals and arts centres. This small business is called ‘Chester House Productions - social history through theatre’; they have successfully performed to over 10,000 people, mainly across the south of England. A theatre company still has a product to sell, must know what its customers want, must do the marketing, keep the books and know how to sell itself to its clients. Both their small businesses have thrived, so Vera and David are happy to pass on the fruits of their experience to you, the new entrepreneurs. Best of luck with your own enterprise.
