God Studio

"I Needed a Mentor, and I Got It." How a Free 10-Week Course Gave Yannick Mourad the Clarity to Launch a Business

Yannick Mourad was a dancer in his native France, before moving to the UK in 2009. He then worked as a restaurant manager for 10 years in central London at Wagamama and Pizza Express.

But his true passion always revolved around the arts. His dancing background evolved into other forms of artistic expression, such as photography, videography, and design. He’s a graduate of the University of Reading, studying for a degree in art and film, where he learned the technical skills involved in camera operation and editing.

By now, Yannick was already self-employed, but always working on other people’s projects, not his own. He wasn’t running a business.

Drowning in Information, Starved of Guidance

It was a lack of clarity that was holding him back. “I always had the passion and the eagerness to make my artistic vision come to life,” said Yannick, “but what was stopping me was having no guidance.”

There was no shortage of advice or instruction to learn from but knowing what to do with it was another question.

“I was getting information left and right, on my own, by myself, but having someone holding your hand and showing you the steps and explaining things properly, that's what I was lacking.”

Yannick realised he needed something else to give him direction, to move him from being a freelancer picking up jobs here and there, to being a business owner doing serious work.

Powerful Questions and 10 Weeks to Pitch: How Launch Reading Gave Yannick His Direction

It was a Department of Work and Pensions recruitment day in 2023 that would give Yannick that direction. The DWP, in association with Reading’s Economy and Destination Agency (REDA) run sessions at Reading Town Hall for people going into either employment or self-employment.

Yannick visited the Launch Reading stand at the event and what they had to offer triggered something in his mind. “They were saying, in effect, that if you’re serious about creating your own business then this is the perfect opportunity for you. It captured my attention and I signed up.”

Launch Reading offer a free training programme to help people from underrepresented communities start their own business. The programme is built around an intensive 10-week course, delivered in person in a three-hour session on a Monday evening, with each week focused on a different aspect of starting and building a business.

Yannick joined the cohort starting the course in October 2023. He was immediately impressed by the quality of the teaching, and the questions that forced him to think about his business ideas. Questions about strategy, about competitors – is anyone else doing what you are doing? “They were asking us some very powerful questions, ones that I hadn’t thought about before.”

The in-person training is supplemented by a business planning software package that participants have access to from home, and they are expected to complete assignments related to each week’s topic as they go. Using this software, the tutors continue to advise and support the participants outside the classroom as they develop their business plan.

This was the guidance and clarity Yannick had previously been lacking. He considers this structured approach, teaching a new theme such as marketing each week, to be the most valuable part of the course.

The most surprising part of the course, for Yannick, was having to prepare a pitch presentation to be given at the end of the course to an independent panel. If successful, participants may be awarded a startup grant for their business, provided by Reading’s Economy and Destination Agency (REDA) out of the Government’s UK Shared Prosperity Fund.

“The pitch was a very powerful thing to master, because if you want to take your business to the next level, you will have to present it to other investors. And that's something that I never thought about - you have 30 seconds, 1 minute, go. They need to understand what your business is, and they need to also know if you understand it yourself. Clarity is such a big thing. If you're not clear about it, then you can't pitch it.”

A £1,500 Grant, a Stand at the National Wedding Show and a Business on Track to Double Its Turnover

During the last week of the course, in January 2024, Yannick registered God Studio Ltd with Companies House and launched his business.

God Studio is more than just a film and video production company. Yannick’s goal for the business is to develop multiple sources of revenue across the arts and entertainment sectors. This includes video production for weddings, music, and events utilising visual effects and drones. Yannick has plans for a skills academy and podcast, and a design branch of the business with its own clothing store.

Yannick’s vision for his business is more revolutionary than that, though. “The idea of God Studio is to bring positivity back in art and entertainment. That's the core value of it, because we've noticed that music and arts and entertainment in general today is not influencing the youth or people in a positive way. There's a lot of negative ideas out there.

“We’re also trying to connect art with emerging technology, a blockchain app that we want to develop.”

Yannick wants God Studio to become an umbrella organisation bringing freelancers together across multiple disciplines – design, architecture, photography – to create something bigger than themselves.

Building the multiple revenue streams was the original intent for the £1,500 startup grant Yannick was awarded following his successful pitch presentation at the end of the Launch Reading programme. The design and clothing arm was to be the initial focus, but Yannick’s supplier went out of business.

He went back to his business plan and concentrated on the core offering of videography and photography, using the grant money to have his own stand at the National Wedding Show in London. “It's been amazing, because I got a lot of bookings from that in the wedding industry, which is an industry that can just accelerate your growth if you crack it.”

And growth is what Yannick is now seeing after a couple of years breaking even, with turnover on track to grow from £35,000 to £70,000 this year. He puts this success down to the type of questions that the Launch Reading programme made him face up to. “They were so specific, and they forced you to come up with good answers. I needed a mentor, and I got it.”

Find out more about God Studio Ltd. here.

Find out more about Launch Reading's business training programme here.