 I spent my whole life working towards becoming a power station operator and I was lucky enough to get to that goal but unfortunately Hazelwood Power Station is shut. Mark Hewer was among hundreds of staff and contractors whose careers were impacted by the closure of Victoria's Hazelwood Power Station. His secure job in the Latrobe Valley suddenly gone. I'd been at Hazelwood for just shy of six years. As an operator I'd been working there on and off since I finished my apprenticeship. With a small payout and an idea, Mark turned his skills in a new direction. When I first had this idea I was frankly terrified of doing this going, I hope this works. His small business repairs coffee machines. So I started looking at it, looking what's in a coffee machine and I figured out they were essentially a small power station and then I did a bit of market research and found there was nobody local doing it and I looked around for training and then once I got a bit more training I started advertising the business and went from there. Over the past year he's found new customers and his income is rising. We average about three, minimum of sort of three jobs a week up to eight or nine. This is the machine, there's no steam coming out of the valves. The coffee machine business, I like my coffee so that was the start and then the intricacies of the machines and all the different fine details to make it work properly. The differences between other coffee people is that I'm local and there's not many based in regional areas and normally city based. Mark found that starting and running a business requires new skills. When we first started out I knew that I'd be able to work on the machines themselves and do the physical work. The stuff that I had no idea about was the business side of things. I ended up doing a bit of research through Business Victoria and found that through the local council they ran a course called Six Business Steps to Success. Mark recently returned to a Business Victoria workshop to share his new knowledge with others just starting out. I actually think this course was amazing for me and they bring up things that I hadn't thought of like build a website, yeah great. With marketing I had a lot of fear. It's been hard and getting better at it. Workshops like this have helped thousands of people gain skills to start and grow their small businesses. In the last 17 years Business Victoria has supported over 60,000 participants and these workshops provide practical tips and advice to help them to grow their business, make their business profitable and sustainable. I want to take my business to the next level so I run training around mental health, mental health awareness, mental health first aid and suicide intervention and I want to do more. I started but I didn't know where to go and this came fine. I thought this is actually what I need. In order to get it up and running, like really up and running. Small business is such an important part of the economy and the employment base in Victoria. As a workshop facilitator I take great joy in seeing the enthusiasm of prospective and existing business owners to run small business. Mark US says the Business Victoria program helped take his repair business to the next level and he hopes to one day employ a small team to service a wider area. I am extremely proud of what I've achieved. To be able to know that I can go into someone's cafe, fix their equipment and confidently say this is going to work now. That's all I've got.