The (recent) history of the Terling Business Hub
2017-2025
A great place to raise a family - and do business?
Allan Wills started out as an entrepreneur in 2017, the same year Terling won Essex Village of the Year, but that was just a pure coincidence.
By 2018, Allan moved to Terling with his young family.
The picturesque backdrop of Terling was very conducive to raising kids, and in that time, it seemed, starting several businesses that grew (more on that here).
The Wills family also leaned into many volunteer opportunities (at the school, church and pool, for example), then Allan and his son became the local "paper boy" from 2023 to 2025 (that was commercial!), and along the way we met other people in the area who ran small to medium size businesses.
Random conversations at the tea room, at the pub, by the pool and on dog walks (and even via Facebook Marketplace and the Terling Village Hub) formed the kernel of an idea: People in Terling helped each other out in many ways, nevertheless there didn't seem to be a place to talk about local business or new startup ideas.
2025
Let's try something new
Over the summer of 2025, a few Terling-ite business owners decided that forming an informal group that met once in awhile to help each other out would be a great idea. Kind of like Fight Club, but without the violence and this club encouraged members to talk about it.
Allan used one of his photos (a rainbow near the iconic Terling windmill) and also took the Terling crest and put a connective frame around it to symbolise our ambition to connect locals in commerce, and that became our logo.
A website was created and posted on the Terling Village Hub Facebook group in August to signal that this new idea was going to be tried and people could register their interest on the website. However...
Is this a scam? To Be Honest...
One concerned member of the community asked openly in the comments if our group was a membership that required payment, to which the answer was no.
As it turned out, some months previous, someone else in the village had formed a group for dads in business that turned into something of a pyramid scheme. No association to us.
We were the Terling Business Hub, TBH for short, which oddly enough turned out to also be the acronym for To Be Honest. Another coincidence?
25 Becomes 12 Becomes Four
In total, 25 people registered for the Terling Business Hub and we arranged a kick off meeting at the Terling Village Hall in September.
An even dozen turned out in person, and we discussed, brainstormed and white boarded a range of ideas and what people wanted out of the group.
We looked at everything from setting up a local co-working space to a private tool (think a tiny local LinkedIn) to investment - and within the room people offered to connect offline around things they could help each other out with so networking ensued.
There was also another idea proposed by Allan, about the local shop where he and his son were paperboys...
An idea: a local shop run by locals?
The local shop and Post Office was up for sale.
A belief formed that there was a strong business case to be made if key members of the village came together as a cooperative to acquire the business and run it by locals, for locals, as a community asset. (You can read more about that here.)
In the end, the shopkeeper went a different direction, and Allan had a change in his personal circumstances (another coincidence, more on that here), so from the outside, the TBH went dormant. However, there were embers burning among four of the original 25 people who expressed interest...
2026 to Present
Better together?
Out of the public eye, several local entrepreneurs running a range of businesses continued to meet ad hoc and continue the conversation.
Collaboration resulted (they are now "featured members"), and together they produced a film about the TBH such that by the summer of 2026 the TBH re-launched with some case studies to see who else in the community wanted to participate and benefit.