Peterborough's The Apprentice winner Joseph Valente and staff make grand donation to Red Nose appeal

Peterborough entrepreneur Joseph Valente and his team have made a grand donation to the Red Nose fundraising campaign.

The team at the construction industry mentoring business, Trade Mastermind, have raised £1,000 for the Red Nose Day appeal, organised by Comic Relief and which aims to help provide support and education for children worldwide.

Staff at the newly opened Valente Business Academy at the Brightfield Business Hub in Bakewell Road, Orton Southgate, were asked to donate to Red Nose Day in return for wearing red or a red nose on the day.

And Joseph and his Operations Manager Chris Ruggiero also added £50 a time for every new course enrolment made by the Academy sales team.

Mr Valente, who on the BBC The Apprentice title in 2015, said: “Normally, we are in the serious business of helping already successful businesspeople take the step up to super-success, but Red Nose Day gave us an excuse for fun stuff too – there was even more buzz than usual.”

Mr Ruggiero said: “It was a great day and the £1,000 was raised in super-quick time via a JustGiving page set up by team member Sadie Ladds.”

Mr Valente (33), won after winning the BBC’s The Apprentice title went on to build up and sell ImpraGas, based in Yaxley, when it was a £10million turnover operation with 150 staff.

He has since made a career from mentoring others to emulate his business style and recently opened his 10,000 sq ft Academy headquarters. It includes two state-of-the-art training suites, each able to cater for 100 people.

He said: “The aim is to enable our ‘students’ to quickly cut through to core areas of business such as company structure, business planning, business strategy, marketing, sales, operations, recruitment, human resources, IT, finance management, and exit strategy – all topics I had to learn the hard way.

“It’s taken three years to refine the course, but we are now experiencing exponential growth and I fully expect us to be a £100 million a year business within the next year or so.