Make Your Mark Blog

A young man from Lowestoft has been chosen for the prime minister’s Global Fellowship - having found success during the Make Your Mark Challenge.

19 year-old Richard Miner from Lowestoft, is one of 100 young people chosen for the prime minister’s Global Fellowship - a programme designed to encourage and nurture oustanding talent and enterprise.

Depsite his obvious hard work and talent, Richard credits his success to the Make Your Mark team and his participation in the Make Your Mark Challenge whilst at school. During the challenge,  Richard and a group of friends established ‘UnHeard Entertainment’, a music management and PR company and as a result of their success, went on to attend the Make Your Mark in Music networking event in london, with Richard also becoming a founding member of YELP (Young Enterprising Lowestoft People) - a local network set up with the help of the local Make Your Mark team.

Richard says:  I believe strongly that getting on this chance of a lifetime, is in part due to the huge amount of support you and the whole Make Your Mark collective  gave myself and ‘UnHeard Entertainment’. It certainly allowed us to all become more knowledgeable about the ways of business and helped greatly in building a self-confidence in ourselves. The experiences that I have had due to ‘Unheard’ were priceless and I personally have a lot to owe you for those and the contacts made from Make Your Mark.”

As part of the fellowship programme, Richard is due to spend six weeks in India including two weeks in a school or college working as a language assistant and two weeks as the guest of a global company to get an understand of international business.

In November, Richard and the other fellowship members, will join the prime minister Gordon Brown to take part in ‘Global Entrepreneurship Week’ as part of the Make Your Mark campaign.

The Eastern Region Make Your Mark Team would like to congratulate Richard on this fantastic achievement and highlight how participating in Enterprise Week can really help young people to make their mark!

Are you a business person based in the North East? Would you like to help inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs?

Make Your Mark Enterprise Clubs are:

A dynamic network of student-led enterprise clubs, currently over 300 nationally, 35 of which are in the North East

Open to students in schools & colleges and are completely free

A great route into schools for employers and a great way to raise your own profile in TV and get positive PR

What the Make Your Mark Enterprise Clubs need from employers:

Real enterprise challenges from you e.g. design challenges or real business problems

Opportunities to talk to you and to learn from your business experiences & expertise

Support and guidance in planning their own business ventures

For you to inspire them about what is possible for them in their future

What’s in it for you?

A chance to

Work with young agile creative minds

Help develop the necessary skills in your future workforce

Raise the profile of your business

Generate lots of positive PR

Offer your staff self development opportunities

Market test some of your products with your potential customers

and …… an opportunity for you to be inspired by our young people!

If you would like to get involved, please contact Julie:

Julie@makeyourmark.org.uk / 01642 451826

Hi, Shed here… Might I say how gorgeous you look today…

This month, I’ll prove to you that the process for turning your ideas into amazing adventures is wonderfully and devilishly simple. It goes something like this: you have an idea in your head, you take steps to make it happen - then… incredible opportunities arise:

All you have to do is START DOING SOMETHING NEW…

THE WORLD’S NEWEST CELEBRITIES - let’s see what you think…

This is a great example of how an idea can cause an adventure. Three years ago, I created a new range of sweets - and unknown to me, a packet of those sweets got sent to a guy in China called ‘Dominic’. He called me up, we became great friends and three years later - just recently - Dom flew me out to Beijing for a book launch for my new title, IDEAS MAN.

Years before I made contact with Dom, I’d been trying to release a new set of ‘trading cards’ for kids (the full exciting story is chronicled in my book). The range of characters is called ‘HELLEBRITIES‘, and here are a couple:

Even though the HELLEBRITIES trading cards never got the backing for a global launch, whilst I was in China I took the opportunity to see if I could turn some characters into 3D Figurines instead. What’s brilliant about China is that there are loads of talented people over there who can help with your idea (for a much lower price than here), and they’re even reachable through the internet (just Google ‘China Manufacturers’). Here’s what the sculptor produced:

If you’re a manufacturer or a retailer and you’d like to help make the HELLEBRITIES range the huge worldwide success it deserves to be, please get in touch through my personal site.

So that shows you how one idea (my range of sweets) can then create a huge adventure (a trip to Beijing) and also make another idea come to life (the HELLEBRITIES models). Pretty exciting!

And this is proof that…

***WHEN YOU START MAKING A NEW IDEA HAPPEN, YOU NEVER QUITE KNOW WHERE IT MAY TAKE YOU…***

All the best and here’s to your ideas!

Yours,

Shed

———————————————————————————————–

Shed’s bestselling, inspiring and amusing book IDEAS MAN is out now.

See more of his adventures and products on www.IdeasMan.co.uk

Read Shed’s inspiring story.

———————————————————————————————–

As we turn the corner of a new era, we need new people to help us continue with our enterprise message - As the new HR manager I am excited to have some great opportunities available to continue the enterprise message through our people. We are looking for people ready for new challenges and passionate about what we do - whether you are a self confessed enterprise junkie or want to embark on an amazing new journey you might just be in with a chance - so who’s in?

Vanessa

Enterprise Junkie - and - Make Your Mark HR Manager

If you would like to go to a Reception at Buckingham Palace, can you think of someone you could nominate for The Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion 2009?

The nominators of the successful candidates also get a Royal invitation so it is will worth making a nomination.

Each year there are up to 10 Awards plus a Lifetime Achievement Award, if there is a suitable candidate.

Previous recipients include Jane Delfino, Innovations Director at the United Learning Trust within the Manchester Academy who is a Board Member of Enterprise Insight.

For further details and a nomination form go to www.queensawards.org.uk/individual

startups.co.uk have published their list of the top 100 UK start-ups. It is great to see some familiar faces in there, and lots of young entrepreneurs in the mix. My personal faves have to be Onya (their shopping bag is always on me) and moo.com. Check em out and please let us know your favourite.

http://www.startups.co.uk/6678842910082155685/startups-100.html

Check out the latest BBC online blog http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7315598.stm

from entrepreneur and Make Your Mark ambassador Kulveer - who has just sold his company which he runs with his cousin for ‘millions of dollars’.

His move to Sillicon Valley in the States has undoubtedly played a part and I wonder whether we can ever hope to reproduce this fostering environment for tech companies in the UK. It’s a point which Kulveer raises within a view point he wrote for us last year.

http://www.makeyourmark.org.uk/policy/future_face_of_enterprise/who_else/viewpoints/stoz/

Let us know what you think…

Kirill Makharinsky, 21, and Bob Goodson, 27 have just launched a new website for start-ups. It is called YouNoodle and is a place to discover and support the hottest early-stage companies.

You can browse innovative startups and follow their progress. You can also register your own startup and use YouNoodle to build up a following as well as develop a team of specific supporters.

It over turns one of the biggest fears that many people have - that if they share their idea in public, someone will steal it. It’s refreshing to see a tool that highlights the importance of collaboration. By sharing your idea you are more likely to attract the right people to support your business, find deals, find opportunities and ultimately succeed.

The founders of YouNoodle are also developing a model which will predict the future success of a start-up. This will use rigorous mathematical analysis to track how social networks and business contacts impact the company’s performance. Definitely one to watch…

We’re on a team away day today and tomorrow. guess thats an away two-days then really. We all boarded the train bright and early in a bit of a daze. it’s funny to see which of your colleagues are really not morning people…

Our first stop is at Bradford FC to check out the LEGI-funded Bradford Grid project. Slightly hidden away after a walk through the Bradford FC football shop (where they wouldn’t let you play with the footballs..very disappointing) . The Grid itself is a cool place and we all heard from Faisal Kahn and Arooj Hussain - a guy starting up a Bollywood dance project with kids in Bradford and a wonderful lady breaking the mould of the typical Bradford photographer.

Its always great to see people challenging the stereotypes of what it is to be enterprising. Faisal says that he has met unexpected demand from young girls and Arooj described the stares she gets from girls at weddings “are you a real photographer?” they ask. Arooj left us with a message that rings true with the campaign - “if there’s something you want to do - just do it - don’t let anyone tell you you can’t”

On that note, time for some food now - so don’t try telling me i can’t…

Here at MYM we are lucky enough to have a massive database of Women’s Enterprise Ambassadors (young women who have successfully set up their own businesses) from all over the country who are ready and willing to volunteer to come along to your school/youth club/event and help inspire young women into becoming more enterprising. They do this through running assemblies, talking to 6th form classes, speaking about their business experiences and lots more…

It’s all great! There’s just one hitch - they are all really keen to get involved and we don’t have enough opportunities to offer them at the moment - especially in the North… just today I received an email from one of our fantastic Northen ambassadors feeling very sad because we didn’t have anything for her to get involved in! The ambassadors are amazing and busy people but they want to do more!

So, if you know of a group of young people (and especially if they are a group of young women) who could benefit from a talk or from networking and interaction with one of our ambassadors, let me know! It’s a free service, all you need to do is email me at girlsmakeyourmark@makeyourmark.org.uk and let me know what you’re looking for!

Sounds a great scheme to me.

The Currys and PC World retail group has begun an experiment to give homeless people the chance to become entrepreneurs. DSGI has teamed up with Foyer Federation, the homeless young people charity, to launch the Big Enterprise Challenge. Fifty young people from around the country were invited to take part in the first trial which took place in north London. They were given coaching and practical lessons in selling and then pitched their ideas to the retailer’s senior buyers. All those taking part won a year’s worth of mentoring to help get their idea off the ground. Sir John Collins, DSGI’s chairman, said businesses were not doing enough to harness entrepreneurship to inspire people from disadvantaged backgrounds to have the confidence to act on their ideas. “We want to give them access to business people by helping them understand what business and enterprise is about,” said Sir John. “The best of them could become entrepreneurs themselves” For the majority, getting employment in an enterprising venture could be where they get too.” He added that while groups such as DSGI could fund initiatives like this as part of their community programmes they had to concentrate on their core businesses and leave the delivery and follow through to specialists such as Foyer. “This is something of an experiment. We want to see how well Foyer follows it up and how helpful it is.”

At the age of 5 Jeff Roche wanted to be a farmer and a train driver, at 10 a computer programmer and at 16 a PE teacher. But his lifelong love of Lego Technic some inspirational Design & Technology teachers and chance has led him to Loughborough University to study Innovative Manufacturing and Technology.

Jeff told his story to a host of business people and policy makers at the annual Owers lecture organised by Core Education and hosted by Oracle at their London offices last week. As well as highlighting the things and people that had inspired him, Jeff was very frank about the things that had not - teaching from the book, almost non-existent careers advice, too few opportunities to relate theory to practice.

This laid the foundations for some really lively discussion with everyone agreeing that while government has got real responsibilities for teaching quality and careers advice, industry itself had to work much harder and smarter at engaging actively with schools to provide those practical experiences and show the innovation, creativity and enterprise within them. And getting Design & Technology properly back on the curriculum. (www.core-ed.org.uk)

Some interesting videos about Enterprise Week on the FT website, featuring young entrepreneurs, the Future Face of Enterprise and lastminute.com legend Martha Lane Fox on tech start-ups: http://www.ft.com/cms/defcad00-8ee6-11dc-87ee-0000779fd2ac.html

 Happy Social Enterprise Day, folks.

Went to the launch of Make Your Mark in 60 seconds this morning. It’s always great fun to see real enterprise week events with young kids. They’re always so lively and daft. Some great ideas coming through - a car door handle that takes photos of thieves, a recycling scheme that raises money to make diabetic armbands to wake you up, you know that sort of thing…

Is social enterprise becoming mainstream now then? Went onto a BERR staff event where staff were learning about this and sustainable development.   We heard some great examples of social enterprise in action - the Sherwood Energy Village in particular is amazing - check it out http://www.sev.org.uk/.  But the points that stuck in my mind where from Tom Savage, formerly known as Swampy of Mercer Street, who described how he resisted the path of social enterprise in setting up his new green recruitment business http://www.brightgreentalent.com/our-team/ because he felt that he could have more of an impact on society and the environment through mainstream business. The challenge seems to remain about scaling up social entrepreneurship - any ideas how this could be done? Should it be done? Ideas on a postcard please to our future face of enterprise work http://www.makeyourmark.org.uk/policy/future_face_of_enterprise

Future Face of Enterprise

What do you think the future face of enterprise will look like? What are the possiblities, opportunities and trends that will shape enterprise? Please join the debate and let us know what you think in 300 words and email them to policy@makeyourmark.org.uk along with your name, job title, organisation, and picture.

Popping into the start of the future face of enterprise conference, you could be forgiven for thinking that the future face of enterprise is a forty-year old Caucasian. Commentators on business are usually very well-educated and insightful, but do conform to stereotype. The first panel (Jonathan Guthrie – Enterprise Editor, Financial Times, Ben Verwaayen and Rt Hon John Hutton MP, Secretary of State for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform) pleased the audience with their witty panel discussion and answered questions well, from an audience with much more variation in appearance.

However, the panel of entrepreneurs soon put a stop to a complaint about lack of diversity. Dominated by women, with only two male ministers present, the image of the future face of enterprise was young, vibrant and an ethnic mixture. The second panel (Lucy Neville-Rolfe - Tesco plc, Joanna Shields - Bebo, Phil Hope - MP, Stephen Timms - MP, Maive Rute - European Commission, Julie Meyer - Ariadne capital, Farzana Baduel - TaxClaim) held a show-stopping discussion with the audience, and all gave their views on a variety of questions from recommendations for enterprise education to a discussion on why British women don’t set up businesses at the same rate as British men.