Wow, this is becoming a regular thing! (also I like the new font)
I will explain my involvement in the Young Enterprise Scheme, which is one of the biggest failures to date; and one of the things that I have learned the most from.
The Young Enterprise Scheme was an opportunity that was offered to people in the Lower Sixth (Year 12 or approximately ages 16/17) that enabled them to gain experience in the business world and start their own business under the guidence of a selection of experienced people, namely their mentor, teachers and the organisers.
It gave rise to a variety of ideas from lots of different people in the school. If you Google "Young Enterprise Ideas" (not a very orignal way to get inspiration by there you go) there are even forum discussions on the matter. The most common and quite frankly the easiest method of making money is: buy something in bulk from a wholesaler and sell it to your target market; and take advantage of the market you have, which will be people at the school/collage that you attend.
The Student Room kind of sums up what I am trying to say, and covers some of the the basic ideas. (If you want ideas just look on the Young Enterprise website because it has a list of winners; if they won, their idea/team must have been good.)
Back to the story: When I applied to be an MD of one of the groups in school, despite submitting my application as one of the first, already having a clear plan or set of plans and being one of the most committed, I was not selected. My plan included making custom stationary for the school, so all that meant doing was branding a bit of stationary and flogging it to new parents; easy. The other plan I had was novelty memory sticks or "gadgets" buying a selection of typical office gadgets and then selling them to the public. Both of these ideas did not require much organisation, require little startup capital and can be higly profitable if the products that are selected are in demand. To find that out all you have to do is get a few opinions from people in your target market. Again another reletively easy thing to do.
Still, as the school could only afford to submit two groups into the competition and I joined one of them. The two groups were called Recurrence and Velocity, I was part of the Recurrence group.
The two groups had radically different views on things, but both went into in my opinion, the hardest business sector: event organising.
I will explain both groups because they are almost opposites in terms of how successful they were, and it gives a good idea of how good intentions can go somewhere, and also how they cannot.
Recurrence was a group of around 8-10 individuals (numbers fluctuated as I will explain. Our business was going to be event organisation. This is notouriously dificult as it requires pursuading a lot of people to do the same thing at the same time; its like trying to sell a non-existant product because the customer's enjoyment is dependednt on various things that may be out of the organisers control. But we pushed on, trying to raise capital through a set of "share issues" (basically getting people to donate because they weren't real shares)so that we could hire a venue.
When we realised our event timing would come at a similar time to the Summer Ball at school we thought; "hey, why not try and use the existing facilites that will already be ready?" So we asked the Headmaster and got set about creating tickets, a website and getting together the various bands and equipment needed.
As I had joined the group and my only disernable skills I was placed in the IT department under the guidence of a largely ICT novice, my job: Build a website. so I did! It's still there for the world to view. However, although I did what I had been tasked to do, others did not. I think this was due to a lack of a formal agenda at each of our meetings, leading to a lack of accountability. This lack of accountability meant that everyon was expecting others ot do something about the lack of progress, they needed guidence and a kick up the backside.
Our MD a massively overworked, over trusting guy took on way too much of the work and as a result get fed up and left. We aslso had members that just upped and left due to the amount of time this projcet was taking. This left a reduced, unenthusiastic group which had no direction. The group voted and tried to get me to become MD. I said there was a better chance of hell freezing over.
However, as a colective under my guidence the group acheived a few things: A reletively successful trade fair, the production of a company report and a streamlining of processes and meetings. However this was not enough to save us, as the headmaster who had given permission for the use of the facilites for the summer ball, turned out did not have the authority to do so which severly messed up our venue plans: as we didn't have one.
From there it went down hill, meaning we made a total loss of approximately £80 (though non of it was my money/any of my family as I had feeling this would happen so invested no money)
Long story short: people who little clue tried to do something hard, didn't put enough effort and time into the project. Not helped by a lack of consistant leadership.
Well, eventually I will explain what I learned from all this but for now, this post is long enough.
Until next week,
Thanks for reading!
I will explain my involvement in the Young Enterprise Scheme, which is one of the biggest failures to date; and one of the things that I have learned the most from.
The Young Enterprise Scheme was an opportunity that was offered to people in the Lower Sixth (Year 12 or approximately ages 16/17) that enabled them to gain experience in the business world and start their own business under the guidence of a selection of experienced people, namely their mentor, teachers and the organisers.
It gave rise to a variety of ideas from lots of different people in the school. If you Google "Young Enterprise Ideas" (not a very orignal way to get inspiration by there you go) there are even forum discussions on the matter. The most common and quite frankly the easiest method of making money is: buy something in bulk from a wholesaler and sell it to your target market; and take advantage of the market you have, which will be people at the school/collage that you attend.
The Student Room kind of sums up what I am trying to say, and covers some of the the basic ideas. (If you want ideas just look on the Young Enterprise website because it has a list of winners; if they won, their idea/team must have been good.)
Back to the story: When I applied to be an MD of one of the groups in school, despite submitting my application as one of the first, already having a clear plan or set of plans and being one of the most committed, I was not selected. My plan included making custom stationary for the school, so all that meant doing was branding a bit of stationary and flogging it to new parents; easy. The other plan I had was novelty memory sticks or "gadgets" buying a selection of typical office gadgets and then selling them to the public. Both of these ideas did not require much organisation, require little startup capital and can be higly profitable if the products that are selected are in demand. To find that out all you have to do is get a few opinions from people in your target market. Again another reletively easy thing to do.
Still, as the school could only afford to submit two groups into the competition and I joined one of them. The two groups were called Recurrence and Velocity, I was part of the Recurrence group.
The two groups had radically different views on things, but both went into in my opinion, the hardest business sector: event organising.
I will explain both groups because they are almost opposites in terms of how successful they were, and it gives a good idea of how good intentions can go somewhere, and also how they cannot.
Recurrence was a group of around 8-10 individuals (numbers fluctuated as I will explain. Our business was going to be event organisation. This is notouriously dificult as it requires pursuading a lot of people to do the same thing at the same time; its like trying to sell a non-existant product because the customer's enjoyment is dependednt on various things that may be out of the organisers control. But we pushed on, trying to raise capital through a set of "share issues" (basically getting people to donate because they weren't real shares)so that we could hire a venue.
When we realised our event timing would come at a similar time to the Summer Ball at school we thought; "hey, why not try and use the existing facilites that will already be ready?" So we asked the Headmaster and got set about creating tickets, a website and getting together the various bands and equipment needed.
As I had joined the group and my only disernable skills I was placed in the IT department under the guidence of a largely ICT novice, my job: Build a website. so I did! It's still there for the world to view. However, although I did what I had been tasked to do, others did not. I think this was due to a lack of a formal agenda at each of our meetings, leading to a lack of accountability. This lack of accountability meant that everyon was expecting others ot do something about the lack of progress, they needed guidence and a kick up the backside.
Our MD a massively overworked, over trusting guy took on way too much of the work and as a result get fed up and left. We aslso had members that just upped and left due to the amount of time this projcet was taking. This left a reduced, unenthusiastic group which had no direction. The group voted and tried to get me to become MD. I said there was a better chance of hell freezing over.
However, as a colective under my guidence the group acheived a few things: A reletively successful trade fair, the production of a company report and a streamlining of processes and meetings. However this was not enough to save us, as the headmaster who had given permission for the use of the facilites for the summer ball, turned out did not have the authority to do so which severly messed up our venue plans: as we didn't have one.
From there it went down hill, meaning we made a total loss of approximately £80 (though non of it was my money/any of my family as I had feeling this would happen so invested no money)
Long story short: people who little clue tried to do something hard, didn't put enough effort and time into the project. Not helped by a lack of consistant leadership.
Well, eventually I will explain what I learned from all this but for now, this post is long enough.
Until next week,
Thanks for reading!
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