Make Your Mark Blog

An interesting response to a Telegraph article here.  Apparently there are huge numbers of young people doing absolutely nothing.  Are there really huge numbers of people who will happily spend their lives doing nothing?  Should we just let them do it?

The article, and the Government define ‘doing nothing as ‘not in education, employment or training’.  Is that fair?  Aren’t there lot’s of us outside of those institutions who are still busy doing something?

There’s an interesting post at: http://www.lifehack.org/articles/management/bootstrapping-life-five-tips.html which discusses the idea of enterprise through ‘bootstrapping’, ie strarting with nothing and reinvesting everything into your enterprise to build it up organically.  It means you don’t need to get loans or funding, and your business doesn’t grow faster than your cash flow.

It’s an interesting way of addressing the number one question I hear from prospective enterpreneurs "where do I get funding from?".

(Incidently, the phrase ‘bootstrapping’ comes from the idea of lifting yourself up by your bootstraps, and is what computers do when they ‘boot’).

Here’s a poll you can take part in to find the UK’s most inspirational business leaders. http://www.edgeupstarts.org/2007/eu07poll.php

Whilst I accept that age and experience can count for a lot I really hope that this poll throws up some exceptional young business leaders. I’m fed up of seeing Richard Branson and Anita Roddick on these kinds of lists. I don’t dispute that they are successful and that we can learn a lot from them. But I do think that young people need to hear about new business role models. So if you know someone young and inspirational please do nominate them!