Make Your Mark Blog

Well, nearly.

Tenner month is almost upon us - that’s when thousands of young people around the UK will be turning a ten pound loan from Make Your Mark into a profit. As if the profit wasn’t enough, they’ll also aim to have a positive social impact on their community or even the wider world. If like me you just can’t wait that long for the flurry of Tenner-related news, you might want to check out some Top Tenner Tips from our Make Your Mark Ambassadors. From transport, food, fashion and football, via roses and wheelbarrows, our Ambassadors have a wealth of weird and wonderful ideas to inspire you to take your Tenner further! It’s all in our Tenner toolkit.

I think before today I’d placed enterprise education stuff happening in primary somewhere in my brain as something different from things happening in secondary. But that’s just daft - its just not the case.It’s the same set of skills and attitudes they’re trying to instil even if they’re doing it slightly differently.

We heard today some really great examples from St Matthew Academy, and Ursuline High in London offering a continuous journey of enterprise through the different age groups. We also heard from the Head of Bridgend primary school in Yorkshire who has turned their curriculum upside down based on enterprise skills. In their view its really essential to start enterprising minds young and they’re putting this into practice. Great stuff!!!

Check out Make Your Mark doing a live ideas mashup at their team meeting last week on youtube!

www.makeyourmark.org.uk/ideasmashup

You only get one chance to create a first impression. To make sure it’s the right one, follow these 7 steps that will have people meeting you, liking you and, critically, wanting to do business with you.

1. Be confident – walk into a room with your head held high and confidence intact. This will come across clearly in your posture. Shake hands firmly and look the other person in the eye when introducing yourself. If someone is coming to collect you from a waiting room, remain standing whilst you wait – no matter how appealing the sofa looks!

Student-based company Elevation Networks, in conjunction with Brunel University’s Entrepreneur Society, recently hosted the event ‘Let’s Talk Business’, with six guest speakers advising ambitious students on gaining financial wisdom for personal business ventures.

National celebrity of Dragon’s Den fame Levi Roots made a guest appearance, sharing the story behind the success of his infamous ‘Reggae Reggae Sauce’, currently the second highest selling sauce in the UK. The self-proclaimed ‘dragon-slayer’ offered a heart-felt take on his humble journey from a stall at Brixton market to owning Sainsbury’s fastest ever selling product. Mr Roots is also due to release an album which he proclaims was the inspiration behind his sauce.

The Eastern Region office has had their director’s hat on these past few weeks and we can now unveil our Enterprise Week 2008 in the Eastern Region DVD!
The dvd will hopefully be on the website by the end of next week so watch this space!

Oh how proud I am! I feel enterprise skills are so important to progressing in today’s commercial world. People need to know how to identify a need or spot an opportunity, find a way to do it, tell others about it and be able to turn it into a commercial reality. Our economy needs continual innovation - not just in these ‘gloomy’ times, but all the time.

Here at Make Your Mark HQ we had a fantastic meeting about Entreprenerurial Youth with members from the Youth Sector who are all really excited about the enterprise journey young people from the informal youth sector are about to embark on.

I asked them what they would do with a whole TENNER , you decide on the how enterprising our fellow grown ups ideas are on this magnificent Tenner Tuesday?

Here we go……

• Take a stall at the childrens school fair and sell plants grown in the greenhouse
• Buy seeds to grow flowers and make flower arrangements

Just a quick one-the nice chaps at Business Zone have pinned down the 10 ways Twitter can help promote your business. It’s all very useful stuff and we at Make Your Mark HQ are slightly (very) obsessed with a bit of Twittering so these tips come in super handy.

Diana
PS: We are not the only Twitter lovers out there, take a look at what Stephen-polymath genius-Fry has to say about it…

When the nice fella from Third Sector Lab gave us a chance to post a question to Janis Krums-the citizen journalist who took this picture-we decided to pin him down on the important stuff. Have a read…

I just found the mother of all resources -

The Enterprise Centre for the Creative Arts list of FREE podcasts!!!!

Loads of talks and lectures - particular from Enterprise Week - its got everything from being more confident to branding and starting a business!

Social Enterprise West Midlands is running a trade fair for those looking to start or collaborate on social enterprise.

The social enterprise revolution starts on Tues 10th Feb at Centenary Square, Birmingham from 11:00 and what’s more is that it’s FREE: http://sewm.eventbrite.com

SEWM website: http://www.socialenterprisewm.org.uk

I would like to share something with you: here at Make Your Mark we LOVE our Ambassadors.

Throughout the year our Ambassadors juggle busy schedules running their businesses (sometimes singlehandedly) with helping Make Your Mark inspire young people with their amazing stories. Don’t just take it from me, the stats speak for themselves:

• Ambassadors spoke at over 75 events during Enterprise Week ‘08
• In the last 3 months they have engaged with over 35,000 young people in enterprise activities
• They have committed over 118 days to helping the campaign!

Impressed? So am I!

If the economic gloom is getting you down, why not whistle a jaunty tune, sing everything for the rest of the day, or go to a CBI conference on accessing finance in the recession.

Although it might sound a little dry, if you’re an entrepreneur you really shouldn’t have missed some top speakers answering:

(1) Is there money still available for businesses?
(2) How do you get it?

First up, Anthony Clarke, Chairman of the British Business Angels Association.

Angel investors are a bit like Dragons’ Den – they take a stake in the business for an injection of cash. Unlike the TV series they are usually very nice.

In today’s current climate- a sentence I’m sure you’ve heard a thousand times this week already- the financial worries of the small business are as individual as the owner.
You may have remembered that I Tweeted that the BBC will be following a small group of entrepreneurs over the coming year. They aim to find out how the entrepreneurs are weathering the recession storm and some of the first entries make for interesting reading.

I’ve listed some of the ones that I thought were intriguing but take a look at the rest and let me know what you think…