Make Your Mark Blog

The Independent on Sunday published a ‘Happy List’ this weekend - encompassing the top 100 people who who make Britain a better and a happier place to live.

There is a diverse list of people on there, including I might add, two very odd entries; Thomas the Tank Engine and Simba (a dog). They are clearly not PEOPLE which I thought was the point of the list.

Anyway withholding those errors there are some good people on the list including entrepreneurs Sophi from Divine Chocolate, Sam Roddick of Coco de Mer and Andrew Thompson of Sign Now. And not forgetting my own personal hero David Attenborough (I love ‘im I do).

As you may have heard on the radio, this week Peter Jones (Chair of Enterprise Insight which runs the Make Your Mark campauign) was asked to call Christian O’Connell on Absolute Radio’s breakfast show, for the “Who’s Calling Christian Competition” to be in with a chance to win £20,000 for a charity of his choice. As a bit of background, the premise of the game is to find celebrities on an impromptu basis and persuade them to call Christian O’Connell.

Well, as for all the negative press and comments about recessions and credit crunches, at the Women in Business event attended by fourteen entrepreneurs and MP, Yvette Cooper in Castleford today there wasn’t a single moan or groan in sight, just positive comments and the most tremendous inspirational stories.

Each person around the table had a different tale to tell and what made it more interesting was that they were so varied and in some cases sparked off a round of giggles – from recession busting ‘oldies’ to decisions between marrying a rich man or getting a job – the job won!

I am a Make Your Mark Ambassador and I was invited to speak to the fashion students yesterday at the Leeds College of Art!

Have you thought of being your own boss, of being an entrepreneur? Maybe you are an entrepreneur. Can you explain it in a video?

The European Commission is looking for videos that explore one of the following subjects: “The entrepreneurial spirit”, “Innovative Entrepreneurship”, “Responsible Entrepreneurship”

For the best video in each of the three categories the European Commission will award a prize of € 3,000, the second best video will be awarded € 2,000, the third best € 1,000.

The producers of the best videos will be invited to the opening event of the European week for small and medium sized enterprises on 6 May 2009 in Brussels, Belgium. Enter here.

Don’t take my word for it (hey I work here) but check out a lovely blog from one of our ambassadors Raj Anand which includes this rather cool pic…

Raj is a fine example of one of our brilliant ambassadors - he spreads the good word about enterprise on social media in particular, he ran a competition in Global Entrepreneurship Week and is supporting Make Your Mark with a Tenner. An all round good egg!

Inspired by today’s Real Business newsletter I thought I’d inspire you with ideas of entreprenurs who could help you celebrate Valentine’s Day (or boycott it depending on your romantic status).

Something to buy for the ladies; a Clippykit bag, La Diosa Jewellery, Lingerie from Ultimo or Pussy Glamore.

A Clippykit bag customised by London school girls.

Something to buy for the men; a fitted suit!, a modern chicken house from the Omlet boys or some cool t-shirts or hoodies from Fifty50.

I’m sure there is more inspiration in our Inspiring Stories section! And pls do let us know your own recommendations.

I regularly run sessions to come up with new ideas and over the years have found a few good ways to do this. Here’s my guide (with all sorts of bits and pieces stolen from other places originally!).

The spirit of creative sessions

• Make them open
• No blackhatting - no idea is a bad idea at this stage
• All ideas are welcomed
• Don’t expect to come up with the perfect solution - that almost always comes at a later stage outside this session

As a facilitator of creative sessions, you should:

• Ensure they are inclusive

Waking up to snow on Monday I was both excited (hey it’s not every day we get to play in 8 inches of snow) and disappointed because I didn’t want it to dampen enthusiasm for Make Your Mark with a Tenner - our fab new enterprise initiative.

So I decided to combine the two (snow + tenner - was that an Ideas Mashup oh yes) and set a challenge for people to create a Tenner-related snowman. The challenge was set to MYM staff and also via Twitter, where we have 400+ followers all desperate to make a snowman no doubt.

Here at Make Your Mark towers we love a good powerballad. So much so that each and every day we play one at 5.30pm, just so that everyone can sing along to the majesty of 80s soft rock.

Now that Tenner Month is underway we thought we would celebrate by playing a Tenner-themed powerballad every Tenner Tuesday.

It’s a TENuous theme but I’m sure we can do it!

Today’s options are:

• Nessun dorma - the Three TENors
• I’m not in love - TENcc
• TENder - Blur

Hey - it’s snowing and let’s face it, it doesn’t happen often to this scale in the UK (well, not since I was a kid in the late 70’s and 80’s!) So as my children are home with me today with school being closed, we had to do a mercy dash to the shops and buy Jet some cat litter. She is so posh she won’t pee outside when it’s snowing like this! So, on the way, we took the chance to have a snowball fight! I think it’s the first time in my 6 year olds’ life that the snow has been ‘plenty’ enough to actually do it properly!

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

www.makeyourmark.org.uk/ideasmashup

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

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!

I’ve just been reading the latest summary of the Trend Watch briefing, which highlights some trends for 2009.

Number one trend is NICHETRIBUTES, which are attributes / features or additions to existing products, making them more practical for specific user groups. An example is ‘Dots Gloves‘ - knit gloves with metal dots on the fingertips that won’t scratch iPhones, iPods or other touch-screen phones or devices. Hopefully our Ideas MashUp activity for colleges will unearth some of these nichetributes!

Number two is Luxyoury - which is about the consumer defining luxury.