Leaving Lowestoft at 5.30am, I was most anxious to ensure that my early start was going to be worth it. Upon arrival at The Royal Albert Hall, I knew I was not going to be disappointed. The organisation was spot on with 2000 delegates arriving, and a sense that all attending were impressed by the obviously hi-tech presentations we were going to receive.
A strange day today - with the good news including that Jamie Murray-Wells has been awarded the Queen’s Award for Enterprise and at 26 is the youngest ever recipient. Jamie is a great example of someone who saw a gap in the market and made his idea happen, entering an established high street market with big players who weren’t too pleased with his business model which took business away from them!
My final stop last week on the Tenner Tour was at Orton Longueville School in Peterborough. Enterprise veterans they may well be, but could they rise to the tenner challenge?
Yes! I hear them all cry! Despite having only started the challenge last week due to a whole week of school closures because of the snow, plus half term break the following week the business ideas and creative juices were flowing with participants keen to start ventures that could get off the ground immediately and get them on their way to make their first profits.
The first stop on the ‘Tenner Tour’ was at Sandringham School in St Albans and boy did they set the standard!
The participants, who were in years 7 - 12 began by pitching their business to me in 60 seconds.. outlining what their business did, who their audience was, how they had used their £10 and what they were doing with profits they had made.
Afterwards, they had to come up with the 3 unique selling points of their venture and then use them to write a press release or advert publicising their ventures.
As the sun set on Tenner Month I dashed accross the country to fit in some last minute visits.
On Thursday I was called down to City Hall, London, not for a telling off from Boris but to help Acland Burghley school dish out bananas.
With the help of Mr. Andreas, the boys from Fruit 2 Go has secured 3 boxes of bananas and a prime spot next to the canteen. They were offering bananas to office workers in exchange for a donation to Diabetes UK.
Don’t look to the Square Mile for budding business success - the real talent is at City of London Academy, Islington!
MYM visited the academy yesterday with campaign Ambassador, Vincent McKevitt. Vincent’s business is valued at £10m and has been built up over just three years. He is The Salad Man and he has set up a chain of healthy-eating cafes called Tossed.
Vincent’s business experience was offered to students who are taking part in Make Your Mark with a Tenner, and his knowledge came in really handy because lots of their businesses are based on catering and the food industry. Businesses include a very entrepreneurial Year 7 student who has started making and selling his own popcorn. Yum!
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…
Chocs away
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!
It is Valentines weekend, which is a gift for enterprising people: sing someone a song, sell roses or do what Hugh Fernley Whittingstall would do and cook Heart and Tongue Stew…
It is half term in many schools this week which means students have a whole week away from classes to make their profit. Tenner Tuesday Newsletters will still be going out - sign up on the Tenner site.
I’ve been putting my promotional skills to use with Bus Slogan generation:
try it yourself at http://ruletheweb.co.uk/b3ta/bus/
Have a good weekend!
I just had a chat to a lovely teacher from Biddenham Upper School in Bedford who told me that, despite being hampered by that pesky snow, her students have planned all sorts of exciting Tenner activities - ‘ladies lunchtimes’ (offering hand massages and pedicures!), a smoothie stall and (a guaranteed money spinner) valentines roses!
I wonder how many other canny Tennerers have made the most of the commercial opportunity that is otherwise known as Valentines Day?!
Good luck to them and I hope they let us know how they get on!
So, it’s the 10th day of Tenner month and Tori James, the Challenge & Club Manager at Make Your Mark has been busy running around the Make Your Mark office in London making sales for her Tenner business. Here’s what has happened so far……
Day 1 – Tori uses her £10 to order 16 postcards from an online photo printing service. Tori is the owner of some very unique and stunning photography. She has been on expeditions to some of the world’s most extreme environments, and she holds the record for being the first ever Welsh woman and the youngest British female to climb to the summit of Mount Everest (see www.torijames.com).
I visited the City of London Academy in Islington yesterday. To be honest I was a bit nervous - having started my own tenner project on the same day, there was every chance that the students at the Academy were going to put me to shame.
And guess what? They did! The room was buzzing with entrepreneurial ideas. The Tenner group met after school and started planning money-making schemes. Students quickly realised that they could work in teams and put their tenners together, so one group of boys will be working with £40 start-up cash!
It’s Week Two of Tenner Month. Thousands of young people are using Tenner loans to make profit and social impact and so I thought I’d have a go myself…how hard can it be?
I love baking and so I’ve turned my hobby into an entrepreneurial opportunity. I invested a tenner in flour, sugar, eggs, butter and some pretty chocolate hearts.
I’ve made vanilla cupcakes and heart-shaped biscuits and I’m selling them to the Make Your Mark office. I hope to acheive a social impact by donating any profit to Community HEART, a UK-based charity combatting the legacy of apartheid in South Africa.
When it’s the all-new Tenner map! Oh yes. Hot off the press, this map shows all of the schools and youth organisations taking part in Make Your Mark with a Tenner - all represented by a little dot (Tenner tangerine coloured, naturally!).
Ah, the magic that is google maps!
It’s really awesome to see that Tenner is UK-wide - and even awesomer to see that lots of schools from my old stomping ground of the North East are taking part. Hooray!
Make Your Mark with a Tenner is well under way and so now is the time to start telling the world about all of the exciting Tenner-fied activities you’ve got planned - because the world wants to know!
But where can I do this? I hear you ask. Well that’s simple - on the Tenner forum of course! It’s brand new and dying to hear about the latest Tenner happenings, so please show it some love and get commenting!
If you have a suggestion for a new forum topic them please send it on through to [email protected]
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.
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