Weekly Update

Today is the last day of Enterprising Minds! It’s been an amazing four weeks, and we hope you’ve all enjoyed it. We’ve had some fantastic reports from so many of you- it’s great to hear that your business have done so well! So we hope that you all give it a final push today, and help bring these last four weeks to a great end.

Yesterday was our Business Inspiration Workshop at RBS head office. Thanks to everyone who attended, we hope you all had a great time. For those of you who weren’t able to make it, here’s a quick explanation of what happened:

The day was split into four activities, each group having the opportunity to try out a range of workshops and improving their business skills. There was ‘Tell Us What You Think,’ where we had some amazing artistic representations of your experiences of Enterprising Minds. There was ‘The World of Work,’ where NatWest Money Sense gave fantastic insight into what it’s like to work in business. Finally, there was the Barnardo’s Dragons, where groups pitched ideas to our Barnado’s investors. There was also a fantastic tour of the Bank Of England provided by MoneySense NatWest.

We had some amazing posters and pitches to us, and we’re so glad so many of you were able to join, and tell us more about what you’ve been doing since you started back in November.

Even though it’s our last week, we’re still looking for updates and want to know what you’ve all been up to. Would you do Enterprising Minds again? If you went to the Business Inspiration Workshop yesterday, we’d love to know what you thought of the day. What was your favourite activity?

So congratulations to all of you! Thank you so much for taking part, and for helping to raise money for vulnerable children. Comment below, and let us know your thoughts!  

Entrepreneurs Post

Good morning Young Entrepreneurs! It’s the final week of Enterprising Minds, and we hope that it all goes well for you.

As our final entrepreneurs post, we’re featuring another entrepreneur that many of you mentioned as your inspiration in your applications. So we hope this small insight into their lives continues to bring you inspiration!

Sir Richard Branson

Richard Branson is one of the most successful business men in the UK, best known for Virgin group, which has over 400 companies. Richard began his career at just sixteen years old, when he published a magazine called Student. After leaving school, he entered the music industry and began selling records at a cheaper price than the average high street stores. This was a very successful method, and after starting just a mail order business, he opened his first store in 1972.

He then moved onto opening a record label, which many famous bands signed onto, including the Sex Pistols, who no other record label would sign. He signed over his record label to EMI in 1992. His most famous enterprise, Virgin Airlines, began in 1984 and is the second largest British long-haul international airline.

Since then, Richard Branson has become involved in many different projects. These include Virgin Healthcare, Virgin Mobile, Virgin cola and Virgin Galactic, which began in 2004 and will be space tourism company.

He is also known as being a risk-taker, having stated in his autobiography that owning an airline was a huge risk that he couldn’t help but take.  He has made many attempts to beat world records in various forms. These include beating the record for the fastest Atlantic crossing in 1986, and he created the largest hot air balloon, and used it to cross the Atlantic in 1987, being the first person to ever do this.

Richard received his knighthood in 1999 and has published many books including his autobiography, which is an international best-seller.

We hope that his story inspires you to do something unexpected that may seem impossible to you. You never know until you try, and although you may not be successful the first time, you continue to keep trying.

Weekly Update

Good afternoon Young Entrepreneurs! We hope that your third week has gone well. We’ve had some fantastic updates, and we’re looking forward to seeing what you all do in your final week.

Our Business Inspiration Workshop Day in London is next week. We’re looking forward to seeing all of you who’ve signed up on Thursday 8^th. It’s going to be a great day! Unfortunately the deadline has passed for the sign ups, but if you think you’ve signed up and we haven’t got back to you, please do email us.

So let’s see what you’ve all been up to!

The Bellators have had a very successful week, having raised £50 in cake sales which will help fund a gig that is happening next week. We’re really excited to see how this goes, but they are off to a fantastic start!

One of our ambassador groups, Threads have had another great week. By using innovative and interesting ways to attract their customers, including advertising in assemblies, and members of the group encouraging people to come inside and buy as they walked passed. They’ve also tailored their bracelets to appeal to the likes of their target audience:

‘My group think that we have found a niche in the market and we are striving to promote the different styles of bracelets. We have seen an increase in brand awareness and have developed a wide variety of our bracelets to cater to the demands of a wider audience. In aid of achieving this, we now have a range aimed at Harry Potter fans (bracelets in the Hogwarts House colours) and various other themed colours such as that of boy-band JLS.’

This is a fantastic way to attract a new audience, and appeal to the likes of many. We’re really excited to see how they do in their final week! Here is their poster, another great example of how advertising can help aid the sale of your product:

You can also find out more about their product on their facebook page.

Top Brew, another ambassador group have started selling, and it’s going well so far. Take a look at their final product:

It looks great, and we’re excited to see how their last week of selling goes! With only one week to go, we’re excited to see the final result.

Henna Heartz, another ambassador group have done really well, more than doubling their expenditure. This is a great achievement, and shows they’ve invested in their product well. We can’t wait to see how much more they will make in their final week.

Finally, Whizz Kids had a fantastic week, and have sent us some amazing pictures of their event.

Their cards look beautiful, their cakes look amazing and they had some amazing prizes in their tombola! They’ve done a great job of putting their £20 seed investment to use, and really used all their talents in their business.

This week has been a great success for so many groups, so we’re very excited to see what the final week of Enterprising Minds holds. Remember, please do email us with your updates so that we can feature them here, and on our news site.

This week we will be deciding on our award winners. We’re really excited to be presenting them next week! To see the categories you could fit into, see our website, and make sure we know how you’re doing. We can only consider you if you’ve been keeping us updated, so we know how you’ve met the criteria. Remember you can always email, tweet us at @EntMinds or find us on facebook. 

Comment below and let us know your thoughts!