In through the outfield

6 February 20087 January 2013

Rasheed Ogunlaru and his Zest for Business

One of our partners at the Business & IP Centre is Rasheed Ogunlaru who delivers a regular workshop called Boost Your Business.

“It will help you develop the three keys – vision, belief and action – to success, confidence, balance, fulfillment and growth in your life and business. Creative, motivational and practical, it’s ideal for anyone running a business or wishing to. It will enhance your success and performance whether you’re a sole trader, entrepreneur, manager or small business owner.”
I was fortunate enough to attend a previous session and got a lot out of it.

Now Rasheed has got together with Nicole Cohen founder of the Marketing Gym to produce a book A Zest for Business which shares the recipe for starting, succeeding and avoiding the pitfalls of life as a small business owner. It highlights that vision, planning, belief and action and staying the right side of the law are the key ingredients to success and the key areas where most businesses fail.

The launch of the book is taking place in the Business & IP Centre on 27 February from 6 to 8pm.

The authors have also launched their own blog which looks really good.

24 January 2008

greentomato eco kits for a greener life

Once again Springwise have come up with a brilliant idea. This time it is greentomato eco kits which sell for a reasonable £9.99. They describe the kit as an essential starting point for people who want to live greener lifestyles but don’t know where to start.

The kit includes a range of items designed to make a quick and simple impact on your enviromental impact.

As you can see below they have strong set of principles.

At greentomato, we don’t believe in producing something unless it will have a positive net effect on the environment. That’s why each item in the kit obeys the following four basic rules:

1. Universality
Wherever you live, whatever you live in, you should be able to use every item in the kit. If you already have one of the items, DON’T THROW IT AWAY! You can still use it – to give to a friend, relative or even your neighbour. There’s no doubt we could throw away much less, and whilst we’re at it, maybe even chat a little more with our neighbours.

2. Net environmental benefit
Of course it consumes resources to make everything in the kit, but this rule ensures that the energy and waste benefits of each item is significantly greater than the energy and resource cost of manufacturing it. Not to mention the item’s influence on general awareness and behaviour…

3. Low cost and / or saving you money
We think that £9.99 is a pretty good price for all this, which is only possible because we have selected items that are good value for money. They also actually save you money – £50 per year for the average household and more than £100 if you use the items well and follow the message of living a low waste lifestyle.

4. Simple to understand and install
Fiddly things are annoying, which is why all the items in the greentomatokit are easy to understand and easy to install. If there’s anything you don’t understand, please feel free to drop us a line using the feedback form.

22 January 200818 December 2012

Mark Prisk at the British Library Business and IP Centre

Mark Prisk the Shadow Minister for Business and Enterprise came to visit the Business & IP Centre on 11 December and was suitably impressed. For his visit we were able to introduce him to Dee Wright of The Hairforce, one of our ‘success stories’. She made a big impression on him as can be seen on the Conservative Business Relations website.

Mark Prisk Meeting Dee Wright

21 January 2008

Broadcast your invention to the world

I was recently contacted by Roger Nettleford who I met at the Business Startup show at Olympia in last year.

He is the founder of www.uploadideas.com an online video business start up site which allows members of the public and entrepreneurs to broadcast their business ideas or inventions using a short video.

The site is still being developed but Roger believes that there are many people who have a great idea or invention but don’t have funds for marketing. He sees the site as YouTube meets Dragons Den, because potential investors are alerted once a video or webpage of interest is uploaded to a selected subject area. He sees this site as a catalyst for business start up assistance and innovation and expects to add ‘How to’ business advisory videos in the future.

Uploadideas

6 January 2008

tellyAds – an archive of UK television adverts

Another great find for those researching television adertising and consumer tastes courtesy of Phil Bradley’s blog.

As they say on the tellyAds website;

“Why sit through hours of telly just to catch your favourite ad? We’re collecting as many current UK commercials as we can, so you can watch the ones you like when you want to watch them.”

They currently have over 5,666 adverts to date, including such classics as the Go To Work On An Egg series featuring Tony Hancock, and my current favourite musician Regina Spektor.

However as they seem to be concentrating on recent ads they don’t currently have any of the Cadbury Smash classics from the 1970’s, recently voted the most popular UK ads of all time.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=zbU2PY8PI9w]

2 December 200718 November 2012

Teenpreneurs – Inspiring Entrepreneurs

I have finally found time to catch up on the events I attended during the hectic Enterprise Week 12-18 November.

The Teenpreneurs event was fantastic with Fraser Doherty, founder of Superjam, Emily Cummins, inventor of the solar-powered refrigerator, Ben Way, serial entrepreneur and founder of The Rainmaker, Wilson Chowdhry, CEO of AA Security.

The most memorable story was from Ben Way who recounted the time when venture capitalists knocked on his door wanted to know how much money he wanted to start a web shopping comparison site. His mind racing but with a cool demeanour he asked for £25 million. The investors said that was the amount they had to offer, so the deal was done. Even more remarkable was that Ben was 17 years old at the time. However with the bursting of the dot com bubble of the late 90’s he ended up with nothing. On the same day he appeared in the Sunday Times Rich List under Robbie Williams he could not afford to buy a tube ticket.

The most impressive speaker was Fraser Doherty who had begun experimenting with business ideas from a young age. By 14 he had persuaded his Gran to share her jam secrets with him and soon started making it himself. He is now 18 years old but came across as the most mature person in the building that evening.

He described some of the ups and downs of his business progress, including having to go right back to the drawing board after Waitrose rejected his initial brand and packaging.

Fraser has a blog to enable us to follow his remarkable career.

13 November 2007

The Future Face of Enterprise

I greatly enjoyed attending the The Future Face of Enterprise – Policy Summit 2007, part of the launch of Enterprise Week which this year was hosted by The British Library.

There was a good range of speakers including three representatives of government:

Rt Hon John Hutton MP, Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform
Jonathan Guthrie, Enterprise Editor, Financial Times
Ben Verwaayen, Chief Executive, BT
Lucy Neville-Rolfe, Executive Director, Tesco Plc
Joanna Shields, President, Bebo
Phil Hope MP, Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office
Rt Hon Stephen Timms MP, Minister of State for Competitiveness, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform.
Farzana Baduel (Founder, TaxClaim),
Julie Meyer (Founder and Chief Exec, Ariadne Capital),
Maive Rute (Enterprise and Industry Directorate General, European Commission)

Ben Verwaayen gave an impressive unscripted talk emphasising the global nature of business and how this gave opportunities for both developing economies such as India as well as mature economies such as ours. Technology meant that geography was no longer a barrier to employment opportunities. Several of the speakers mentioned that London is now the leading city for international business and finance. The positives that immigrants bring to our society (they are far more likely to set up in business) were also contrasted to the negative press they have been receiving recently.

Joanna Shields (originally from the U.S.) told the audience that she was shortly to take up British citizenship. This led to muffled laughter from the audience which I felt gave a fascinating insight into the British psyche. The same comment in the U.S. would have led to loud applause and cheering.

Perhaps most impressive of all (and I find that young entrepreneurs often are) was Farzana Baduel the Founder of TaxClaim. She was amazingly confident and poised. Her main message was just go for it, and don’t listen to those who would counsel caution.

Matthew Gwyther editor of Management Today led a very lively discussion on a range of issues but focussing on challenges for women entrepreneurs.

From left to right:
Farzana Baduel (Founder, TaxClaim),
Julie Meyer (Founder and Chief Exec, Ariadne Capital),
Maive Rute (Enterprise and Industry Directorate General, European Commission),
Stephen Timms (Minister of State with responsibility for Enterprise, BERR),
Phil Hope (Parliamentary Secretary with responsibility for Social Enterprise, Cabinet Office), Joanna Shields (President International, Bebo)
Lucy Neville-Rolfe (Corporate and Legal Affairs Director, Tesco).

7 November 200718 November 2012

Levi Roots and his Reggae Reggae Sauce

Once again our Inspiring entrepreneurs events proved to be geniunly inspiring. For me the most surprising speaker at our recent Winners 2: The rise and rise of black British entrepreneurs event was Levi Roots.

He is a reggae musician, chef and entrepreneur, who achieved fame after appearing on the BBC’s Dragons’ Den looking for funding for his ‘Reggae Reggae Sauce‘.

He was a great speaker and joked about how he had slayed his person dragons and now had two of them on a leash. He also talked about the 12 years he had been producing his sauce before striking lucky on the Dragons’ Den.

Videos of all of the speakers have just been put up onto our website.

5 November 200718 November 2012

Crazy Coffins – thinking outside the box

Crazy Coffins have proved that by ‘thinking outside the box’ (apologies for the appalling pun) you can discover a whole new area of customers in what might appear to be a dead end business (oh dear…)

It all started in 2000 when a fan of the Red Arrows asked to be buried in a model fighter. They constructed a plane with folding wings and a cockpit casket. The word began to spread and after a being featured in the Sun newspaper the phone didn’t stop ringing for three months. Now they are even exhibiting their coffins as art at the Museum für Sepulkralkultur in Kassel, Germany.