Enternships Blog
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The Only Way Is The Entrepreneurial WayPosted on Monday 06 February 2012 at 13:41PM by trrpaipai |
Joe Levi is the founder of studentmoneysaver.com, a website that provides students with tips and advice on how to get the most of their student years on little money. We recently visited him in his cute little office in North London to discuss the ups and downs of life in a startup and here's what we got.
So why did I do it?
The idea for Student Money Saver began when I started Manchester University in 2007. I fast realized that being financially independent for the first time at university was incredibly intimidating. For the first time I had to live on a budget much more limited than I was originally used to, manage my bills AND pay my rent. Following a quick Google search, I found absolutely nothing that provided me with the type of assistance that I would have liked and so, I took matters into my own hands. I didn’t exactly have a big budget so the movement started off with a group of like minded folk who helped me to get the website going.
When people ask why I chose ‘the road less travelled’ and decided to opt for entrepreneurship instead of working 9-5, the only answer that no one can EVER argue with is the fact that my job satisfaction trumps that of any investment banker. Making money is obviously a great contributory factor to any career path but whilst most city workers [however successful] still come beneath someone in the office hierarchy, I get the immense pleasure of being in control of my own destiny. To be fair, I think I always knew I would go down this route when as a child, I opted to sell sweets instead of eating them but it is admittedly, not for everyone.
The downside?
The immense fear associated with taking the risk of starting your own company. There is always that niggling doubt that the world will not understand your vision, however, it is this very same vision that keeps you going on those days when everything seems to go wrong. To be honest, hard times or no, I wouldn’t change my choice for the world. Alongside the bad days are good days and sometimes, there are REALLY good days and there is nothing like the deep sense of satisfaction that comes from knowing that your vision has yielded results.
To all those who agree that ‘the only way is entrepreneurship’, my key advice to you is to remind yourself of your vision – DAILY. You may get disheartened but [without sounding to cheesy] you have to keep your eyes on the price.
Well that’s all for now. My next blog will keep you updated on the goings on here at Student Money Saver, so join me on my journey: witness my downfalls and rejoice with me in my successes.
Happy Saving!!
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Are You Ready? Bringing Enterprise In EducationPosted on Thursday 26 January 2012 at 11:46AM by trrpaipai |
Enternships is a big fan of initiatives that bring enterprise and business innovation forward. We love those that involve young people even more and this is precisely what 'Are You Ready?' is all about: a comprehensive programme and campaign to create an urgently needed culture of enterprise in education.
Their approach is to harness ‘enterprise’ as a vehicle for transformation – raising aspirations, developing skills and bringing the community together through schools and colleges to create a more prosperous future. The 'Are you ready?' experience and belief is that young people need to be enterprising, develop an entrepreneurial mindset and have the confidence and ambition to take on the challenges and opportunities of life in the 21st century.
How it all started
It’s been six years since they launched their first enterprise programme and the ‘Ready’ model and ‘Inspire’ enterprise training are now internationally acclaimed. The original project, Rotherham Ready, won the prestigious Enterprising Britain competition for ‘creating a culture of enterprise’ and Rotherham was named the ‘Most Enterprising PlaceinBritain’ 2010 as a result.
The national programme ‘Are You Ready?’ won the StartUp Britain ‘Best Enterprise Support Award’ at the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards in 2011. This project received very good feedback from OFSTED too – after HMI spent a week in 2008 looking at how it inspired schools and colleges to give enterprise education a high priority.
This team believes that education has a key role to play in helping young people prepare for the challenges and opportunities of life in the 21st century and that supporting them to be ‘enterprising’ is a key part of their development. Can't argue with that!
How they do it
The 'Ready' target has a bold and unique take: they target young people – from four-years-old right up to young adults of 19 – to ensure a progressive development of enterprise skills, qualities and knowledge. Attitudes and mindsets are formed at an early age, so it is critical that we start developing enterprising skills, qualities and knowledge in the primary years and ensure it progresses through secondary education and beyond.
The idea is to train teachers to develop enterprise through the curriculum and as part of school culture so that enterprise is not seen as a bolt on – it is seen as an approach to teaching and learning and a way of giving relevance and meaning to the curriculum and school life. The ‘Inspire Pioneers’ tour aims to take this acclaimed training programme around the UK, working with teaching practitioners from Early Years to Higher Education.
The campaign
In November 2011 a campaign was launched and HM e-petition to highlight some of the major challenges faced by young people and our society. The campaign and e-petition call on the government to do three things:
- Make enterprise and entrepreneurship education a key part of all young people’s learning entitlement through the National Curriculum.
- Make enterprise and entrepreneurship education part of teacher training and development.
- Make enterprise and entrepreneurship education part of the Ofsted inspection framework.
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How to accidentally become a Social EntrepreneurPosted on Friday 18 March 2011 at 08:19AM by Will Bentinck |
This week's guess blog is from Will Bentinck a recent graduate who found himself drawn to social enterprise. Here he explains his story of how he 'created his own job' and how his experience as an 'entern' inspired and helped him on his journey as a serial social entrepreneur.
I finished my degree last summer and spent several months job hunting and claiming Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA). This is not an experience I recommend, particularly because I grew out of getting an allowance when I was ten. And it's really boring. I hated it. So, instead of trying to get hired by someone else, I created my own job. The interview was a doddle.
I had quickly got sick of trying to be heard over the cacophony of voices screaming, "Please give me a job! I am keen to work in a dynamic industry, I have dynamic transferable skills and am a dynamic team player!" My CV wasn't perfect (as I kept being told by my very helpful, perfect-CV lawyer friend) and I had to do something worthwhile (I'm not motivated solely by money, much to my surprise); so I set out to do two things: get an internship or three and start my own organisation. Aside: There is ongoing commentary about internships only being for people from wealthier backgrounds because they can afford to work for no money, but you can do internships even when you're claiming JSA (there are some rules) and it is probably the most effective thing you can do for your career other than sleeping with a CEO. (I'm a CEO by the way.) So I went to w4mp.org (Work for an MP) and looked at their job listings (I wasn't clever enough to use enternships.com). I found an internship at a debating website (read that again, it doesn't say dating website). Debatewise.org aims to create crowd-sourced debates and, among other things, use them to influence policy. I applied, went for interview and quickly started peppering my job hunting with some interning at a desk in Shoreditch. Around the same time, a friend of mine introduced me to an idea in a pub.
"I had this idea..." is a phrase I hear a lot. These ideas usually involve monkeys and occasionally spaceships. This idea was a little more far-fetched. Alex (beardy Glaswegian autodidact) wanted to continue the work of Lord Shaftesbury and rekindle the Ragged Schools, the precursor of state primary education. Except Alex wanted to create the Ragged University.
We've all been in a pub or café and found that we've learned something from the person we've been talking to. The Ragged University's primary goal is to expand that experience so that one person is passing on their knowledge to a whole room. It gives a platform for communities to educate themselves, it increases social capital (I didn't know what it meant either), it encourages civic engagement and allows people who would otherwise be distant from education to engage with topics and attitudes they never would have been exposed to. And it's free.
"That's a frightfully good idea!" I thought (I'm quite posh) and the idea quickly turned into action - raggeduniversity.com. If you take anything away from this article other than eye strain, let it be this compound statement: It has never before been easier to start something; it has never before been cheaper to share your ideas with an almost inevitably growing market; it has never before made more sense to take an idea, mix it with some friends and make some entrepreneurial cake. It's quite an experience being part of a team of your friends creating, developing, repairing, adjusting, relaunching, publicising and then maintaining an idea that is so much bigger than you originally conceived. I could write for hours about my experiences with the Ragged University, but I will share only one observation here (please write to me if you want to know of any others). Don't get too big for your boots, but make sure you wear big boots. I'll rephrase that: Implement your idea on a manageable scale, but implement it hard. This is similar to the advice not to bite off more than you can chew, but with the added instruction not to talk with your mouth full.
My internship at Debatewise went well. Debatewise was an entrepreneurial endeavour itself, the brainchild of the brilliant David Crane. His idea got picked up by IDEA, ironically, and after a couple of years of them funding the site, he has now taken over their UK operations. Or rather, our UK operations, because he gave me a real job when we became a charity at the beginning of the year. So internships can turn into jobs too - especially internships with start-ups and entrepreneurs (I think they call them enternships). Blatant plug: IDEA (the International Debate Education Association) UK are hiring enterns right now. We promote informed public debate to help people build more open, participatory societies. There's a massive revamp of our website going on and we need help with all sorts of things, from code to prose. There's a job advert on this very site, so sign up immediately! The Ragged University would have happened without me; IDEA would have a UK branch even if I'd never worked for David; I was just there at the right time and grabbed at those great opportunities. However, the lessons I learned from those experiences (and keep learning) enabled me to substantially contribute to my next project - Levantine Links.
The lawyer friend I mentioned earlier (Ben) went to Syria a couple of summers in a row, to the Syriac Orthodox community in the north east, to teach English and learn Arabic. Ben kept telling me he wanted to set up a recruitment process in the UK to send top graduates out to do the same thing. He kept talking about it. And talking. I kept pushing and pushing him to actually do it and eventually we sat down and started planning.
We achieved more in eight hours that day than I had contributed to the Ragged University in eight months. When we work together, we are astonishingly efficient and productive. I am new to this entrepreneur stuff, I've only been at it since last summer, but I am sure that the following lesson will prove to be the most valuable one I ever learn. Who you work with will define your business, its successes and its failures. So work with people who inspire you with their brilliance, yet acknowledge and defer to your areas of expertise. If you're one of those people, I want to work with you; whether that be at the Ragged University, at IDEA or in Syria. Drop me a line and let's make some cake.
Enternships.com gives you the opportunity to work with other people and learn how to be better at doing your own thing. While you wait for that world-changing idea to come along, you can intern in brilliant buildings, with passionate people, doing awesome activities.
Let's make some cake.
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