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It All Begins…

My poor neglected blog, I am sorry for leaving you for so long. I know nothing will make up for it like a few regular posts in the next few days.

So I have started my first placement at Love Creative and it is proving to be a fantastic although very busy experience.
Some of my Manchester Masters colleagues are complaining that they do not have enough work to do, and yet here I am, 4 projects, and a few more if I manage to get the first few done.
Despite the elegant chaos that is the work within an agency, I find the informal communication lines and collaboration between people of various functions quite a wonderful way for a business to work. The fact that it does work so well here is a mental note for me and any entrepreneur who might be tempted to start a business using some traditional organisational structure.
The buzz all around me is Social Media and I was not surprised to find out that one of my main projects would be related, and suddenly I’m off to after-work workshops, tweeting with industry leaders and reading case studies of successful use of SM within organisations (e.g. BT and IBM). Tomorrow, Chris and I will hopefully create a so-called “Task Force” which will assist me on this project.
Anyway, better get back to work.
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Erasmus Entrepreneurs

I recently came across a very interesting opportunity, which I recommend all 3rd year student who are finishing with their studies (for now), should have a look at.

All around me my friends are struggling to find a job. I remember thinking, I want to be an entrepreneur, despite all the risks associated with taking on this career. These days, looking at how many people lost their jobs in the world of investment banking (and in many other industries as well), I think to myself, being self-employed, now there’s one job you can never get made redundant from.

So here is an opportunity which allows you to travel, be entrepreneurial and get paid to learn from other entrepreneurs. The Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs Programme allows you to go to another country in Europe for a period of your choice (1-6 months) to work alongside (not FOR) another entrepreneur who is an industry you are interested in. While doing this the programme pays you a maintenance grant of up to 1,100 euros – not an enormous amount of money, but you’ll have time to work a part time job as you won’t be at the office 9-5.

I am considering applying to this programme for the summer months of 2010 – thinking of the experience as a paid-internship in a country of MY choice, to learn how to be a successful businessman – BRILLIANT!

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Los Angeles here I come!

Every year Manchester Business School send 8 students to compete against the best business schools in the world in what is called a “case study competition“.

In such a competition you are given 24 hours to read through a pretty thick report on some company, analyse their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and then propose a corporate and marketing strategy using the latest business models and with supporting financial information – think of it as what consultants get paid millions to do in several weeks, we have to do in 24 hours. No one sleeps, and 24 hours later your team has to present to the directors of that company and then get grilled with some hardcore questions.

In preparation our team will meet every Wednesday this year for 5-7 hour sessions where they are going to teach us some really cool stuff – how to talk to large crowds, how to use our voice and stage presence, how to answer corporate questions, working under extreme pressure, analysing company data, preparing effective presentations and a lot more. This is going to be really useful stuff and I am super excited.

What’s even more awesome is that they pay our flights, accommodation and once the case study competition is completed, we get to party even harder than we worked. LA… Los Angeles… the city of Angels… CALIFORNICATION!!!

I’m excited, can you tell?!