Entrepreneurship, Creativity and Innovation
My day of inspirational business lessons
Despite not really being a morning person my day started rather early as my alarm woke me up at 5.30am. I caught the National Express from Southampton to London Victoria coach station at 6 am. Three hours later I arrived at my destination; The Business and IP Centre, situated right next to the Kings cross tube station which is easily accessible from Victoria tube station via Victoria line. Once I caught the Victoria line I didn’t need to change tubes and arrived straight at Kings cross. Once I arrived, I made myself familiar with the Business and IP Centre.
The day started with the beautiful and very inspirational Emma Jones who started her first business at the age of 27 and sold it 18 month later. She now runs Enterprise Nation which she launched in 2006. With more than 100,000 visitors each month it has become the most popular site for home business owners in the UK.
Emma spoke about her experience in Business and gave amazing advice to all of us. She invited some guest speakers who have been visitors to this start up weekend themselves not so long ago.
They were all amazing and very inspiring in their own right but I am going to mention the ones which really stood out for me:
The Godmother
She brought so much energy to the room that one couldn’t help but be inspired by her and her story. She left school at the age of 16 and is now one of the UK’s top 10 business advisers. She is GB Entrepreneur of the Year 2015 special merit. You can read her full story her Alison Edgar
Justin Jackson
Justin also appeared centre stage full of energy. He is a creative marketer, innovative PR person, a business advocate and social entrepreneur. He now runs a very successful company called Digitalremit.
TeaHuggers
Emma also invited Esther Thompson from the company Tea Huggers. Esther Thompson had been drinking herbal tea for 15 years and was becoming increasingly disillusioned with the products on the market.
“Often the tea smelt delicious but the taste didn’t deliver….” So in 2013 she launched her business Tea Hugger.
Esther herself came to the IP centre as a new entrepreneur not so long ago. She is a mum of two like myself and started her business from scratch. I found her case study very interesting as I could relate to her.
After listening to so many interesting entrepreneurs, my rather exciting day at the IP centre came slowly to an end. I walked back to the rather beautiful newly designed tube station Kings Cross and headed back to London Victoria. (Newly designed for a sad reason though)
Unfortunately the day didn’t carry on as great as it started….my bus had a 2h delay due to road works and a few accidents on the motorway. My mobile battery slowly seemed to die and my portable charger didn’t work. We finally arrived just before midnight at Southampton University in pouring rain. Me and another girl from the bus were waiting in the bus stop for our taxis to turn up….. sadly no Taxi turned up …. Which seems rather normal for a Saturday night…we were told that there was a 1h wait for the next one…? By that time my phone battery was completely dead so I had no chance calling someone to get a lift home. We didn’t wait long and headed to the nearby take away to ask for help….thanks to the very friendly delivery man from that shop I finally arrived home by midnight….He was so kind to give us a lift.
So that was my Saturday….
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