As part of Medical Supermarket’s charitable Give a Day Scheme which sees our employees helping our local community, our founders, Nick and Udhi worked with Young Enterprise for one of their Business Workshops at the Chiltern Halls Academy.
Both Nick and Udhi took part in Young Enterprise when they were at school and so this is a charity that is close to their hearts.
For those who don’t know, Young Enterprise is the UK’s leading enterprise and financial education charity. They give young people – from all backgrounds – the opportunity to realise their full potential through a range of practical enterprise programmes, from one day masterclasses to year-long projects. Young Enterprise empower young people to learn, to work and to live. It was at Young Enterprise that both Nick and Udhi learnt some of the skills you need in business, especially around knowing your customers and how to influence people.
We turned up at the impressive Chiltern Halls Academy and met Jackie the YE Manager for the region as well as the 7 other voluneers for the day all of whom have fantastic business experience. Each volunteer was in charge of 10 young people and the first exercise for the day was exploring the “elevator pitch”. Surprising difficult to talk for 1 minute about ourselves without waffling or running out of things to say. We went round the group a couple of times and by the end of the session our personal pitch had hugely improved and if any of us was stuck in a lift with Richard Branson, we’d know just what to say.
Next up was an exercise looking at how we as individuals define success. Be it money, love or health it was interesting to see how each person is motivated by and defines success differently. This then led onto an exercise looking at who we find successful in the community and it was fantastic to see so many voted for one of their own classmates. The reason being he was a Taekwondo UK and World Champion Under 17, impressive stuff!
The groups then had to brain storm a business idea and explore all the aspects of how to start the company. They looked at what problem the product would solve, who would buy it, how much for, how much profit they would make, how they would sell it, how they would advertise it. They were only given a few hours to do all of this, before the daunting task of presenting their business and product to the whole year group in front of the “Dragons Den”. Eight groups pitched their ideas and the winning Business and Presentation were chosen.
To see these young people passionate about their idea and bursting with pride when they spoke about it to their school was a brilliant feeling. The great thing about Young Enterprise is that it makes the connection between school and the world of work, enabling young people to develop the knowledge and attitudes they need to succeed. Even after just one days session you can see the group gained experience in Communication, Teamwork, Problem-solving, Creativity and Resilience and we’re both excited to take part in the next event.
