Enterprise week your fired!

Enterprise week took place over a period of two weeks stretching from 9th November to the 27th of November 2009. The theme for enterprise week was to inspire and encourage students to express their ideas and to encourage them to turn into commercial success.

Enterprise week consisted of major talks from starting up your own business to the importance of social technology but what did Enterprise week really mean to me oh yes the Apprentice Challenge I just wish I could add some theme music in after I said that something to emphasise the immense event that is the apprentice challenge. To summarise for all you that are not familiar with this event it is ran in the style of of the popular TV show The Apprentice. I am not going to summarise the Apprentice for you if you don't know the show hang your head in shame I will give you one clue In the form of this picture.If you still don't get continue to hang your head in shame thanks. The apprentice challenge was there to test your business planning, marketing, time management, pitching, negotiation and selling skills. It consisted of twelve teams varying in group sizes from two to six with only one winner. Are team was 3 three, 3 boys 3 girls still a bit of a lame name in my view but still as I didn't want to rock the boat so to speak I went with the motto a happy team is a hardworking team!

On November the 9th we were ordered by the lovely Ruth to attend the Grand Plaza Hotel in Marlow Buckinghamshire were each 12 teams were to be randomly selected in a hat as to which sponsors they would have for the event. The Grand Plaza was lovely especially impressed with the free nibbles but more so the wine. 3 three were paired up with Dreams Ltd the International bed company which in my view was a result as the team they sponsored the year before won the event. After a brief chat with are sponsers Matt and Sarah we were given £50 to go buy some doughnts.



Challenge 1- The first challenge took place on November 9th 2009 form 11:00 till 15:00 this challenge is to create the most profit from selling doughnuts. Now you no why they gave us £50 for doughnuts. We sourced are doughnuts from a local cake factory and were given a pitch prior to the event in the Eden Centre High Wycombe each team. The nine teams with the highest profit then went through to the second challenge. Still drunk from night before I felt confident with my selling skills and with encouragement from my team and the man the myth the legend Patrick Zinga myself and the team resorted to local market selling tactics i think some of my catchphrase as goes: "Biggest Doughnuts in town, If you've had bigger ladies Ill be shocked" or my personal favourite "Best doughnuts in town if your not satisfied you can come personally slap me in the face" if that didn't work I just shamefully referred to singing simply the best by Tina Turner.

At the end of the day after selling all our doughnuts we made a rough profit of £70.00 which meant we were one of the eight teams that went through to the next round finishing 3rd overall.

Chalenge 2- The overall task was to make the most profit from a stall situated in Eden Shopping Centre in High Wycombe on the Saturday 20th November 2009 09.00 – 17.00.

However, the first part of the challenge was to pitch are proposed products and approach to Eden Management. This will take place on 17 November at 18.00 in the Management Centre at Eden. We where marked on the following:

· Presentation skills

· Business planning

· Marketing

· Project Management

· Selling skills

Six teams of the eight teams where selected to go forward to the second stage (3 three being one of the of course), which was to set up and run are own market stalls. Are team were then provided with an additional £200 on top of what we already had made from the previous challenge to create and sell a product or a service. The three teams with the highest profit were to progress to the third and final challenge.

We decided to go with the theme of little presents filled with sweets using Christmas as are hook for people to by them for loved ones as we were approaching the festive season. But like any ingenious idea it has it problems, as were team we each provided pacific roles not mentioning any names (TOM) but some people didn't take these roles as seriously as other people. Which resulted on the day not having any boxes to put our sweets in this meant spending most are budget on fancy shiny boxes n ribbon from Wilkinson's well as fancy as you get for Wilkinson's stores anyway. Although on the day we had Santa suits and decided to sing festive songs to get people in the mood due to the mix up in the boxes we made a loss and were therefore ousted out of the competition oh no not by Alan Sugar in a fancy board room but from some equally grumpy old lady in a small office who counted our money and sent us on our way.

Looking back on enterprise I felt it was great learning curve for me as individual I learnt about organisation, team leadership as I did take on a team leader role, sales and just how easy it is with a slight bit of determination and small amount of money how easy it is to make money if you really set your mind to it. Overall I really enjoyed my time in enterprise week and consider it a great success bring on next year Im going to show that grumpy old lady who the man is. Peace out hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!