YCEOM Issue 2 by Young CEO Monthly

YOUNG

CEOMONTHLY 1

ISSUE 2 | FREE

A YOUNG GLASWEGIAN ON AN INDEPENDENT MISSION

INTERVIEW WITH

Melissa Currie A young woman turning things around for herself and her future

Foreword 3 EDITORIAL

editor@youngceomonthly.com Produced by: CEO Monthly Publications Design: GB Designs

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elcome to the 2nd Edition of Young CEO Monthly, the magazine that aims to bring young known and especially un-known business owners from the age of 16-30 to the attention of the public. Firstly I would like to thank you, if you did, for taking time out of your busy schedule to read our 1st Edition and hope that you will enjoy our 2nd one as much or even more. As we all know September was a very important month for Scotland an we thought it would be quite fitting to invite a young entreprenuer from the largest city of Scotland which is Glasgow, to share her journey of becoming financially independent.

Young CEO Monthly is published by CEO Monthly Publications. Opinions and views expressed do not necessarily reflect CEOMP policy. CEOMP accepts no responsibilty for views expressed by contributors. Advertisements and reader offers are not endorsed by CEOMP.

We hope that her story will be inspire you to go on an entrepreneurial journey and above all you’ll share it with your friends and family.

George Boateng Editor

Quote

of the

Month

“An entrepreneur is a leader of excellence, trailblazer and pioneer who constantly brings change to their generation.” Onyi Anyado Multi-Award Winning Entrepreneur

To © All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without written permission is strictly prohobited. Colour transperecies, manuscripts or disks submitted to the magazine are sent at owner’s risk; neither CEO Monthly Publications nor its agents accept any responsibility for loss or damage. Unsolicited material shoud be accomapnied by a stamped self-addressed enevelope.

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Content Page 3 – Foreword Page 4 – Cover Story Page 7 – Business Advice of the Month Page 9 – CEO/Company Profile Page 10 – Classifieds Page11 – Reflections

4 Cover Story

A YOUNG GLASWEGIAN ON AN INDEPENDENT MISSION W it?

hat inspired you to start your 4. Value for money (Oops that’s more business and when did you start than 3!)

In 2010 when sitting up in my hospital bed I had a ‘light bulb’ moment. The thought of being tossed aside at 21 as unemployable due to ill health was hard to take. I had to turn things around for myself and my future...and there was no better time to do it. What was your background before starting your business(s)? Like most teenage girls I always had an interest in hair and beauty. At 16 yrs old I enrolled in night school and during the day I continued in full time education. I tried my hand at other trades but always came back to hair and beauty. This was my first love.

What is your work ethic like? Staying focused, loving what I do.

professional

and

If an investor wanted to invest in your business what would they be investing in? Over the last 3 years I have put my own personal stamp on our ‘one-stop beauty shop’. This young, exciting yet down-to-earth salon is what the customers are looking for. We provide all beauty needs under the one roof. From pamper parties (hen parties to children’s themed parties) to a quiet celebrity haven.

What would you consider your main achievement so far in your business What do you find to be the best thing and personal life? about the industry your business is in? Starting an idea from scratch and The passion! I love the transformations watching it grow into a business - in the that we can create ranging from hair middle of a double- dip recession gives extensions to make up. I like helping me great satisfaction. Also standing clients achieve certain looks and up and being counted amongst the seeing the confidence and enjoyment bigger, more established names in the our end result gives them. business. What three areas do you focus most on Where do you see yourself and your in your business? business in 10 years’ time? 1. On what the client wants, through our consultations. 2. Making sure our client is happy with the end result. 3. Providing a great service

Youth is the future and I hope to train and help others start up in business so I will continue my work with the Princes Trust. More staff bigger premises. I have recently qualified in dog grooming

You need to be 100% “ committed and be ‘in it’ for the long haul, things don’t just happen overnight.

”

Melissa Currie, Glasgow and in the future we hope to open up in a nearby unit to provide our clients and their pets a joint pampered service. What is your #1 advice to another young person thinking about starting their own business? You need to be 100% committed and be ‘in it’ for the long haul, things don’t just happen overnight. If you are serious about going into business get in touch with the Princes Trust. Their advice and expertise is second to none. Be prepared for hard work, sleepless nights but also a great sense of pride and achievement when you can see it all coming together.

+44 (0) 141 357 5511

MacsGlasgow

Melissa with the keys to her

MacsGlasgow

salon in 2011.

www.MacsGlasgow.com

6 Business Advice of the Month

You Just Came Up With A Great New Business Idea - So Now What? by Melanie Haselmayr| CEO of Mevvy – The Next Generation App Store

It might happen when grocery shopping at the supermarket, while you are at the salon getting your hair done, or as you are driving down the road: a new business idea hits you, and it doesn’t let you go! While you might feel the urge to drop everything else and jump on it, you should think rationally about any new business endeavour. How can you test your business idea without going all in right away? What can you do to validate it (that is, confirm that it has potential worth pursuing) while expending the smallest amount of effort, time, and money possible? In this article I present a number of suggestions on how to evaluate your business idea, how to test the market, and where to find your first clients! 1. Determine What Problem Your Solution Is Solving Let’s be frank: there isn’t any product or service that hasn’t been invented yet. So once you get to the computer to start working on your business idea, do not get discouraged and abort your mission once you find out your product isn’t 100 percent unique. Instead, seize the opportunity that lies in the details. You do not need to reinvent the wheel. Use the existing competition to your advantage and use their performance data to better understand the market, the clients, the product, and the price structure. Find out what works for them and where they need to improve — and integrate those elements into your own product! Better yet, focus on improving the way you communicate with potential customers.

Here’s how: instead of presenting a long list of product features, tell your customer what problem your product is solving in one clear sentence. Here are two examples: • “Search and find the best event venues in Miami Beach” • “Your one-stop pilot job search website” Both are clear statements of what each company does, without having to attach any additional information to make their product/service understood. Keep this in mind as the core of your business idea; the very heart of what you are doing and the specific problem you are solving. 2. Lock Down the Details of Your Business Idea Creative ideas rarely come in an orderly fashion. When we are visited by our muse, the details can often flood our brain in the most unstructured way. That’s why, in order to shed full light on a brand-new business idea, you’ll have to organize your thoughts, and the best way to do this is by writing them down. If you’re thinking I’m about to advise you to write a 40-page business plan, don’t worry. Formal business plans are for investors, partners, and other external parties — who often never read the full document. What you need is a simple and concise summary of your business concept, a onepage document that you can refer back to anytime you need to touch base with your original thoughts (be it to stay on

7 track or to alter your path … but we’ll get to this later!). There are a hundred ways to summarize your business idea, and one of the easiest methods is a Business Model Canvas. Whether you use pen and paper or a predrafted version like Business Model Fiddle, this one-pager captures every key aspect and makes you consider each important element of your future business.

website, running ads on Google, and then solely relying on this traffic to validate your business idea. What you need to do is find people who love your product and your company. You need to find people who will choose your brand over another, people who go out and tell others about how great you are. In order to reach this kind of customer, you have to use alternate routes:

3. Embrace the Lean Startup Model Now that you’ve organized all the thoughts around your idea, it’s time to trim down your business concept. Your goal here is to reduce your business idea to its most important core feature (highlight it on your business model canvas!), excluding all features that can be seen as “additional” and can be added on later. The result is your “lean” business concept, a slim version of the fully loaded package you have just assembled.

• Use social media to gain attention for your business idea

4. Build a Simple Website to Measure Interest and Impact In today’s world, many new business ideas are online-driven. A simple but attractive website with some basic marketing around it can help you gauge the potential of your business idea.

All of these efforts combined will help you create not only a solid clientele, but a tribe around your company.

These days you don’t have to write a single line of code to create a website; just use Tumblr or WordPress to make it happen. Both platforms are easy to use, and feature an amazing array of gorgeous templates for you to use — many for free and some for a small fee! 5. Choose the Right Marketing Mix for Your Business Idea Because it is not the main point of this article, but is definitely interconnected, I am going to dip into the topic very briefly: Marketing is what brings customers to you. Your product/service and company what makes customers stay.

Do not make the mistake of launching your

• Give back to the community (that can be in a literal sense such as donating time or money to a good cause). • Identify friends and family who can amplify your marketing messages • Understand the type of customer you have, what they care about, and how you can reach them;

6. Set Goals, Work Toward Them, and Evaluate the Results As much as creating a tribe is probably the ultimate achievement for any brand, business is business, and numbers need to live up to your expectations in order to move forward. Once you’ve got your product defined, your basic website set up, and your marketing plan laid out, don’t fail to determine your business (test) goals. Lastly, Never Stop Changing Sometimes in order to reach your goal you must adjust your course slightly and steer the ship in a different direction. Don’t let that get to you, because getting it right the very first time around is very rare. Also we’d love for you to check out Mevvy’s new website apps.mevvy. com and have you join our Twitter and Facebook community!

Mevvy

MevvySupport

apps.mevvy.com

Business / CEO Profile 9

From a tech visionary to dedicated philantropist B

ill Gates is a technologist, business leader, and philanthropist. He grew up in Seattle, Washington, with an amazing and supportive family who encouraged his interest in computers at an early age. He dropped out of college to start Microsoft with his childhood friend Paul Allen. When Bill and Paul Allen started Microsoft, their vision of “a computer on every desktop and in every home” seemed farfetched to most people. Today, thanks to Microsoft and many other companies, that vision is a reality in many parts of the world, and personal technology is an integral part of society. In 2000 Bill and his wife Melinda officially established the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. They also announced the first round of Gates Millennium Scholars, part of a $1 billion effort to help 20,000 young people afford college over the next two decade. Bill helped launch TerraPower in 2006, a company that aims to provide the world with a more affordable, secure, and environmentally friendly form of nuclear energy In 2008 Bill left his daily job Microsft and stepped down as chairman in 2014 but remains on the board and began serving as a technology advisor. Melinda, Warren Buffett, and Bill launched the Giving Pledge in 2010, a commitment by the world’s wealthiest people to dedicate most of their wealth to philanthropy. These days Bill focuses most of his time on the work he and Melinda are doing through their foundation. People are often surprised to hear him say that this work has a lot in common with his work at Microsoft. In both cases, he gets to bring together smart people and collaborate with them to solve big, tough problems. Bill is gratified to know that the foundation and its many partners are helping people all over the world live healthier, more productive lives. As of September of 2014 Bill Gates’ net worth stands at $80.6bn | £49.9bn | €63.6bn but probably by the time you read this it would have increased.

Adapted from www.gatesnotes.com

10 Classified

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Time To Reflect 11

Does the ‘British’ dream exist? by Victor Azubuike | pensivevictor.blogspot.com

he American Dream; a national ethos of the United States, the belief that anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into, can attain their own version of successes in a society where upward mobility is possible for everyone. Studying the history of the United States it is clear to see why this ideal is so necessary to the makeup of the USA. A land formed by immigrants, from all across the globe, need to be provided with some sort of vision they can equally aim for and acquire in order to spur the competition that is a key ingredient of a healthy capitalist state. I visited the States’ this summer with the emphasis placed on this ideal, and my admiration of it led me to question whether such an ideal existed across the pond. The ‘special’ relationship between the UK and US has been the topic of debate for countless political commentators and economists; yet it seems that the American dream has yet to disseminate to British shores. I say this because despite the fact the UK’s financial services are amongst the top in the world, it is a very small elite sample of our population that are able to reap in the benefits of such industries or if I might say, experience the ‘British’ dream. In most modern capitalist states education is the main driver of meritocracy. Reflecting on the statistics concerning educational attainment and students from low-income areas. 1 in 5 nineteen year-olds are without Level 2 qualifications (effectively the same as ‘5 or more GCSEs or vocational equivalent’); qualifications that many companies are placing as necessary at their respective recruitment processes. This results in most of these students missing out on opportunities to succeed in some of the UK’s most thriving industries. Poverty.org mirrors the same concern, citing: “In a competitive job market, academic and vocational qualifications are increasingly important. Those without qualifications are at a higher risk of being unemployed and having low incomes.” At a quick glance of the top echelons of some of the most prestigious institutions across the UK we can still see the remnants of nepotism and cronyism. It is safe to say that they have always been present in our society. However, the key difference is that with the introduction of globalisation, the competitive landscape of the world we live in today is evolving rapidly. We the British can no longer afford to look upon ourselves as being notably exceptional as we could afford to do few centuries ago; at a time when Great Britain was responsible for much of the scientific and economic breakthroughs taking place. These days have passed, but even as we look to our leaders for guidance to creating a better and more equal societal structure, we see they are cut from the same cloth. With the vast majority of them being millionaires through either property, or inheritance, and are the bastions of family privilege and elitist nepotism. However, it’s not all doom and gloom and it appears there is beginning to be light at the end of the tunnel. There is scope to argue that the ‘British’ dream does exist; as we reflect on the lives and businesses of entrepreneurs such as Lord Alan Sugar and Sir Richard Branson we see that you do not need to necessarily be born with a silver spoon in your mouth to succeed. From Jamal Edwards and his dynamic SB.TV to Jamie Waller and his game changing debt-collecting initiative it’s clear the entrepreneurial spirit has become contagious among a young and energetic wave of entrepreneurs ready to emulate these trailblazers. The British Dream is on its way up, now it’s time we wake up and make this dream a reality.