Last week studentbeans.com underwent a number of exciting developments. This included the release of the much anticipated Bean Board - which lets student from across the UK share useful information on local and national deals, discounts and free stuff that fellow students will find useful and valuable. This powerful addition to the studentbeans.com platform will further enable users to stretch their student loan and gain even more from their university experience. It’s very early days yet but it’s great to see the board already getting a healthy number of valuable posts and we look forward to this continuing.

In addition to the bean board, we released a new homepage portal template which enables easier access to the diverse studentbeans.com content - as you will see the local portal now offers a snap shot of local offers, local bean board content a selection of competitions - my personal favourite at the moment is win a skiing holiday in Vald’Isere, and easy access to the studentbeans.com market section, which offers a unique selection of online retailers that will help complement student life. The portal will also house a number of additional features which are yet to be released so watch this space for further updates.

Finally, studentbeans.com has also just released a West End theatre discount website - where you can save up to 50% on West End shows. In only a week you guys have snapped up loads of tickets so I’m glad to see you’re enjoying that. The ticket site is actually also available to non-students so feel free to spread the word to family and friends!

Have a good week!

So as Enterprise Week 2007 came to a close I met some fantastic people who all contributed to making this week a success. Tuesday at Thames Valley University saw me being interviewed by the FT so a short video for their website click here to view it. Enterprise week was all about encouraging people with Ideas to Make them happen - and if you didn’t have an idea to start to think what might be possible.

On Friday morning I was invited to the launch of The Make Your Mark Tool Kit in central London. It was a fantastic event with people from all different parts of Business - MPs, PR and the media. The highlight for me was hearing Eugenie Harvey speak - Co-Founder of We Are What We Do the organisation behind the book Change The World For A Fiver a brilliant book, you might have guessed, that costs £5 - and has 50 practical Tips on what you can do to Change the World. By each of us doing our bit we can all make a different. I came across the book shortly after it was originally launched in 2004 - they hope to sell their millionth book by the end of this year. Hearing Eugenie speak was inspiring, her energy and passion for the movement they have created and the impact they are having. Click here for a recording on Delicious Ambitious to hear Eugenie for yourself.

What are you going to do to make a difference?

As I have been travelling up and down the country attending several different careers fairs for students I have been amazed and intrigued by the power and draw that our free sample packs of jelly belly beans have had on attracting students to our stand and website.

It is a well know fact that students love most things free, cheap or at discounted prices, all of which fall nicely under the umbrella of studentbeans.com. With this I new our jelly beans would go down well with the students, just how well I wasn’t quite prepared for. Whilst most other stands were offering freebies in the form of pencils, rubbers and if you were lucky a stress ball or chocolate nothing drew in the masses like our jelly beans! Students would try all different tricks and tactics to get there hands on one extra pack, pretending they hadn’t already been to our stand or signed up to the website earlier.

As the day drew on and our supply of jelly beans shortened there demand became greater. It wouldn’t just be the students who had caught wind that we were distributing jelly beans, now other graduate recruiters were trying to trade off their freebies for a pack of jelly beans. I was more than happy to supply them with there share of beans along with many organisers of the event who were easily “paid off” to help me out in return for the odd bag or two! Little did I know just how useful the jelly beans would be to me. I started to wonder where it would leave me once my supplies had run out, luckily we had some great voucher flyers to also offer the students and quell the demand for beans. Most importantly many of the students seemed extremely excited and interested by a number of the offers on our website so were more than happy to sign up, with or without there jelly beans!

If you have missed out on getting a pack of jelly beans don’t worry you can win a years supply of jelly belly beans in our competitions section and I still have a couple more fairs to attend across the country! Just need to make sure I don’t eat them all when I’m stuck in traffic on the M1 coming home to London.

The fourth annual Enterprise Week starts today, with over 5,000 events and activities taking place throughout the UK across the week – a massive 61% up on last year. It has involved a massive collaborative effort with 1,893 different organisations officially registering events, with support from many more.

So what are we doing to Make our mark? On Tuesday I’ll be a Judge at Thames Valley University along with Alex Tew who set up www.milliondollarhomepage.com and another fellow entrepreneur. This should be a great day with local students having to pitch their ideas to us to be in with a chance of winning £150. The winners will go forward to a national final, where they’ll compete to win £2,000 plus a package of Microsoft products to help them get their business underway.

Wednesday I’m down at Brighton University speaking at Beepurple’s Enterprise Week event Reality Cheque running interactive Q & A sessions along with Speed Networking which is a bit like speed dating for those that have been!

Friday sees me do an assembly for a school in North West London – so why is all of this so important? Well, being an entrepreneur is probably one of the most varied and challenging experiences you might choose to do. So many people end up working in jobs they don’t enjoy and let their dreams disappear - you have a choice and the question is what are you going to choose?

As a team we are creating something new and different, it is fantastic to look back over the last year and see how much we have grown as a business whilst there is always so much more we want to do. If you’ve got any ideas of what else you’d like to see us to let us know!

Having an idea and making it happen is what Enterprise Week is all about – celebrating innovation and people that are making a difference. What are you doing? What can you do to make your mark?

Advertising in the student market can be quite challenging. If it was easy there would be lots of studentbeans.com’s. In order to increase our visibility within the market so that students hear about us we use all sorts of mediums.

We’re not currently using TV campaigns yet but if we did it would have to be something like the latest Guinness advert.

Called Tipping Point, the 90 second ad was shot in the Argentianian village and shows dominoes toppling suitcases, oil drums, fridges, cars and flaming hay bales.

You can check it out here: (more…)

We’ve been getting a lot of feedback from students across the country on ways in which we can develop studentbeans.com. Taking this on board we have been developing an innovative user generated content platform that will enable students from across the UK to share and access an even greater number of student deals, discounts and offers.

Students will soon be able to share their own tips with their peers on such things as the best places to buy mobile phones, limited time supermarket offers, great travel saving ideas and where to get some great freebies.

We are currently testing the new application, code named ‘blue banana’, and it will role out across the studentbeans.com network in the next few days. Watch this space for more information.

Backpacking rocks! You can go to the most beautiful places in the World, expand your mind, meet some incredible people and try some amazing new things. But if you’ve never gone away before, or are planning a new trip, it could be a bit daunting - so I thought I’d offer some travel advice. Here are my top 5 tips for backpacking that I picked up after spending over 2 years on the road.

1. Don’t plan too much

It’s tempting to plan your trip or gap year down to the smallest detail. But as I see it, part of the fun of travelling is being flexible. You could be sitting on a beach chatting to someone who says “Hey, you’ve got to go here…” or “I’m going to check out wherever. Come along…”. It’s really cool to just change your plans and tag along. Spontaneity is the key. Of course, the degree of flexibility you’ll have depends on the amount of time you’re on holiday for. So that brings me on to… (more…)