Saturday saw me take the day out and drive up to Warwick university for the Young Entrepreneurs Forum. A gathering of like-minded people interested in being an Entrepreneur or finding out more information and what it’s all about. I was there to deliver a talk ‘Behind The Beans’ giving an insight to how we got started and what it takes to be an entrepreneur.

It is great going to meet aspiring students full of drive, enthusiasm and self-belief about their ideas. Whilst there are those that have their idea already, others are still searching for that light-bulb moment. What I think they all have in common is they all have the opportunity to make a go of it.

Not every idea is going to work but a common phrase that is mentioned is that if not your failing you’re not trying hard enough. It’s true as well you learn far more from your mistakes than you do from getting things right all the time. It’s not just about new ideas or reinventing the wheel but it’s about doing something slightly different, or better than anyone else – with the fantastic customer service in the UK I am sure everyone reading this can think of an experience they’ve had with a company in the last week that could be improved upon by another business.

Another speaker that seems to be getting it right a lot of the time was Edinburgh schoolboy Fraser Doherty of SuperJam. He went into the jam‐making trade at the age of 14, after his homemade preserves sold well locally.

Now at nineteen, Fraser has won a number of prestigious awards and been the focus of a great deal of media coverage. The product is a range of no added sugar ‘super fruit’ spreads. These are made from the most nutritious fruits around such as blueberries and cranberries and are sweetened with grape juice rather than sugar or sweeteners. Amazingly Fraser went into an industry that existed for hundreds of years and has been able to do extremely well selling over 500,000 jars in the last year. It was great to hear his story first hand along with the creation of the SuperJam foundation which is about to launch it’s first tea parties for the elderly all supported by Waitrose his first big national distributor.

Overall it was a great event, not only to share our experiences and help to inspire others but to meet students and other speakers a like - not to mention studentbeans.com fans that share their favourite offers with us.

Feel free to contact us if there is any event you want us to speak at.

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?