ACHIEVEMENTS
My Lucky 600
Under two months and a half I successfully Organised a student event on a thursday night slot for over 600 students with 4 live music performance acts and live djs. This event was one of the most memorable project I embarked on, it was the perfect platform to explore my creativity approcah to consumer behaviour and experimenting freely to solve solution in a very lean approach. What strikes me the most is that I actually never invested (initial capital) in the event at all, instead by capitalising on my network of friends. I got a friend to design flyers and with the help of friends on social media got the word around and the buzz going on. What really mattered was getting the buzz going on and allowed my initial friends to attend the event for free on the conditions of if they can sell 10 tickets in advance and if they sold 25 tickets I would arrange VIP access all night. This dramatically boosted inital sales that funded the event entirely and it was an experience to watch it all come together on the night of the event.
Product Sourcing from China
This was by far one big learning experience that came really handy, I was this young guy all I wanted to do was sell stuff never knew what friegh tax meant or swift code or dealing with a chinese manufacturer to design products to my specification. I remember using AliBaba to source wristband (wristband where cool back then thanks to STAND UP, SPEAK UP campaigns everone had a wristband and i wanted to capitalise on it) and other cool products to sell to fellow students and people in my community. All those late nights calling china it was a learning achievement that I can never forget, looking back at it and connecting the dots with the today of me, it truly shaped me.
My first taste in entrepreneurship aged 19
I can vividly rememeber a guy called Jo standing under the Finsbury park bridge selling all kinds of stuff, what stood out the most was him selling a small circled flag patch that can be clipped on clothes with a magnet and with a simple twist LED flashing lights would turn on for a £1. I saw the potential of the product and I approached him and bough 100 of them for 50p each, I figured if I sold all 100 I would make a cool £50 profit. Invested £50 and took his number and started walking into different pubs by first approaching the landlord/landlady for permision then started to approach customers to sell to them. It was amazing feeling and I managed to go back to Jo 5 times to re invest until he offered me to work together. We visited football home games selling the patches, but as a young guy I didnt know at that time anything about copyright infringement or having trading licences to sell outside football grounds. So once I became more knoweldgeable I stopped my summer adventurous venture and looking back it when I hear the term "Ask Forgiveness not Permission" in the startup community it reminds me of summer 2004.