November Update!
If you're interested in Hire an Arist, you'll want to read this. On our last blog post I had covered our first two days into Entrepreneurial Spark, well 3 months later we now we stand as one of the UK's greatest small-businesses!
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| Here I am with my fellow entrepreneurs at The Pitch 2015 Manchester event! And what an exceptional day it was! |
For those short of time, here is what's happened in a nutshell:
- More publicity! Including interviews, mentions and features, such as the publication, 'Make it Happen', for a charitable cause, where I summarised my thoughts on the key to success.
- Accepted into the Top 100 of the UK's largest national small-business competition, The Pitch 2015
- Hire an Artist was exhibited at an event for trade for the first time! (Argh! So exciting!)
- Made it into the Top 30 of the UK's largest national small-business competition, The Pitch 2015 (Where is this going to lead?)
- My birthday happened and I became 21!...I'm so old now...
- Become a regional finalist in The Grad Factor, the UK's Government-endorsed National televised student business pitch contest!
- Some big plans are set for the future...
For those who do have time, let's go into this a little more.
Now on the matter of publicity, this gives me the smiles! Publicity equals credibility, it means that a journalist/writer has learned about you, likes you, think others will like you and thereby will write about you. So when you get an interview like this one here, you know you're becoming a very credible business. For the time being now though I'm not going to actively pursue getting publicity, I've build significant credibility so I'm going to focus all my efforts into other aspects of the company. Although if a journalist/writer approaches me I'll be more than happy to speak, I love talking to journalists/writers!
Let's talk about The Pitch 2015 now, and OOOOHHH is it an exciting subject! Workshops. 1-2-1's. Expert advice. Pitching on stage to big players. But most of all the people, ah the people! I was honestly in awe of just how incredible of an opportunity it was when I was there. Networking with other companies that are going to change the world is indescribable, how often does this happen to someone? And this is no joke if you saw some of these companies! Take my word for this when I say the future is going to be so amazing if these companies succeed! Including my own of course!
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| A lovely picture taken at The Pitch Manchester Bootcamp. The man beside me is Dave Fisher, the man behind yourstudentbox.co.uk. Dave is a cool guy! |
It doesn't end there though, Hire an Artist made it into the Top 30. The Top 30 of The Pitch 2015. Being a finalist is seriously big news! But I'm going to withhold a lot of the details on this for now, I want to save the details until after the event, where we will find out who is the Pitch 2015 Champion! So we're now travelling down to Bristol for The Pitch 2015 Final on the 12th November. What I will say though is 300+ people attending, I'll be on stage in the spotlight pitching for 3 minutes. My heart races just at the thought of it and I couldn't be more excited!
So if you've been keeping a bead on our social media you will have seen a few times that we were to exhibit at The Spirit of Music and Art event not too long ago. This would be the first time our business had been exhibited for trade and it was a true success! This was more of a testing format for us, to see if it was practical to attend events and we learned a lot from it. I'm now feeling confident for our next event coming soon, which hopefully will lead to some good business!
Additionally to a big surprise my legendary entrepreneurial cousin, Andrew was there too! Andrew runs numerous businesses such as Blackthorn Spice and knows his fair share of running businesses, which always is useful good ol' natter on what I don't know yet about business. By the way if you love spicing up your food you must give these a try!
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| Check it out, you know you want to: http://www.blackthornspice.co.uk/ |
So lastly, The Grad Factor. Their tagline is 'Helping to fund, support and encourage student enterprise and entrepreneurship'. Now if that doesn't sound perfect for me I'm not sure what does. The Grad Factor is a government endorsed program that runs across the country, looking for entrepreneurial students to support in their venture. And they quite literally do run across the country in some cases, with the Grad Factor Bus!
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| The Grad Factor Bus travels from place to place, Uni to Uni, hunting for fresh talent! |
Until next time!
Gareth Craven
Founder / Hire an Artist
