Last week I was a guest speaker at Ash Manor secondary school. It was a good set up as I wasn’t speaking in front of a year group in an assembly but instead was in front of a smaller group of students that had elected to be there and who had taken time from their schedule.

This makes for a much more engaging talk, discussion and Q&A as you only have the students who want to be there or have an interest in the subject matter, rather than the opposite.

The Year 10 and Year 11 students were keen to hear about the journey. Whilst I spoke about some experiences I’d picked up along the way with anecdotal references to some of my more bizarre choices I’d made at their age, it was the Source journey that really got their attention.

The cold calling from my bedroom to the first million. It seems to flick a switch with students of that age, whatever their academic ability.

This is immediately exciting for me too as I can detect the entrepreneurial juices that are flowing and once one student broke the ice with a question, they came thick and fast.

From what I hear, they went away motivated about business and hopefully were playing around with ideas of what could be their next move or future goals.

‘I wanted to say a really big thank you for coming along and providing a brilliant careers talk and insight into the life of a entrepreneur.

It’s such a great opportunity for our students to learn about some of the different options open to them and to meet and interact with people from industry.  It’s great for them to understand a bit more about how people get to where they get to, and that it’s not necessarily about talent or having a plan, sometimes it’s about doing what you’re good at to the best of your abilities.  The feedback we had, particularly from the Year 11s, is that they all really enjoyed your talk and went back to class feeling very motivated and inspired.

I really appreciate you taking the time visit our school and I know it was a really valuable experience for the students.’

Jane Sheridan

STEM Co-ordinator

Ash Manor School