Entrepreneurship in Action: Speaking of Success

The Entrepreneurship in Action event on Friday 6^th December saw the Austin Lecture Theatre was packed with Business and Economics students, including Year 11 guests from Holme Grange School. The assembled students were keen to hear our three Old Leightonian speakers share the secrets of their success as independent business people and to learn what might help them on their own entrepreneurial journeys.

Rosanna Collis (Class of 2020) is establishing her underwear brand ‘Tiaki’ providing supportive bras for high impact sports players. Her business has been celebrated as the ‘UK Company of the Year’  in a final against other start-ups from across the UK, that “was like being heckled by 2,000 people!” and her career highlight so far: “I got to talk to Princess Anne about boobs; it was the best thing ever!” With a background in rugby Rosanna had a strong network of contacts and potential customers providing a sounding board for the development of her ideas. She has also been mentored by the management module team from her university degree course, Sports Science at Loughborough to get the business off the ground. Rosanna took the time to engage students in an interactive exercise teaching them the importance of self-leadership whereby you take intentional control of your thoughts, behaviours and emotions to make sure that you progress in both professional and personal life. They discussed vision and goal setting, self-awareness, adaptability, accountability and discipline/consistency.

Rosanna was followed by Harry Portsch (Class of 2016), founder of recruitment agency HM Staffing and winner of Young Entrepreneur of the Year. As the youngest person in the UK to set up a recruitment agency, after only 18 months work experience in the industry, Harry’s success owes a lot to his determination and force of character. Keen not to take himself too seriously his biggest regret was “hiring a mate but then, we had a lot of fun!”.  He inspired students by showing them what could be achieved when you put your mind to it and encouraged them to be ambitious in their aspirations.

The afternoon concluded with OL, Frank Khan Sullivan (Class of 2008), Co-Founder and CTO at Enhanced Fertility, and his partner, Andrea Trigo, a former nurse turned entrepreneur, talking about their various business ventures and the lessons that failure has to offer. Frank explained, “My first business failed. It was the most humiliating, painful, crushing experience but it teaches you more about success than anything else, because it teaches you resilience.” Advising students to ‘start with the why’ and to understand what it is that they ultimately want to achieve, Frank and Andrea convinced the audience that “If you do something that you are passionate about, that makes a difference to others, the money will come.” The couple are invested in helping the 17% of the world’s population, 180 billion people, overcome fertility issues. They also have other businesses in training medical professionals in the safe administration of medicines and anaethetics and in remote testing for diseases and genetic conditions, particularly in developing countries. Frank reminded the students that they should validate their ideas by testing out the target market but that they should be brave saying “If the expected outcome of an experiment is failure, what is there to fear?”