Entrepreneurs in the Making

Most of us have watched the HSBC advert where a young girl is selling lemonade to pedestrians. Every time I watch it, it reminds me of the time when my cousins and I, started our own mini business while on summer holiday in our village. We set up a stall in the driveway outside the house, selling brightly coloured rocks, for 10 pence/rock.

Although our business (if you could call it that) wasn’t much to talk about, it was the first time I had experienced the feeling of doing something whose sole purpose, was to earn some money.

During my last year at secondary school, I was part of a team selling “Leaver’s Hoodies” to students graduating that year. I particularly liked this project as it made me feel I was in an episode of the Apprentice. This task had made me realise, to some extent, what sort of stages a business idea has to go through - from research and development to production and selling. Although this was “homework” to us, the project was profitable and won first prize.

Throughout our lives, we learn new skills, which prepare us to face an uncertain employment future. Having these abilities, a time may come when we will think, “I have a great business idea. How can I best utilise my expertise, to build a business that will generate income to benefit myself and my family?”

Ideas never stop being generated, and in business, there are always hurdles that need to be overcome as founder of Virgin, Richard Branson, once said “Ideas are like buses. There is always one coming along.” Looking back at the hoodies and the coloured rocks, I thought that I would enjoy a project like that again. During the summer, some friends, with the help of our university, will be setting up a new magazine named “StudentPedia” and have asked for my help. This magazine will be for first year students in particular, advising on how to survive the transition from secondary school to university, as best as possible, as this is a tricky process. So make sure you look out for StudentPedia in the near future!

Taking into consideration the current economic climate, and the number of people out of work, more people turn to self – employment. The latest book I have been reading is called, “How I Made It” by Rachel Bridge (published in 2005). This book is a collection of success stories of entrepreneurs that have created their businesses and achieved so much from very little. My favourite story is that of Lizzie Vann, an investment banker turned organic baby food maker. As a child, she suffered badly from asthma and eczema. When she grew older, she realised the link between food and her condition. Now, her business sells more that 10 million jars of baby food per year.

This shows that a good business idea can come to anyone of us; all you have to do is follow your dreams, and don’t let anyone put you down. All you have to do is have a little faith and you can go far. You haven't failed until you stop.

Ellie Fanis

BPP University College

http://www.strategicbusinessteam.com/successful-entrepreneurs/the-worlds-richest-school-drop-out-billionaires/ 

This post first appeared in The Accountant (June 2012)

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Think and Grow Rich

Since spring is here, I decided it was time to do some “spring cleaning”, beginning with the book cases. As I went through each shelf, I slowly discovered all the work I had done in the past two years. I was up against four huge overflowing folders, consisting of papers on subjects ranging from geography to maths and from economics to psychology.

As I was going through the shelves, I discovered some books that I wasn’t expecting to find, but did not belong to me either. It was easy to figure out what kind of books they were. The various shelves were filled with my dad’s Maths books, mum’s economics books, my brother’s engineering books, and another book I couldn’t quite recognise. It had a strange title which I hadn’t heard of before: Think and Grow Rich (by Napoleon Hill; first published in 1937).

I decided to look inside and I ended up spending a lot of time reading a few chapters while standing in the middle of the room, and not even realising I was doing so. The contents of the book were similar to some topics covered in my organisational behaviour class. However, one aspect was somewhat different - The driving force behind the 'behaviour' was the individual itself, not the organisation.

The unfamiliarity of the concepts brought up in the book captivated me. The talk of desire, the knowledge of what you want to achieve, the talk about faith, the state of the mind dominated by positive thoughts, fascinated me even more. According to the book, it was a burning desire to achieve, which motivated Thomas Edison to invent the light bulb.

A relentless passion for technology was what drove Henry Ford to invent the motor vehicle, even though he was a poor and uneducated man, and it was a modern entrepreneurial spirit that led the Wright brothers to dream of building a machine that could fly.

It also said that in order to achieve your goals, after setting them in the first place, it is important to acquire specialised knowledge, to use your imagination and to organise your plans, whilst having alternatives in case they are needed.

It seems that serendipity, the discovery of something good by accident, had materialised itself in the accidental discovery of this book.

The very first piece of advice in the book is to make a “wish list” of the things you want to accomplish in life. Revise this list regularly and you will achieve everything you wish for.

After that thought, I can say that as I discovered the book by accident and found it intriguing, I will spend a lot of time this summer re-reading the book, without the thought of looming exams in a few weeks distracting me.

I would like to wish good luck to all students with their assessments and of course, I will let you know if I am fortunate enough to discover any more interesting books in the near future.

And before you forget, my name is Ellie and I would like to be an accountant.

Think and Grow Rich (PDF Format): http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0304spiritpsych/030413.hill.think.and.grow.rich.pdf

P.S Read in the link below about how the advice of Napoleon Hill inspired Mel and Patricia Ziegler to establish the founders of the tropical travel - theme clothing company Banana Republic!
An Empire Built on Short-Armed Shirts - Bloomberg

Ellie Fanis

BPP University College
This post first appeared in The Accountant (May 2012)

The Future Value of Good Advice

The other day, my father asked me for a small favour. I was asked to deliver some documents to an office very near my university.  He told me that I was going to meet his financial advisor. When I visited the office and got his business card, I thought that his job title was very cool. It was:  “Wealth Management Advisor”.

Not knowing enough about that kind of business, I decided to ask him a few questions. When I enquired about the services they offer and how they approach their customers, he told me that “people, throughout their working lives, had invested into various company pension schemes. Their money is scattered into numerous pension funds, making the process of monitoring their performance a full time job for the individual concerned”.

His company is able to combine all these funds under one roof and recommend investments into various pension and hedge funds. The outcome of the advice they offer, can be the difference between a comfortable retirement and an expensive financial mistake, whose implication will be felt well into the client’s financial future.

I must admit that, until that moment, I had no idea what he was talking about and after the meeting I made a promise to myself to find out more about that line of business. I am now certain about one thing: Selecting a wealth management advisor can be risky. The price you may end-up paying for wrong or misguided advice could be very dear, especially when the “family silver” is invested in the funds they recommend. Therefore, the relationship between the client and the advisor must be built on trust and must become very personal.

We face the same situation when it is time for us to choose what to study and where.

As students, we are at an age where, we do not have to worry about wealth management services, yet. We are the NINJA generation, according to Gordon Gekko. “No income, no jobs and no assets”.

But we are desperate for good advice. Like in the wealth management services, the value of that advice can only be evaluated after some time has gone by and the advice has been put to its proper use.

It is obvious to me that, every day we come across different people, such as tutors, mentors and classmates. By interacting with them, we absorb a lot of information which can be considered as guidance. The question is: What do we do with all this advice? I believe that, it is our responsibility to convert that advice into valuable knowledge and the knowledge into actions as Confucius said: “The essence of knowledge is, having it, to apply it; not having it, to confess your ignorance.”

Although the future value of the good advice will take time to discover, the present value of the good advice can be very small. It is in fact, free. The only thing we have to do is ask for it.

Ellie Fanis

BPP University College

This post first appeared in The Accountant (April 2012)

Intangible Assets in a Student's Life

One of the most interesting expressions frequently used in accounting is the term ‘intangible assets’. Intangible is a word, not heard in everyday conversations, meaning something that cannot be touched, or something which has no physical presence.

The way these intangible assets are created, is what I find most interesting to talk about. Something that comes to mind is that these assets take time and effort to develop. In terms of an organisation, something intangible could represent the know-how of an organisation, the way it does business, how employees interact with clients, and in general, the “culture” of the organisation. Human capital is a generating force of an organisation’s intangible assets.

It crossed my mind that when we graduate, and hopefully get a job, we will be ‘that’ human capital, and it will be our responsibility to develop and preserve those assets. So, now that we know what is expected of us, we should better prepare ourselves for the task.

Given the title of this blog entry, a case can be made that our student-life is in a way, an intangible asset. We study and learn a lot of subjects, attend numerous seminars, take tests, and interact with our lecturers and fellow students, while also networking with many potential employers. All these activities have one thing in common – the acquisition and propagation of knowledge. These collaboration activities help us build our knowledge-base and skill-set which represent our intangible assets; Assets which, our future employer(s) would have to pay a lot of goodwill, to buy.

We have often heard the expression “we are a product of our environment”. After spending three years of our lives at university, it is inevitable that we would be influenced by its “culture”. That means, we and our university, are equally responsible for developing the intangible assets through collaboration, and knowledge developing activities that will generate our ‘intellectual property’.

Over the past five months, I was pleasantly surprised to find that, our school had given us the opportunity to participate in a lot of activities that are necessary for us, as students, to get a taste of what is meant by “business culture”. I feel that I have become a professional student, and all that thanks to the culture that exists at the school.

It would be a waste, on my part, not to take advantage of the goodwill shown by the lecturers who give us a lot of advice and guidance. The best way to develop our skill-set, is by following the advice of people “who have been there, and done that”. For that reason, let us all try and take advantage of these opportunities and make the most out of them.

Ellie Fanis
BPP University College

This post first appeared in The Accountant (March 2012)

Careers Choices

I am sure most of us have been asked the question ‘what would you like to be when you grow up?’ at least once during our youth and I would hazard a guess that most of our answers would have been to become a fireman, hairdresser, footballer, doctor, or perhaps even Superman.

What was my answer? Well, let me tell you a story. After one particular trip to the supermarket (being as observant as I usually am), I turned to my mother and said “I know what I want to be when I grow up! A cashier”. “Why?” my mother responded. “Because you just sit there and people come and give you money to keep in a box.” At the time of course no one had explained to me that the money they collected was not theirs to keep. From that moment onwards, I knew that ‘counting’ would probably play an important role in my life.

It was not until my GCSEs and later A Levels that I really understood how important the role of an accountant is. As I matured, I wanted to find out more. In order to find out exactly what an accountant actually does, I thought I’d do some research on the Internet. I found out that the word accountant has an interesting history.

It is actually derived from the French verb compter, which, like a decent proportion of English and French, originates from latin, in this case, the Latin verb computare meaning ‘to count’. The word was formerly written in English as accomptant, but over time, (having always been pronounced by dropping the ‘p’), the pronunciation and its spelling has evolved into the current, more anglicised form.

Whenever I would tell people that I wanted to study accountancy, I was surprised to find that most people think that being an accountant is a boring profession. I could not understand the negativity shown towards my choice of profession. They do not seem to express that kind of negativity towards professions such as firemen, police officers or soldiers, which can be really dangerous. I believe the negativity towards accountants may be derived from a lack of understanding (perhaps even phobia) of the number crunching involved in accounting, or a fear of filing an incorrect tax return.

Having friends who work in the City of London, I had the opportunity to ask them what a typical interaction with their accountants is like. I was pleasantly surprised and relieved to discover that they all thought their accountants are a very valuable part of their organisations. They seem to think that their accountants are like the ‘doctors’ of their firm. They analyse the financial health of the organisation, they find remedies to ‘cure’ any hiccups in the everyday transactions and advise their clients how to make their business more profitable.

Those answers were good enough for me. And before you forget, “my name is Ellie and I would like to be an accountant”.

Below are job sites which I recommend:
eFinancialCareers
The Accountant Magazine - Job Section

By Ellie Fanis
BPP University College

This post first appeared in The Accountant (February 2012)