Global Entrepreneurship Week Day 1

It is Global Entrepreneurship week, and South Eastern Regional College are scheduled to host a full programme of activities for students and staff.    

Today we bring you a ‘Welcome to Global Entrepreneurship Week video’ from Katie Matthews (YENNI, GEN Director for Northern Ireland) 

We also have a live recording of a workshop Ashleigh did with our Virtual Entrepreneurs Club to celebrate the first day of Global Entrepreneurship Week.  Ashleigh is the owner of Copper Square - who are a marketing consultancy firm specialising in social media strategy, management and training. Copper Square is based in Belfast, and they work with businesses of all sizes across the UK and Ireland.  

Founded in 2015 by Ashleigh, it is her aim to help businesses connect with their customers online in an engaging, creative, and profitable way. They won't work with two clients in the same industry at the same time and have a small client base for a reason:   - they focus their attention on you so that they can dedicate the time and resource needed to understand your business, its needs, and the direction it is going.      Ashleigh is a member of the charter Institute of Marketing and is a marketing communications professional with over 16 years industry experience working across the public sector, business to business and business to customer, and is a specialist business mentor.    

Finally, we have a ‘Meet Your Local Entrepreneur’ profile from the Director of Stack Digital Martyn King. 

What is your business?  

Stack Digital. We are an online marketing agency specialising in PPC (pay per click) and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) primarily for the gaming and ecommerce industries.  

Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you came to run your own business?

I left home in Ards in 2008 and joined the army. After being medically discharged in 2012 for an injury sustained during a training exercise I had no qualifications so I did not have a clue what I was going to end up doing. I applied for hundreds of jobs and heard noting back until one day my phone rang and I was offered a sales job for a company who did online marketing. Having absolutely no idea about this I took the job and threw myself in at the deep end. Over the next few years i progressed and became a sales manager and then started learning more about how to actually manage the advertising account, spending hours in my own time learning how these things work. In 2018 me and two friends were in my living room talking when we decided we knew a lot about the industry, and we could probably do this ourselves. This was the best decision we ever made. I would advise anyone who has any self-doubt or thinks they can’t do it to go for it! What’s the worst that can happen? 

What has been your biggest success to date? 

Working through the pandemic was a hard task with the worry of not just ourselves but also that of the staff. In our first year we employed people, this is my biggest success as it allows me to give people the chance I was given. 

Have you had any mishaps along the way? How did you overcome them? 

 I feel that in life we learn more from mistakes and when things go wrong than we do from things that instantly go well. I find that remaining calm and looking at things from different perspectives always helps, my advice would be just don’t overthink it! 

What motivates you to keep performing at your best? 

 My family and previous experiences in life keep me going. I don’t want to go back to being on job seekers ever again and with three children to support it's imperative that every day I do the best job I can, not only for me but for the business and all associated with it. 

What have you learnt in running a business that you wish you had known before you started? 

Admin. This is by far and away the hardest thing to keep on top of. Before I didn’t have a clue about all the different tax types or rates and just how much works go into keeping on top of this. For the first year it was just constant letters asking for more tax bills to be paid. My advice is get an accountant asap. 

What key pieces of advice would you give to students who are interested in setting up a business?

This is a hard question because everyone is built differently. My advice is to believe in yourself and go for it. Block out the noise and work hard. What is meant for you will not pass you by. 

Do you have any advice regarding finance and funding? 

There are grants and funding out there for everyone, some of you may not have even thought about. Speak with your local council as soon as you set up and check if you're eligible for any funding. 

How has Covid-19 impacted your business, and how have you overcome this? 

Covid 19 affected everyone differently. With our industry being online it did quite well because everyone quickly realised they needed a website and also needed to market it properly. This led to a record breaking year for us in terms of turnover. 

Any final thoughts?  

BELIEVE IN YOURSELF. 

All activities and interviews from Entrepreneurship week can be found on the Virtual Entrepreneurs Club Teams Site.