Lola Fayemi - Urban Spirit

Nick Williams runs a business called Inspired Entrepreneur and he helps people start doing the work that they were born to do. He gave some really good advice in the first half of the show about how you can try and work towards making your passion into a business. Now it sounds great in theory but how do you take something from being an idea in your mind, sometimes a wild idea, into actually turning it into a business? Nick advises taking the idea and starting it in it’s simplest form as a first step. One of his clients went from being a recruitment consultant into starting her own clowning business ! I was surprised when he said it too but it’s proof that you can really turn anything into a business if you have a passion for it and if you answer the question: what is it that you in your wildest dreams would love to do? Once you find your passion, you can start working towards making it happen. Going back to the example of this lady, she went to see Cirque Du Soleil and said to herself ‘This is me’. With Nick’s help she made it happen. Nick says we are all born with certain seeds inside us and we need to let those seeds come to fruition, rather than try to be the person we think we should be.

In the second half of the show, we talked about self-self. Can self-help help or is it just a load of rubbish?

Self-help is a multi million pound industry and entrepreneurs have mixed feeling towards it: some entrepreneurs attribute their success to things like The Secret or the principles found in Rich Dad Poor Dad; and some people have the attitude that if you just work hard and take a commercial approach to your business you’ll do well. In the second half of the show I talked about it to Nick and Lola. Ok, so the interview is a little biased because I had two people on the show who are complete converts when it comes to using self-help but they still had some fascinating things to say. I asked Lola what advice she’d give to cynics and she said that most successful people use these principles without even knowing it. She also gave some excellent and very practical advice about how anyone can make self-help work for them.

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Toby Beresford - Nudge London

The internet and social networking sites like Facebook present lots of opportunities; but how can you make money from them? I wanted to know, so I interviewed Amanda, Geoff and Toby. Amanda and Geoff’s business, Fund It Frog, is a Facebook application. The way it works is that you buy items via Facebook and Fund It Frog will give some of the money from your purchase to a charity of your choice, at no extra cost to you. Fund It Frog is making money and so are hundreds of charities nominated by Facebook users.

So is this a good way of making money from the net? I asked social media expert Toby, who commented on Geoff and Amanda’s business and gave some hot tips as to capitalising on the opportunities out there. Whether you’re a blogger, a Facebooker or MySpacer, there are thousands of ways to cash in on this phenomenon and anyone can do it, even me: as a result of Toby’s advice, I’m thinking up all sorts of ideas to make money from this blog.

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Are you a singer or a music producer? In fact, if you’re anyone interested in finding out what it takes to make it in the music business, listen to this interview. I spoke to the two music producers named above. Between them they’ve worked with the likes of Jay Z, Micheal Jackson and Craig David. In this interview they gave advice about how to promote yourself, how to get your demo heard and what sort of attitude you need to be successful in the music business.

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Have you ever wondered if you could start a business at the time of retirement? It’s happening all over the UK and it seems to be the new trend. Annabel and Penny Rhodes started a cosmetics company when they were approaching retirement and Annabel talks to me about why they did it. She also talks about how older people are different in their approach to business.

Laurie South of Prime (which in his words is like a Prince’s Trust for older people) tells me about this growing trend, why it’s happening and what assistance is out there for the 50 plus person starting up.

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In this show I explored the idea of gender types. Speaking to two female entrepreneurs in the first half and then going into a discussion in the second half of the show, we looked at whether or not the business world is just simply a man’s world.

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In this show I explored whether or not ethnic minorities approach business differently. What makes some ethnic groups so hugely successful and why do some have lower instances of success? Entrepreneur of the week Jessica Huie talked about how she launched a greeting card business with the aim of featuring more ethnic minority models and then I chaired a round table discussion with Kamel and Lola about what they thought.

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The entrepreneur of the week in this show was Nick Dolan who founded The Real Ale Company. Starting out based on a friend’s farm, he’s now got his business up and running from his base in Twickenham. So if you’ve ever wondered what the difference between ale, beer and cider is and have ever wanted to start this sort of business listen below to how Nick did it.

And then we talked about branding. I asked expert Simon Middleton about what it takes to create a kick ass brand……

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Sue Atkins runs a company called Positive Parents. What her company does is to train people how to bring up happy and positive children. As a mother herself, Sue is passionate about this area and is a passionate businesswoman. I also talked to the lady behind a network that she has created specially for Mums In Business called Mum’s Club. I asked her about what they do and what sort of support is out there.

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Ex-Apprentice contestant, Paul Torrisi dropped into the show to give his views on why he thinks some businesses fail. Management Consultant, Terry Irwin also gave his advice and then in the second half of the show, I got some advice from Alix about how to build an effective team.

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Are you a young mother with not enough time to start a business? If so, be inspired by Gemma who started her business whilst being five months pregnant. And it wasn’t any old business. She has launched her own pre-paid card. In these credit crunch stricken times, I think it’s a genius idea.

Life coach Lola gave some fantastic advice about how your attitude to success might but actually be hindering you from doing well. All I could think about for the entire day after this interview was what she says about living in the moment.

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