College hosts workshops for Global Entrepreneurship Week

Barnsley College (@barnsleycollege) students had the opportunity to take part in a range of workshops with a panel of guest speakers, including the CEO of chocolate company Green and Blacks, as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW), a campaign to promote enterprise and entrepreneurship.

Jo Fairley, CEO of Green and Blacks, spoke to students via a live, College-wide broadcast and shared her personal journey from leaving school at 16 to heading up the company now worth over £110million. Jo explained her childhood experiences and her desire to prove everyone wrong and her key message to the students was to turn any negatives into positives and learn to thrive on failure.

Students also heard from Jake Richings, keynote speaker, mentor and workshop facilitator. He spoke about his personal journey into motivational speaking and how our students can find their passion by exploring a number of pathways, taking the time to have meaningful work experience and do thorough research. Jake also discussed how important it is to be able to expect and accept failure and learn from the experiences.

Another guest speaker was James McGowan, Director and Mortgage Advisor at Legacy Financial Ltd. James delivered a very motivational workshop to students as he explained the key points about why he set up a business. He also spoke of his rocky career path prior to becoming an entrepreneur and discussed how he became certain that being his own boss would make him happy.

James said: “It was a pleasure to visit Barnsley College and speak with the students. I hope to have inspired more young people to take the leap of faith into the business world if that’s what they want to do and provided them with some key advice for making a success for themselves.”

Students were also joined by Owen Gleadall, Director of Sales and Marketing at Merlinsoft Ltd. He went back to basics and explained entrepreneurship is all about finding solutions; if you find a solution, then you have solved a problem. He shared stories from throughout his life and students enjoyed listening about how Owen had created a business, lost a business and then built himself back up.

Students heard from a number of other guests throughout the week including: James Robinson, Director of Next Step Asset Finance Ltd.; Chris Vaines, Director and National Learning and Development Consultant of KMF Training and Consultancy Ltd.; Claire Cahill, Executive Coach at Accendo Coaching and Training; Adam Bradley, and Director at Corrosion Resistant Materials Ltd.

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