We recently hosted our first SuperJam Tea Party in Bolton, the hometown of Peter Kay.
The tea party was very kindly hosted by the teachers and pupils of Canon Slade School; who got excited about SuperJam after I visited their school to share my story. About seventy elderly people from the local community came along and enjoyed a performance from the school band.
I'd like to say how impressed we were at SuperJam about all of the work the pupils put into the event; they even baked the scones themselves during their lunch break!
Hopefully this will become a regular event and will grow and grow over the coming months and years.
If you would like to run a tea party in your school, workplace or community, please get in touch. We will do everything we can to help you; not least provide you with some delicious SuperJam!
Last week, I was very kindly invited to speak to the pupils at a school on the Isle of Anglesey in Wales.
The pupils, aged 14-16, were working on coming up with ideas to set up their own small businesses as part of an after school group run by the "Mentermon", a government-backed organisation that aims to foster enterprise on the island.
I shared the story of how SuperJam came about and how we got the SuperJam Tea Parties off the ground. The kids were very enthusiastic and asked questions for about half an hour.
While I was on Anglesey, I got to stop off at "Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch", a small village that holds the Guinness Book of Records title of having the longest place name in the world.
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I was recently interviewed about how SuperJam came about by the fantastic website Smarta.com. They have interviews with all kinds of inventors, entrepreneurs and business minds; check it out!
In this interview with myself, the founder of SuperJam, we talk about my first ever business (a small scale chicken farm in my parent's back garden at the age of 10!), the set backs I faced in getting SuperJam off the ground and all of the people who helped me out. It is the same story that I have recently been sharing as a speaker at a lot of events at schools, colleges, universities and conferences across the country.
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Last week, I shared the story of the SuperJam adventure with a few hundred school kids at the Changeworks Make Waste History Conference at the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh.
I also spent the day running workshops for four groups of pupils, giving them the opportunity to come up with their own enterprising ideas to try and reduce food waste. They then pitched their ideas to the whole group, 'Dragon's Den style', and one team was voted the winner.
The pupils came up with all kinds of ideas; from feeding food waste to pigs to creating a website to help shoppers predict what they need to buy better; helping them to reduce the amount of stuff they throw away at the end of the month.
The event coincided with the Climate Change conference in Copenhagen and the hundred of kids who came along definitely left with good ideas on how to reduce food waste. You can read more about it here.
Over the festive period, we have been having some really fun Christmas Tea Parties; with mulled wine, champagne and mince pies.
The guests have enjoyed the usual live music and dancing, as well as performances from local carol singers and at two of the larger tea parties in Edinburgh, we served up a whole lunch for everyone. As always, the events were completely free for the guests to come along to and really brightened up their days.
One of the tea parties, held at a sheltered housing complex in Edinburgh, was filmed by Channel 5 and Sky News and will be broadcast at some point between Christmas Day and New Year's Day.
Thanks a million to all of the people who gave up their holiday time to come and help out at the tea parties!
Throughout November and December, i'll be sharing the story of how SuperJam grew from my Gran's kitchen to the supermarket shelves. You'll be able to come along and hear me speak at the following places:
Last week, I was very kindly invited to visit Wick, which is a few miles from John o' Groats (the most Northernly point of mainland Britain).
The reason for the trip was to give a few talks at local schools, including to over 300 kids at Wick high school. I also had the pleasure of visiting the Laurandy Centre, which was hosting the most Northerly ever SuperJam tea party for 30 or so elderly guests.
It was a really lovely trip and I was shown around by Professor Iain Blaikie, a friend of mine, who organised the trip and is a big believer in getting entrepreneurs, inventors, astronauts and political figures to speak to pupils at the local schools.
We even went for lunch on the shortest street in the world, which is in Wick and is about one and a half meters long!
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As part of the world-famous 'Edinburgh Festival', Foodies Festivals will be hosting a massive food and drink event in Holyrood Park from tomorrow till Sunday.
We will have a stand there, serving freshly baked scones with SuperJam and the amazing Rodda's Cornish Clotted Cream. I will also be giving a talk ('SuperJam: The Adventures of Jam Boy') at 11am each day.
You should definitely come along, for some scones and jam and for the chance to see demonstrations by top chefs and to sample some of the many culinary delights that Scotland has to offer.
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SuperJam Wins Nectar Business 'Entrepreneur of The Year' Award.
This week, I was delighted to be told that SuperJam has been awarded the 'Nectar Business Young Entrepreneur of The Year Award'. There were a number of really great companies that were also up for the award, so it is a real honor.
Nectar Business said:
“We're delighted to announce Shiply.com, SportStars and SuperJam as the winners in the Nectar Business Small Business Awards. It's staggering to see how successful these three businesses have been in their individual ways. From, Shiply.com who have achieved incredible success in less than 12 months, to SportStars who spotted a gap in the education market to create a highly successful business, to young entrepreneur Fraser Doherty who set up SuperJam, the fast-growing jam brand in the UK - it's inspiring to see each of these three businesses leading in their field.”
“Everyone who runs a small business, especially in the current climate, has to work extremely hard to get it off the ground and make a success of it. The awards have represented a fantastic opportunity to celebrate great business ideas, business practice and people and I would like to congratulate all the small businesses from across the UK that entered.”
Thanks very much Nectar Business - it is a really wonderful pat on the back, encouraging me to continue to grow the business, as well as the SuperJam Tea Parties, as ambitiously as possible.
For the past four days, we've been handing out samples and telling everyone about SuperJam at the Royal Highland Show.
The Show is Scotland's largest public event, attracting hundreds of thousands of people. It is a sort of celebration of food and agriculture, with tractors, sheep and whisky.
We went through over fifteen thousand oatcakes and two thousand jars of SuperJam and we're definitely all exhausted.
The Queen even visited the hall we were in, which was very exciting. I didn't get a chance to take a decent photograph of our stall in between handing out samples, signing autographs for over-excited school kids and talking to the thousands of people who stopped by to say hi.
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A few years ago, when I was trying to get SuperJam off the ground, Channel 4 followed me around to make a 30-minute program about what I was doing.
As part of the program, I was given advice from the hugely successful Scottish entrepreneur, John Boyle, who built and sold Direct Holidays and then later set up Zoom airlines.
In the program, his advice was not to try to supply SuperJam to supermarkets. Of course, I ended up going against his advice and following my dreams.
The program was repeated on Channel 4 this morning and you can watch the entire program on 4oD online, here.
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On Sunday, as part of our sponsorship of The SuperJam Great British Race Day at Brighton Racecourse, we served up cream teas to the crowds.
We used Rodda's clotted cream and freshly baked scones and it went down a treat. The races on the day, which you might have seen on Sky Sports or elsewhere, were named after the flavours of our jams.
Over the Summer, we'll be serving up cream teas at events all over the country, so please do pop along and say hello. Next up is the Cockington Proms on 12th July, in Torquay, which we're also a major sponsor of.
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On Wednesday, I had the privilege of meeting HRH Prince Charles. He was a very charming man, as you would probably expect.
The event was a conference run by the Scottish arm of The Princes Trust, which is of course his charity that helps young people set up companies by giving them grants, loans and great advice.
I was supported by them when I was starting out and was invited to give the keynote speech, alongside Michelle Mone.
SuperJam Great British Race day at Brighton Racecourse!
Nice weather we've been having lately, eh?
We will be serving cream teas at all kinds of events over the Summer. The first event this year is at Brighton Racecourse this Sunday, the 7th June.
SuperJam is the headline sponsor of the SuperJam Great British Race Day at Brighton Racecourse this Sunday.
There will be six SuperJam races, Proms in The Paddock with The Sussex Band of the Royal British Legion, a 'Best Banger competition' and traditional seaside entertainment.
We will also be serving thousands of cream teas to the 8,000 people who're coming along, so come and say hi if you're in town!
If you'd like to come, you can buy tickets and find out more info here.
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If you happen to follow my Twitter, you'll know that a couple of weeks ago I was followed around for a whole day by a film crew from BBC Alba, the Gaelic channel.
We had a lovely day filming for 'Cuide Ri Cathy', with Cathy McDonald. We tried out a new jam recipe in the morning, visited the local Waitrose supermarket to see the products on the shelves and then had a massive tea party in the afternoon.
Don't worry; it is mostly in English and the Gaelic parts have subtitles.
You can watch the program on BBC iPlayer here, for the next week.
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On Monday, I was interviewed by Declan and Naga on BBC2's Working Lunch program.
I was the 'main guest' on the show and the interview was, according to some of my followers on Twitter, the best i've had in a long time.
You can check out the interview on BBC iPlayer here, if you wish.
There has been a flurry of orders on the website since the interview so it has been all hands on deck in Jam Land - which is why it has taken me so long to blog about it!
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Recently, Eteaket tea boutique opened its doors on Frederick street in Edinburgh. They serve a range of wonderful teas, cream teas, afternoon teas and home baking, soon to include our jam! You should definitely pop in for a cuppa if you're in town.
Eteaket have very generously agreed to support the regular SuperJam Tea Parties in Edinburgh and will be serving their wonderful teas, alongside the scones and SuperJam. With their help and support, we are hoping to make the events even bigger and better. The guests at last week's tea party (picture here) thoroughly enjoyed Eteaket's teas. You can check out their website, order some of their products or learn more about their philosophy here.
What's more, our FaceBook fan page crossed the 200 fans mark today. To celebrate, we're having a some scones and tea this evening and probably some bubbly.
This week, we made the rather exciting step of opening the first SuperJam retail outlet, in the Union Street Mall in Aberdeen. We are selling the full range of products, as well as oatcakes from our friends Nairn's and perhaps some other products later down the line.
This is a bit of an experiment at the moment; if it goes well, we may open extra outlets in other malls. It is a great way of giving people the opportunity to try the products and if it proves successful, will mean that we are going to have to take on permanent staff.
Of course, if you live in Aberdeen, and you don't have jobs to attend to please do feel free to stop by and say hello.
Twitter is becoming something of a phenomenon and has been on the news a lot over the past few weeks.
One of the most famous 'tweeters' in the UK is Stephen Fry, of Qi fame. I've been following his tweets for some time and find it very amusing. You might have read a few weeks ago that he was stuck in a lift and his 'followers' were able to live the experience with him, through his regular up-to-160-character posts.
For those of you who don't know what Twitter is; it allows users to post about what they are doing, reading and thinking in real time, in short posts, sort of like text-messages. If you like, you can follow my updates by signing up to my tweets here.
SuperJam is placed 18 out of 100, which I think is quite cool. Other entrepreneurial companies on the list are Tossed, the chain of London salad bars, Plum Baby, the fast-growing brand of healthy Super Food baby food and notonthehighstreet.com, a portal for buying quirky and unique products from hundreds of small companies across the country.
It is inspiring and very interesting reading about all of the 100 entrepreneurial companies on this list.
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For the past couple of months, i've been writing about a variety of useful and interesting websites that I have come across online. Previous posts were about Graze, the online healthy snack delivery company and A Quarter Of..., the old-fashioned sweet shop on the internet, where you can buy all of the sweets you used to fight over in the playground.
This week, I came across a website called mySupermarket.co.uk. This site allows you to compare the price of your online grocery shopping from Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Ocado. You are able to import your favorites from your existing supermarket's online shop, to compare how much it would cost elsewhere. It also displays the offers that each supermarket has, which means you can take advantage of the best prices at all the supermarkets, while only doing your shopping through one site.
You can also calculate how many calories are in your basket and compare the calorific content of different products, which would probably be quite a handy function if you are watching what you're eating.
Director Magazine, the monthly publication of the Institute of Directors, named me as their 'Director of The Month', which was jolly nice of them. They also wrote a wee article about SuperJam in their magazine here.
Previous 'Directors of The Month' include Maitland Mackie of Mackies Ice Cream, Shaks Ghosh of the Private Equity Foundation and Jeremy Leggett of Solar Century.
I have today been spending a bit of time watching the amazing talks and lectures you will find on the 'Do Lectures' site. The speakers include the inventor Trevor Bayliss, author and bread expert Andrew Whitley and Guy Watson of the Riverford Organic box scheme.
The idea behind the event is that 'People who DO things can inspire others to DO things'. Every year, the event invites DOers from business, the arts, campaigning, inventing and so on to share their stories and give insight about what inspires them, what motivates them and why they do what they do.
The event is sponsored by the wonderful Howies company, who produce a great collection of ethical clothing.
David Hieatt, co-founder of the event says "When you listen to their stories, they just light a fire in your belly to go and Do your thing, your passion, the thing that sits in the back your head each day, just waiting, and waiting for you to follow your heart.
To go find your cause to fight for, your company to go start, your invention to invent, your book to write, your mountain to climb."
The event takes place in West Wales and all of the 60 delegates camp out over the course of the days. For more information, check out the website.
A Quarter Of... is a website that hosts an incredible selection of sweets and candies from years gone buy. Like an old-fashioned sweet shop on the web.
You can buy cherry lips, sweet tobacco, Black Jacks and Space Dust. All the sweets you remember growing up with but that, sadly, aren't around any more.
You should check them out here if you fancy reminding yourself of the playground.
The SuperJam Tea Parties featured on The Five Thirty Show...
At our most recenttea party for the elderly, our guests enjoyed the company of a TV camera from STV, filming a feature about the Tea Parties project for the Five Thirty Show.
We've now hosted well over 100 Tea Parties all over the country and there were over 110 elderly guests at last week's Tea Party, at Meadowbank Sports Centre in Edinburgh.
You can watch the feature here, which was broadcast today, 27th January.
We've got a lot of Tea Parties planned for the coming months and the whole project is just growing and growing. The events are very well received by the elderly guests and, for some of them, it is the highlight of their week.
If you would like to get involved, click here to visit our Facebook group.
Tomorrow, Tuesday 27th January, at 9.30am on Channel 4 there is a repeat of the 'Tricky Business' documentary that followed the development of SuperJam for 6 months. You can watch the documentary online here.
It was an amazing and sometimes surreal experience being followed around by the film crew. Having them follow my progress definitely helped to motivate me to pursue my ideas and turn the SuperJam idea into a reality.
In this program, you can watch the ups and downs of setting up the business, finding a manufacturing facility, raising finance and the challenges we had coming up with label designs that everyone were happy with.
The awards, in their third year, were created by BT Business to celebrate the achievements of various entrepreneurs who have challenged the status quo in their industries. The competition was judged by Peter Jones, of Dragons' Den fame and James Hurley, editor of Growing Business Magazine, among others.
The prize for the award was a photo shoot with the renowned photographer Rankin, famous for his images for the Dove 'Real Women' campaign, the Queen and Kylie Minogue. It was a pretty fun day having my picture taken. I can honestly say that it was the first time I've ever worn make-up...
The overall winner of the competition, crowned 'Most Outstanding Entrepreneur' was Mike Welch, who is a very nice chap indeed. He runs BlackCircles.com, the biggest online retailer of car tires on the internet in the UK.
The photographs taken by Rankin of all of the winners will be exhibited at gallery@oxo in London's South Bank, starting from next Thursday, 29th January. Entry to the exhibition is free and definitely worth a look, the stories of all of the winners are fascinating.
Today, I signed up to a pretty cool website. I thought i'd post about it since it is similar to SuperJam in its approach to health, super foods and good packaging design.
Graze is an online subscription service, created by the founder of LoveFilm. You can sign up for relatively little cost to have healthy, natural snacks delivered to your desk or home once a week or even every day.
The boxes come with nuts, dried fruit and various other things. You can actually sign up for a free trial on their website. They will send you a box of snacks for free, which is rather generous of them.
I'd say it is a business to watch over the coming year, I think their concept will be very popular. I wonder if people would subscribe to have their jam delivered every week?
I was recently invited to Palm Springs, California, for the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of The Year Awards.
The whole event was an incredible experience, with the best entrepreneurs from all manner of industries being recognised for the steps that they had taken to build amazing businesses, supplying ground-breaking products and creating thousands of jobs.
I met some very inspirational people who gave me some great advice and helped motivate me to take the next steps in growing SuperJam.
At the event, I was grabbed by Diane Brady, the Senior Editor of the massive Business Week Magazine, and fellow Scot, for a quick interview.
The SuperJam story was featured all around the world on Sky News this week, as a feature on 'the stories of 2008'.
You can watch the video on the Sky News website here.
It has certainly been an amazing year for SuperJam and, judging by the hundreds of emails from all around the world that have come flooding in after this feature, next year is going to be just as busy...
Apparently, i'm 'Scotland's Top Young Innovator', lovely!
As reported in the press today, at an awards ceremony in Glasgow last night, I was awarded one of the 'John Logie Baird Awards'. This was after competing in regional and Scotland-wide judging panels, which involved being asked questions by the leading minds in innovation in Scotland.
John Logie Baird is famous as the Scottish inventor of the first working television. Although his version of television is not the same as the type used today, he led the way in the development of what later became one of the most influential technologies of all time. He was a prolific inventor, with creations such as thermal under socks, 'rust-proof' glass razor blades and pneumatic shoes, all of which saw limited success, before creating television.
He even once shorted out Glasgow's electricity supply, trying to produce diamonds!
The John Logie Baird awards were created in his name and I am very proud to have been given one. It is really great for the innovative nature of SuperJam to be celebrated in this way.
There were many wonderful inventions on show last night, including the Walkodile, which helps keep groups of children together when taking them for a walk, in a fun way.
Given all of the doom and gloom in the media, it is great to see innovation being celebrated in this way. Arguably the best way for Scotland to get out of the current economic problem and compete globally in the coming years is to invest in the creation of new technologies and the products of the future. Scotland has a long list of successful inventions from past years and hopefully we can be as inventive in the future.
The John Logie Baird Awards go some way to encouraging me that we can!
I won the Glenfiddich 'Spirit of Scotland' Entrepreneur Award...
Last night, I was very gratefully awarded this very prestigious award. Thanks very much if you were one of the folks who kindly took the time to vote online last month.
It felt amazing even just to be recognised among the ranks of such incredibly talented, famous and successful people as Glasvegas, KT Tunstall, Mark Beaumont and James McAvoy.
To win an award, in the Entrepreneur category, was very touching - since the winner was chosen by the public. I didn't really know what to say when I was invited to give a speech. I thanked my family for being so supportive and, of course, my Gran for teaching me to make jam in the first place.
The overall winner of 'Top Scot' was Chris Hoy, the three-time Gold medal winning Olympian.
The Scotsman editor, Mike Gilson, who presented the award to me, said: "Fraser's fearless mix of Scottish home cooking and business acumen embodies the spirit of young entrepreneurship". Very nice of him to say so.
You can read all about the event and the other winners in today's Scotsman and the whole ceremony is broadcast this Sunday, St Andrew's Day, at 10:30pm on STV.
This week has seen thousands of events, with tens of thousands of participants all around the world (in about eighty countries) promoting entrepreneurship.
Encouraging young people to think about setting up companies, charities and to develop the products of the future, is something that I think is very important and I put a bit of time into. I was asked to be an 'Ambassador' for the Government-supported Enterprise Week, and have been giving a couple of talks every day at events all over the UK.
I started out in the Orkney Isles, in the far North of Scotland and gave a talk to all of the young people taking part in Young Entreprise up there, about 160 of them. After going to the US for a few days, I gave a talk to about 800 young people at the Leicester Square Odeon with Levi Roots, of Reggae Reggae Sauce fame. I then spoke to a couple of hundred people at the impressive Institute of Directors, then at Lampton School in West London, to the Eton College Entrepreneurship Society and then, to end it off, at New College, in Swindon.
I've taken 12 flights, skipped two nights sleep and given 7 talks in the past fortnight. I'm off to the pub..
There has been a 'SuperJam' group on Facebook for some time, created by one of our most adoring fans.
I decided that it would be good to create an 'official' SuperJam page on Facebook, for our fans to show their love and for us to be able to keep everyone up to date with our upcoming events (like SuperJam Tea Parties), competitions and news.
You can upload your own pictures with your favorite SuperJam in an exotic place, comment on ideas for new products and encourage your friends to become a part of the SuperJam movement!
To have a look at our Facebook page and become a fan if you are a user of the site,
I get lots of emails every week from the lovely people who run independent stores up and down the country. Delicatessens, farm shops, department stores and garden centers. Until now, we've struggled to supply SuperJam to you guys in small quantities.
Thankfully, all of the SuperJam products are now available from some of the leading distributors to the independent trade, including Hider Foods and Tree of Life . If you have a wee shop, get in touch with them and pile your shelves high with the best jam there is. If you want any posters, press clippings or advice on how best to sell the products, feel free to get in touch with me and I'll do everything I can to help you out.
Let me know if you start selling the products or are already stocking them. We're going to put a search function on the site very shortly, so that people can find out who in their area is stocking SuperJam. If you are particularly quirky or do a really good job of displaying the products, send me a picture and I'll write about you on the blog.....
Last year was quite an amazing year for SuperJam. Over the past nine or so months, SuperJam has launched in Waitrose and Tesco across the country, been the focus of a huge amount of media coverage and we've now sold the best part of a quarter of a million pots!
It has been an amazing adventure for me and I have met some very interesting people, visited other countries and been asked about my views on all kinds of things in the media. I have loved sharing my story with tens of thousands of young people at large events and, most of all, had a lot of fun playing around in my parents' kitchen with different kinds of fruit!
Anyway, BBC's 'Breakfast' show made this little video about what I have been up to over the past year...
I recently gave a wee talk about setting up business, being a teenage entrepreneur and so on at the British Library. They have posted the video online here. There are also talks by a whole load of entrepreneurs like Richard Reed of Innocent Drinks and Stelios, the EasyJet chap.
Strathclyde University's 'Brightest Young Business'
I am a student at the University of Strathclyde (in Glasgow) and, as part of their many excellent enterprise activities, was invited to the annual 'Enterprise Awards'. There were a variety of prizes for the social entrepreneurs, spin out companies and enterprising staff of the University. There was also a 'Strathclyde Supernovas: Brightest Young Business Award', which I was delighted to be awarded.
The prize is a one week course at MIT University's Sloan Management Business School (worth over $8,000), to study Strategy. I'll be going over in June to do this and will be sure to post about it afterwards to let you know how I get on.
To be honest, I've only really written this post so that I can put up this picture. It looks like I am just a head, haha.
Anyway, if you didn't know, this week was 'Enterprise Week'. This is the one week of the year where thousands of enterprise related events take place simultaneously, with the aim of encouraging young people to think about starting their own businesses or become more enterprising in their lives. As this is something that I am quite big on, I rolled up my sleeves and got stuck in with helping at various events around the country.
On Monday, I spoke to about 1,000 schoolkids from around Scotland at the annual Young Enterprise Scotland conference. This was quite a laugh and the kids were visibly enthused by my story - hopefully some of them went away thinking 'well, if he can do it then why can't I?...'
The picture at the top of the page is of me 'launching' the Biggart Baillie Innovation Awards at the Glasgow Science Centre. I gave a talk about the process of coming up with my innovation, which led to me being a winner at last years awards. If you have invented something or started an innovative business, I would urge you to check it out . There are three categories (Student, Open and Female) and a prize of £1,000 for each.
I have also been involved in the Make Your Mark Challenge , which is the biggest live enterprise event in the country and will see teams of schoolkids compete next Thursday to solve a problem that will be set on the day. This is being hosted by Heather Suttie, the Xfm DJ and I will be helping to judge the entries.
To finish off the week, I was invited to speak to students at Bath University about starting a business, juggling studies while running one and what help is out there for young entrepreneurs. That was all rounded off by a drink in the rather impressive setting of the city's famous Roman Baths.
I don't mean for this to be another 'I got an award' post but this is a story I really have to write about. On Wednesday, I went over to Chicago to the 'Global Student Entrepreneur Awards', having been chosen to represent the UK (and the University of Strathclyde). I won't write about all the details but basically I had to give a 20 minute presentation to a bunch of very successful entrepreneurs about my business, what I wanted to achieve, my ethics and so on...
Originally, over 700 students around the world were nominated to enter the competition, then 26 were picked to go to Chicago and then they picked 6 based on the presentations. I got to present again and also watched some of the other five guys talking about their businesses and ideas. All of the 26 young entrepreneurs in the competition had incredible businesses, one of my favourites being Ten Minute Media - this guy, Brendan, makes websites for people like Mick Jagger and Natalie Cole. There was also a Swede, Erik, who made software for McDonald's.
I had never met such passionate and driven people my own age - we all shared an enthusiasm for ideas and enterprise and got on very well with oneanother.
Anyway, I ended up winning the competition and also got a special 'Social Impact' prize. It was a really cool few days and
Firstly, I've not grown a beard. I'm still as fresh faced as ever. This is a picture of James picking up 'The Young Entrepreneur of The Year Award' for me from Adrienne Lawler off the news. Sadly, I wasn't able to go along to pick it up myself since I was on my way to Chicago.
Anyway, the prize was given to me as part of the Startups Awards . There were all sorts of cool other entrepreneurs there and the Young Entrepreneur category was open to anyone under the age of 30. I was delighted to get a prize, obviously.
As reported in today's Edinburgh Evening News , SuperJam has been named 'one of the country's best start-up companies' after being shortlisted in the Startups Business of The Year Awards.
I am up for the "Young Entrepreneur of The Year" category, alongside three other very interesting start-up companies. There are sixty-two companies going along to the 'awards luncheon' so I am looking forward to chatting with a wide variety of entrepreneurs about how they started their businesses.
A few of the other finalists' businesses that I think are cool are Plum Baby (a range of organic 'super foods' for babies, Boudiche (an Edinburgh lingerie boutique) and Mrs Massey's (a range of homemade sauces, chutneys and spicy rubs).
Before I start, I'm going to point out that I am not actually a millionaire. However, I have recently contributed my thoughts and advice for aspiring entrepreneurs to a book called 'how to be a teenage millionaire'. It is not a bad wee book for teenagers who are maybe thinking about whether they want to start their own business, either now or in the future.
Encouraging other young people to think about starting their own business is one of my big things. I've got so much out of starting SuperJam that I couldn't recommend a better way of life to other people than being an entrepreneur.
I get a couple of emails every day from teenagers who are thinking about starting up their own businesses. This is something that I love and am always more than happy to help in whatever way I can. I'm keen to hear from young people about what they think about starting their own business, what obstacles they face and what kind of businesses they would like to start.
