Be the Boss - Jo Ashburner
I'll be honest, I thought the Be the Boss event was going to be rubbish. I wasn't looking forward to it, I thought it was going to be a room full of business start-up companies trying to get us to take out loans and become more in debt than we already are, but thankfully, I was wrong!
When I saw that Jo Ashburner, founder of Noonoo and Red Dragon Flags, had been business woman of the year (2006), I became interested. For me, successful business women are especially inspiring.
When she began telling us all about how she had come from being a single mother in huge amount of debt living in a council house with a small child, to becoming a massively successful entrepreneur, I wanted to know more about how she achieved it all. It was inspiring to hear how she had taken a chance doing an Art Foundation and then gone through to get a first in a Surface Pattern Design degree (which is also extra-inspiring because that is the same degree I'm doing of course).
I related to her quite a lot as she explained how she didn't follow what everyone else was doing at university and did her work based on her gut instincts and personal interests and how she knew she had to do something different with her degree. I was left after the talk feeling inspired and like it was time to really start considering if starting my own brand was what I wanted to do with my degree when I finished it.
Also, she mentioned that both her business were registered 'Social Enterprises' which I had never heard of before, but she explained how that meant that the main concern of the business was people and not profit, as in improving other peoples lives through making them part of the business.
Jo spoke about employing a lot of single mums and disabled people and people who otherwise would have found it very difficult to find steady employment, and that really spoke to me.
All in all her talk was really inspiring and I really enjoyed it.
Laura xox
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