Why are not there a lot more younger entrepreneurs?
Jamal Edwards, 23, set up the YouTube channel SBTV in 2006 – right now he is one particular of Britain’s most successful young entrepreneurs. How do we get much more like him? 
Photo: Jamal Edwards
I think my generation have a lot of self-belief and loads of large concepts. If we want to have a lot more entrepreneurs like me, we just want to locate a way of unlocking that self-belief and these tips. I’d say the 1st phase is defining what you want to accomplish, or possessing a objective.
When I was a teenager, I worked at Topman for 4 many years while I was obtaining my music channel SBTV off the ground and finding new talent. I did not leave till the cash I was making from the channel was matching my month to month cheque from the shop. Some people would have believed of that as a dead-finish occupation, but since I had a larger objective, and all the money I made was going into SBTV, I kept at it and stored functioning hard.
A whole lot of my close friends who have been to university are now operating in bars. Some of them say, “It’s fine, I’m operating to help my dream,” and I can tell they are going to get somewhere. Other individuals say, “Why am I doing work in a bar? This is rubbish.” That is the kind of mentality they need to get out of.
Other men and women have the opposite problem they have as well significantly help and no reason to try out something for themselves. There is one particular guy I know who was being offered income every month by his dad, sufficient to dwell on, but he was bored and had no notion what to do with his existence.
One evening we ended up speaking for about an hour on the cellphone. I was asking him loads of inquiries about what he was actually interested in and where his passions were. Nobody had truly accomplished that with him just before they considered that due to the fact his dad was fairly effectively off he had every thing sorted.
We made a decision that he’d put all the cash he was obtaining from his dad into an account and not even touch it till he’d worked out what he wanted to be undertaking himself. Now he’s got the motivation and belief to be out there and making an attempt various items. All it took was somebody sitting down with him and unlocking a few of his concepts.
But even with the self-belief and the tips, if you want to be an entrepreneur you even now have to have a set of basic expertise. Some of individuals – like knowing how to strategy men and women and act professionally – I realized from my work at Topman. Others – like understanding about VAT and filling out my own tax kind – I had to educate myself. It is odd that people kind of abilities aren’t taught in colleges.
I want to produce a YouTube channel that displays folks my age the fundamentals of setting up your very own business. I was also lately invited for a meeting at the Division for Enterprise, Innovation and Expertise to speak about obtaining far more younger folks into internships and apprenticeships, exactly where they can pick these kinds of items up.
I have had a lot of publicity with SBTV. I truly feel very uncomfortable when people talk about me being a millionaire, and I take the total point with a pinch of salt. I attempt to use no matter what publicity I get to shine a light on other young entrepreneurs the much more I get the much more I want to give back. I get emails every single day from people with all types of concepts, so I know they are out there. It is just about locating them and producing certain they are outfitted to be successful.
As advised to Theo Merz
Jamal Edwards is the founder of SBTV . Follow him on Twitter