Week 6 📆 

Welcome to the Masters of Entrepreneurship Podcast. A podcast following the progress of a group of students at Staffordshire University as they go through the new MSc in Entrepreneurship course. I’m Helen Ryles, I work in podcasting and I’m also a participant on the course. 

We started day 1 of week 6 with our accountability check ins and had a discussion in small groups about some origin stories of various startups that we had researched. We looked at the very beginnings of those companies and saw how big companies can start from very small first iterations. 

We looked at the concept of a Minimum Viable Product. Something that is a small scope project that brings your ideal customer's value and is designed to test an assumption and help you to learn more about your idea. 

We heard MVP stories from both James and George and we wrote out our own assumptions that we would need to test. Then we looked at what we could do to give us confidence in those assumptions and how we could validate them without spending any money. 

We then had an afternoon to create an MVP and we demod some of our live MVP examples and talked about what assumptions we were testing out. 

We ended the week with some celebrations of our recent wins and appreciation of others within the group for their support and efforts to help others. 

We ended both days this week with a 30 minute writing retreat to allow us time to write up our learnings from each day, which would go towards our learning log.

Join me next time for week 7 of The Masters of Entrepreneurship Podcast. 

Week 5

Welcome to the Masters of Entrepreneurship Podcast. A podcast following the progress of a group of students at Staffordshire University as they go through the new MSc in Entrepreneurship course. I’m Helen Ryles, I work in podcasting and I’m also a participant on the course. 

We started week 5 with our usual accountability checkins. We then completed some entrepreneurial identity exercise where we looked at what we had learned during the entrepreneurial self module and thought about how we’ll apply this to ourselves. 
We wrote about what we had learned so far, what has changed in us, and what things are we taking forward. 

In our small groups we discussed where we were at with our business ideas and projects and what the next important steps are. 

We had a guest speaker Shib Hussain founder of Unsolved Studios. 

The following day we all presented a 60 second explanation of where we are currently at with our projects and business plans. 

We worked on our business vision, what we want it to be, what we want to achieve and how we want to be known. 

We then prepared to close out the module on Entrepreneurial Self. 

We looked at the structure for the next module on Entrepreneurial Concepts and set ourselves some goals for the end of the new module. 

We discussed our insights on to entrepreneurship over the past 5 weeks and what we are each going to do differently. 

We head into week 6 with our first 2 assignment due. Join me next time for week 6 of The Masters of Entrepreneurship Podcast. 

Week 4 

Welcome to the Masters of Entrepreneurship Podcast. A podcast following the progress of a group of students at Staffordshire University as they go through the new MSc in Entrepreneurship course. I’m Helen Ryles, I work in podcasting and I’m also a participant on the course. 

Week 4 was a week all about well-being. On Monday we started off with a yoga session, we did some free writing, journaling and finished our well-being day with a sound bath experience. On Tuesday we discussed our results with our accountability partners. We set some intentions for the week ahead and we wrote specific aims that would help us take small steps towards better habits. We completed a session on neurographic art and created our own drawings. We then ended the day with our guest speaker Laura Gibbs. Laura recounted her experiences of going through several business accelerator programs, told us about her work at the Houses of Parliament and her business teaching kids how to code. 

One topic that came up this week was about perfection. How it would be very easy to not create anything for fear of wanting to be perfect from day 1. I’m using this podcast to overcome that barrier of perfection. I’ve now recorded 5 simple episodes and got them published. My aim for this show moving forward is to make small incremental improvements in quality and content each week. Anything great needs to start out in its most basic form first. Setting a deadline to create something small each week is a great way to improve. 

Join me next time for week 5 of The Masters of Entrepreneurship Podcast. 

This weeks incremental improvement to the podcast: used an improved mic and acoustic foam.   

 Week 3 

Welcome to the Masters of Entrepreneurship Podcast. A podcast following the progress of a group of students at Staffordshire University as they go through the new MSc in Entrepreneurship course. I’m Helen Ryles, I work in podcasting and I’m also a participant on the course. 

 In week 3 we revisited our accountability pledges from week 2. We shared as a group founders we were inspired by and who our role models in business are. 

We completed a role model reflection and looked at what our core values were. We investigated some entrepreneurial self reflection tools. 

We also learned more about our upcoming module assessments and then moved onto a segment on failure. What it is, what our experiences are of it. We talked about how failure is an expected part of entrepreneurship and how we can feel more comfortable failing. We also did some critical examination of our failure risk. 

This week we also looked into Mentoring and the models and approaches surrounding it.
We worked on some group mentoring exercises and developed a support plan and wrote more pledges for next week. 
We had a lovely section on championing and appreciation in our supportive group and rounded off our week off with a guest talk from Craig Bunting and Michael Thorley the co-founders of BEAR a local coffee company. 

We ended the week with our reflections and takeaways from the sessions, picked our course representative and took our new hoodies home. 

Join me next time for week 4 of The Masters of Entrepreneurship Podcast. 

Week 2 - Masters of Entrepreneurship Podcast. 

Welcome to the Masters of Entrepreneurship podcast. A podcast following the progress of a group of students at Staffordshire University as they go through the new MSc in Entrepreneurship course. I’m Helen Ryles, I work in podcasting and I’m also a participant on the course. 

In Week 2 we moved forward in our module on the Entrepreneurial Self. We reflected upon our Week 1 tasks. We had talked to our friends and families about the course and what we all hoped to achieve. We identified our own interests and what was motivating us to work on a new idea, project or business. Not only did we look for the positives we also looked at our unconscious motivators and how our instincts may be a driving force behind our behaviours. 

We completed a short creative task followed by a presentation to the rest of our group on our passions and what we felt called to work on. We had so many different presentations from diagrams, to slideshows, to collages and poems. 

We also had introductions from Martin Tideswell, Jenny Amphlett, Deb Sanderson. As well as Shaun Dixon and Max Thowless-Reeves from Sorbus Partners. 

We completed exercises on the world we want to see in 5 years time, what we hoped to accomplish both personally and in our business. We listened to each other describe our visions and gave each other feedback. 

We mapped out some of the things that are holding us back within our projects and devised ways we could beat those blockers. 

We also set a pledge for things we would do to move ourselves forward with the things we that know we need to change next and that became our tasks for the coming week.

Overall this module so far has been investigating our own interests and understanding that the ideas we work on will only be as successful as we allow them to be. 

We finished off the week with a course social event, all gathering for a meal at Spode Creative Village. The energy was high and we’re all looking forward to next week. 

See you next time for Week 3 on The Masters of Entrepreneurship podcast. 

Week 1 - Masters of Entrepreneurship Podcast 

Welcome to the Masters of Entrepreneurship podcast. A podcast following the progress of a group of students at Staffordshire University. I’m Helen Ryles, I work in podcasting and I’m a participant on the course. 

Week 1 was an introduction to the course, the modules and our peers. We completed ice breakers and some self reflective exercises in small groups. We looked at our strengths and also shared with the group what kind of help we would need in future. 

We quickly realised we were amongst a very friendly and diverse group of people from all backgrounds and industries. 

Our class was invited to the Business Awards launch at lunch and we had the opportunity to network with business people in the local area. We had a tour of the campus facilities including tv and radio production suites, science labs and innovation departments. 

We were introduced to James, our Entrepreneur in Residence and his co-founder George. We heard their entrepreneurial story about  the companies they have built together. 

Also in week 1 we had an evening Startup Social event, one of our classmates produced a video of our week 1 experiences. We started to connect with our classmates and created a student directory to help us learn what skills and experiences we had between us all. 

Next week I hope to speak with some of the students on the course, record their story, where they are at now and what business or idea they would like to build. 

See you next week for Week 2 on The Masters of Entrepreneurship podcast. 

A short introduction to the Masters of Entrepreneurship podcast.