This year I launched Urban Nerds Agency, a creative collective dedicated to providing brands with the opportunity to form a credible relationship with youth audiences.
Urban Nerds, one of London's freshest urban lifestyle brands, was born in East London in 2007. Our mission was to help break music scenes, blending underground genres through a series of live shows in gritty London warehouses, playing host to the likes of Katy B, Tinchy Stryder and Professor Green early on in their careers.
The Urban Nerds journey has seen dance stages and parties pop up everywhere from Glastonbury to the slopes of the Austrian Alps, the shores of Croatia and back to the underground caverns of London's Fabric.
This journey has helped us forge a collective committed to positively representing today's 18 - 24 year old British youth.
Pre-Nerds, I was a student at Manchester Metropolitan University, graduating in Advertising & Brand management.
I started my degree studying History and Psychology joint honors, but moved to a more career focused degree in Advertising & Brand Management after failing my first year. Unfortunately due to my over enthusiastic drive for extra curricular activity, I never could keep engaged with the academic side of University life and failed the next two years of my degree.
On the flipside however, I was taking full advantage of living in a socially thriving city with 350,000 students, and managed to become group events coordinator for all of Manchester's Universities European trips. I was also involved in, and launched some of Manchester's biggest student events and festivals, helping me develop invaluable skills which would later serve me well.
Manchester Metropolitan University recognized my extra curricular success and allowed me to take my final year. I was introduced into a young entrepreneur programme which provided me with an office, mentor and all the resources I needed to start a business.
Nurturing my entrepreneurial skills and allowing me to apply them to my course allowed me to successfully complete my final year and get a first.
University is great if you're passionate about what you are studying, your degree is a doorway to next steps in your career.
If you want to start a business but are unsure and feel University can help get you to the place where you feel more confident, then take some time out to consider your options before you start studying. Travelling worked for me.
In my experience of young entrepreneurs, most good ideas come from outside of university lectures and from real-life experiences.
However, if you feel you have a great idea then go for it 100%, ignore any social pressures suggesting University is the natural progression in education. You have to have confidence and grit determination to see it through.
University was worth it for me as it provided a platform for some key life experiences, helped me develop and gave me confidence in in my talents. It gave me space and time to grow into the character I needed to be to start a successful business.
However, University definitely wasn't essential, there are always numerous amounts of different routes you can take to get where you need to get to. So don't stress out!
Luke