Paper to Windsor: The Story of 6 Tycoons – Adam Smith
The story all began in the first week of 2017; it was the beginning of our year 12, and the prospect of starting a business in school that would (to our ambitions) make enough money to retire by the age of 17 was a rather nice prospect to start the daunting year ahead. Mr. Brightwell, a new face to the school sent the 5th school wide email of the day which brought the attention of the founding members of what would become SOLO. Holly F-S, and Nick Sims. The two attended the meeting with fellow team member Tzay Rhodes where to my knowledge it was not very much going on. Nick then returned to house after missing house meeting to my questioning I found out where he was and managed to get myself into the team. Over the other side of the school 2 new members were recruited; Tash and Sonia. The team was made; now the first meeting.
The first meeting of the new team was on a Wednesday lunch in the business department, most of us enjoying the prospect of early mess once a week for the next term. The meeting opened with a description by Tim of the event and what we had to do. We were then thrown in the deep end and had to go and create a business. The brainstorming spanned over two weeks but finally we then concluded that the group chat is to be named ‘Future Millionaires’. After this vital decision was made we tried to decide what we wanted to do, with a collection of ludicrous ideas we initially settled on creating personalised stickers for electronics. The name came later with Holly singing “Riding Solo” where with a sudden burst of energy jumped up and stated that the name should be ‘solo’ for individuality. It stuck. This was to be our most successful meeting ever with Nick then suggesting the idea that we change tac and go for clothing instead so that he could start his modelling career. It was settled, a clothing company that we would grow from a classroom into the biggest thing since sliced bread.
The designs were my job, which took hours and resulted in missing many preps to make them with a ‘not good enough excuse’ from teachers who had only taught me for a week; great start. This was then the start of the evening meetings in Anson, which by the way is a long way to travel from St. Vincent over the parade square when it’s cold Nick and I complained about, however, food was present and therefore all was forgiven. This was the start of endless feuds from a difference of opinion from all corners of the company (and the creation of the strike system, which Tash loved to give out). It was like sitting in parliament, any idea was shot down (which I will take a lot of responsibility for) but in hindsight was detrimental to the end focus. This continued for a long time resulting in arguments that stemmed into everyday life between certain members of group, finally resulting in Nick deciding to remove me from the business.
The business in all went better than any of us were expecting. A profit of £1,300 isn’t bad for a company that a lot of our piers laughed in our faces at but led to our first initial invitation to Buckingham Palace. But the weather had other plans; with ‘the beast from the east’ blessed us with the best snow any of us had seen in 7 years with the inevitable breakdown of Britain’s transport system leading to the cancellation of the event to our great disappointment, or happiness as you could continue to enjoy the snow, depends on which end of the fence you sit on. Weeks, then months went by without any news. I lost hope, my chance to meet the Queen had come and gone, but then that envelope was sat on my desk
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upon my arrival into year 13 with the royal stamp on it. We were invited to Windsor Castle this time, no doubt a downgrade but good enough.
Our travels of to the royal palace was on the third day back to school with all of us in the back of a mini-bus driven by Ms. Polson and accompanied by Mr. Brightwell on our trip to the venue of the royal wedding. We were in the queue to be passed by the security, where the normally timid Tash starts screaming to our amazement. Peter Jones steps out of the car behind us, with Tash being like a puppy seeing its owner again. We were waved through the gates by police, looking over the tourists with a sense of superiority as we entered the gates and up the driveway into an iconic palace. Entering, to your delight I imagine our phones were removed so that there weren’t endless Snapchat stories uploaded (not like you would see them anyway). We ascended a large staircase into rooms of huge rooms with every wall, seeing, piece of furniture ordained in gold. It was stunning.
Upon walking in we had an inkling we hadn’t won; everyone else gave their profits to charity but we, private school privileged individuals decided to keep our profits. Unsurprisingly we came second in our age category (not second in the whole competition as the school is using for their publicity). But the whole experience was an amazing one that none of us would give up for anything and he whole experience I guess is a direct representation of what business is like; you get into arguments, you disagree, you have fun, you fight, fight some more but mostly laugh and have a great time. It was such a great time and we would highly recommend anyone to get involved in Tycoons for Schools and keep our legacy going!
Holly, Nick, Adam, Tzay, Tash, Sonya.
SOLO.
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