Building enterprise confidence. Understanding your strengths – where am I now?

Sherry Xian was our guest speaker at Session 2 from the 5 on offer during the Warwick Skills Enterprise Scheme. A former student at Warwick, Sherry gives her tips to budding student entrepreneurs and tells us more about her enterprising venture: Achieve Mentoring.

What does Achieve Mentoring offer?

Achieve Mentoring provides international students with personalised learning support through coaching and mentoring. We have worked with over 200 students for various durations, depending on each student’s study and career preparation needs.

Why did you decide to focus on supporting international students?

International students come to the UK to learn about English life and at university they have to adapt to different styles of education. Students can lack the confidence to attend central careers sessions and do not want to admit they are struggling. Achieve Mentoring provides private personalised support.

What advice can you give new entrepreneurs?

• You need to build your uniqueness. There are many products out there which are similar to yours, or they can substitute yours. You need to build your uniqueness to make yourself stand out and hard to copy.
• You need strong motivation. There will be difficult periods where you will be disappointed. Strong motivation will get you through that. We thrive on knowing that students value our service and are relying on us.
• When choosing a business partner, work with someone who has similar values to you so you agree on the direction of the business and support each other.
• Choose a business idea which requires little initial investment so you can get up and running to demonstrate an impact before you need to convince potential investors.

You can read more about Sherry and Achieve Mentoring on her Voices webpage.