1. The 8 Employability Skills
Confidence
Financial Capability
Communication
Team work
Organisation
Student’s understanding of the Young Enterprise 8 skills is a critical factor to their success in the Fiver challenge. Students should develop their understanding of the skill definition and recognise the many circumstances in which they might apply the skill, this could be in school, in play, in jobs of the future or at home.
Task: Exploring enterprise skills
Aims: To develop student’s understanding of the Young Enterprise 8 employability skills
Resources: Flip chart / pens / digital camera / printer / glue
Activity: Introduce the 8 skills to the class. Discuss student’s understanding / interpretation of each skill. Write a brief, class agreed definition on the board. Reveal the Young Enterprise definition – do they match? Discuss as a class. Now, working in small groups, provide each group with a digital camera (or take in turns to share). Each group should create a photo which they feel demonstrates the skill in action. For example, students writing letters to engage parents / businesses may demonstrate developing communication skills. Allow each group to download and print their photo. Using the flipchart and pens, each group should then design a poster, including their photo, promoting their given enterprise skill. Posters should be of quality to display in either the classroom or within school, they could also be used to promote the skills in a whole school assembly to which parents/carers could be invited.
*Use the skills pages in the work book for this activity.
Problem Solving
Resilience
Initiative
Young Enterprise Fiver Challenge supported by Virgin Money| June 2014

2. Market Research Who will buy our product or service?
How do we know that they want or need it?
How could we find out?
What would we need to ask them?
Are there similar products or services which already exist?
How could we check?
What would we need to know about other products or services similar to ours?
What are we going to do next?
Before any good business takes off, it is important that they understand their market.
Task students to consider the below questions as they begin to think about their business ideas. Students should use the Market Research pages in their work book to answer the questions above and record their findings.
Young Enterprise Fiver Challenge supported by Virgin Money| June 2014

3. The Business Plan When will you start? When do you need to finish by?
How will your business run? When will you do the work / run events?
What will your business do?
Who will your customers be and how will they know about your business?
Who will be involved and what will they do?
What job roles will everyone have? What specific responsibilities will each role have?
How will you make money? How will you know what to charge?
A good business will always start with a plan, but this isn’t as scary as it sounds – it’s just writing down your idea and planning ahead for all the important things you will need to know and need to do. Using the prompts above (and the Business Plan template provided in the work book), task students to note their ideas.
How will you know if your business has been a success? How can you ensure this?
Young Enterprise Fiver Challenge supported by Virgin Money| June 2014

4. Who Are You?
Every business needs to be able to present itself to the public and for it’s customers to easily recognise it. This means that you will need a company name and a logo.
Activities:
What businesses names can we think of?
You could design a mind map and discuss as a class large and local businesses that students know, thinking about why they know about them, what does their business name represent, e.g. Smith & Son might be a family business or Team Sports would be easily recognisable as a sports company.
What logos do we know?
Students should think about how they recognise the businesses they have talked about and their products. This should lead to a discussion about brands and logos. You could source popular logos or product pictures from the internet and do a pop quiz to see which students recognised and why. You could discuss what makes a good logo and brand.
What will your business name be and what will your logo look like?
Students should use the Our Business pages in the work book to complete the above activities.
Young Enterprise Fiver Challenge supported by Virgin Money| June 2014

5. Product / Service Design and Quality
What will we need to make our product?
Do we have the budget to buy everything we need?
How can we make our product / service stand out from the competition?
What is our USP (unique selling point)?
Is our product / service environmentally friendly?
We will buy the cheapest materials / resources or more expensive versions?
Will we buy fair trade produce / products?
Will every product we make be ready for sale? How will we check?
Is our product service good value for money?
How durable (long lasting) will our customers expect our product to be? How can we ensure this?
When creating a new product or service it is important to think not just about the finished product, but all of the component parts / stages that will be required to achieve the end goal.
Use the questions above to prompt discussion and thinking – these questions can be completed in the work book.
Next students should start to think about the design of their product / service. Space is provided in the work book for this.
Young Enterprise Fiver Challenge supported by Virgin Money| June 2014

6. UNIT COST AND SALES PRICE
Finance and Costs
Unit Cost & Sales Price
Budget
UNIT COST AND SALES PRICE
BUDGET
Researching Costs
Break Even
A successful Fiver project needs to make a profit, therefore it is essential that students work through every phase of their financial planning. This should include: calculating a budget, researching the costs needed to buy materials / resources, costing the unit price of products / services to be sold and working out the breakeven figure.
Budget
Each child will receive a £5 pledge from the Fiver Challenge. Depending on the size of a class or the groups established, students may have differing collective budgets. Establishing what this is per company should be the first task undertaken.
Researching costs
Once students have identified the products / services their business will sell, they should spend time researching costs for the materials / resources needed. Some questions to consider could be: is it cheaper to buy in bulk? What might they access for free? Who might donate / sponsor any materials / resources?
Unit cost & Sales Price
If students are making products to sell, working out the unit cost will identify what it costs to make each product from the materials they have, and from this they should calculate a ‘sales price’ – the amount each product will be sold for.
Breakeven
To calculate the breakeven figure, students should work out how many ‘units’ they need to sell to match the amount of budget spent so far. This is the breakeven amount. Students could keep a tally of products sold which will help them assess how far they are to breaking even, and how many products they need to sell to be in profit.
Young Enterprise Fiver Challenge supported by Virgin Money| June 2014

7. Calculating Finance Question £ Other
What’s our budget? (Total amount of £5 pledges per company)
What are our costs? (Total amount we need to spend on buying the materials / resources needed to make our products)
Donations and Sponsors (Can anyone help us buy donating materials / resources or sponsoring our activity?)
Unit cost (How much it will cost to make each product)
Sales price (How much each product will be sold for)
Profit per unit (Sales price – unit cost = profit per unit)
Breakeven (How much money do we need to make to recover our costs? How many products do we need to sell?)
Number of products:
How will we record our finances?
Using the worksheet above and the definitions provided earlier, apply the costs specific to your project, working through each question.
Young Enterprise Fiver Challenge supported by Virgin Money| June 2014

8. Template – Financial Record Keeping
Budget
Resources we need
Cost
Supplier
£25
Coloured Paper £3
Paper Magic
Blank CD’s £5
The CD Shop
A1 printing
£10
Print Store UK
Total cost
£18
Budget remaining £7
Use this as a guide for students to complete their own financial recording. See pages provided in the student work book.
Young Enterprise Fiver Challenge supported by Virgin Money| June 2014

9. Breakeven Sheet Template
How Many Sold? (Complete each box each time a product is sold)
Unit cost: (How much its cost to make each product) £
Sales Price £
Profit made = £
And so on, until the total breakeven amount is reached and you are in full profit
Sales Cost:(How much you will sell each product for)
Profit:(Sales cost – unit cost = profit per unit)
Breakeven:(how much you need to make/or how many products you need to sell to recover the amount spent)
Use this as a guide for students to complete their own breakeven chart. See pages provided in the student work book.
Young Enterprise Fiver Challenge supported by Virgin Money| June 2014

10. Marketing and Promotion
Who are our customers?
How will we let them know about our business, products or service?
How can we make them want to buy our products or service?
How could we encourage them to buy from us more than once?
How can we let them know when we will be selling our product or service?
What will they want to know about our product or service?
Letting people know about your business, products or service is essential to your project being a success. Businesses call this marketing and promotion.
Discuss with students their interpretation of marketing and promotion – agree a definition.
Using the questions above, students should discuss their marketing and promotion plans and complete the questions in the workbook. Students should agree next steps to keep to their time line. Design pages are available for students to think about posters, letters etc.
Young Enterprise Fiver Challenge supported by Virgin Money| June 2014

11. Evaluation What was your Fiver Challenge project?
How much money did you make?
What were the key successes?
What did you find most difficult or challenging?
How did you develop the 8 employability skills?
Which ones did you find hard or feel that you didn’t develop?
Who did you engage in the project?
What was their contribution?
How did this help?
If you were to do the project again, what would you do differently?
What did you most enjoy about the project?
Once your project has ended and all of the money has been counted up and repaid…now what?
This is the time to evaluate!
Using student work books to jog your memory of the feelings and perceptions at the time, and through whole class discussion, everyone (including the teacher!) should reflect on the project overall.
Young Enterprise Fiver Challenge supported by Virgin Money| June 2014