TRICKY BUSINESS
PROGRAMME 3: RUTH MCKAY
The entrepreneur
Twenty-three-year-old Ruth McKay lives and works in Dunfermline. She graduated from Stirling University with a first-class honours degree in marketing and wants to put her qualification to good use. Her bubbly personality, good social skills and high energy levels make her well-suited to a career in marketing. She has extensive personal networks to support her and enjoys working flexible and irregular hours.
The business
Ruth set up Unique Solutions to fill a gap that she identified through market research. Her target market comprises small and medium-sized enterprises that cannot afford the services of large public relations agencies. A £1,000 grant from Business Gateway helped her to get the company off the ground and her mother is subsidising her activities for the first year. Although a sole trader with little practical experience, she aims to provide a comprehensive range of services from a small high-street office.
The programme follows Ruth through the highs and lows of her first few months in business. She has a bumpy ride and makes several embarrassing errors of judgement that have the potential to finish her marketing career before it has started. Her photo shoot is amateurish, disorganised and poorly planned. It results in images that give the opposite impression to the one that she was trying to create. Her marketing materials focus on what she knows rather than what she does. She goes 'off message' when representing her first client, a limousine hire company, and fails to get any repeat business. Tough advice from business professionals helps her to appreciate, and learn from, her mistakes. It gradually dawns on her that a good theoretical knowledge of marketing is no substitute for first-hand experience.
The programme demonstrates that having a degree, however good, is no guarantee that individuals will be able to hit the ground running when they enter the workforce. Like Ruth, they will also find themselves learning on the job, continuously refining and enhancing their personal and business skills, and thus increasing their employability.
The business adviser
Graeme Allan works for Business Gateway and is Ruth's business adviser. Business Gateway is a Scottish organisation that helps people who want to set up or to expand a small business. Business Link provides a similar service in England and Wales. In Northern Ireland, the service is available from Invest in Northern Ireland.
The mentor
Angela is managing director of Porter Novelli, a global public relations company.
