October 2020 marks the 10th anniversary of Small Business Sunday (#SBS), TV Dragon Theo Paphitis’s small business initiative. To celebrate this milestone, Theo has partnered with national charity, Young Enterprise, to celebrate young entrepreneurs and give them a chance to grow their businesses as #SBS winners. All the winners will be under 25 with startup businesses recognised in a special one-off celebration of young entrepreneurs.
Inspired by the brilliant pitches that Theo received into his Twitter DMs and emails in 2010, when he was first on Dragons’ Den, he decided to run a Twitter competition to provide an opportunity for businesses like these to grow as part of a small business network. Every Sunday since, Theo has invited small business owners to tweet him between 5-7.30pm to tell him about their businesses to try to find ways to catch his eye to be one of his six weekly winners.
There are currently 3,000 small businesses in the #SBS network, and the winners would join these like-minded entrepreneurs, have access to an annual event, sponsor perks and have their businesses shared with Theo’s 600k+ social media followers.
Theo Paphitis, #SBS creator and retail entrepreneur said: “I can’t believe it is ten years since I created #SBS at the Paphitis kitchen table and that the network now has over 3,000 small businesses in its family. I have seen many more young entrepreneurs of all ages tweeting me during the #SBS hours every Sunday, so the partnership with Young Enterprise, to give young entrepreneurs a boost, was common sense to me. It is particularly important that we support our business owners, many of whom may have launched this year in tricky times, and I look forward to seeing the young business talent we have in our midst.
So, if you, a friend, your son or daughter are under 25 and have a great business they want to shout about, then this is a call to action for them. Now is the time, in an increasingly tricky work landscape, to support young peoples’ aspirations and dreams.”
