An Evening With... Sam Jones

Have you ever thought about how great it would be to interview a successful entrepreneur? To find out all their secrets of the industry? Well, earlier this month, that is exactly what we did...

for the fourth time!

Sandy Lindsay MBE kicked off our fourth 'An Evening With...' with a bang, introducing Sam after having known him for years after he was on Sandy's first ever job creation programme 'Manchester Masters'. An Evening With… was a fantastic idea created from different thoughts from our apprentices and how they wanted to have their own businesses in the future and they wanted some advice and inspiration from the professionals. So that's exactly what we produced!

Sam Jones founded a media production agency called Tunafish along with his two friends. Despite not having any clients in the beginning, it allowed them to perfect their craft which ultimately lead to seven years later them being named one of the North West’s critically acclaimed agencies. They have also won multiple different awards over the years, and for Sam alone he was named ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ and ‘Marketing Professional of the Year’! As well as this, Sam co-founded the ‘Not Just Soup’ initiative, where every Tuesday they see a different restaurant cook food and serve it up to rough sleepers in Piccadilly Gardens. They have now served over 30,000 meals to homeless people across Manchester.

Sam was interviewed by two of our apprentices, Molly Louise (Tangerine) and Jamie Kelly (Mid Communications).

Sam spoke about his journey through his career telling us everything about his journey... from his humble beginnings in hospital radio to his HUGE Captain Manchester campaign for the Forever Manchester charity. The work he has done as a Forever Manchester ambassador is exceptional, from paying for strangers' parking tickets to handing out umbrellas in the rain; giving out scratch cards to serving up gourmet food to the homeless. Sam is a huge inspiration to us all. Not only has he been extremely successful in his business but now does huge amounts of work for charities. After inspiring the audience there was lots of networking and exciting conversations!