Student
Profiles |
Norway
Together with fellow Norwegian students Lars Wulff-Nilsen, Martin Nerstad and Tone Aursnes, Christofer Mortensen created a highly successful public relations business while studying at Leeds Met in recent years.
Christofer first got the idea of starting his own PR consultancy towards the end of his first year on the PR course. He put together the team of four course-mates and formed a limited company in October 2001.
Christofer takes up the story:
“
We targeted small-to-medium businesses without the resources
to use a professional agency and our initiative was quickly picked
up by an influential daily paper in the region – the Yorkshire
Post. We were covered on the front page of the business section
after being in business for only a couple of weeks.
“This publicity led to a constant stream of requests from all types of local businesses. We were fortunate enough to be able to pick the ones we wanted to work with and quickly established a client list of six. These included an internet radio station, a charity, a software development company, a castle holiday company, a bar and physiotherapy clinique.
“Forming and running the consultancy were huge steps to take and we met new challenges every week. The company became profitable, although gaining professional experience was our main motivating factor.
“We threw out the TV set and turned our living room into an office where we spent many late nights! But we got some great support from a number of our lecturers, and fabulous encouragement from our fellow students.
“Running the company ensured that we had our hands full during university holidays as well, but, because of the cooperation and support of our lecturers, we were able to practically apply much of our work for clients back to course assignments, somehow enabling us to cope with our studies as well.
”A successful run for the company finally ended half way into our final year, when the pressure of coursework made it impossible to maintain an effective service to our clients.
“However, we had a fabulous time doing it and have gathered
experience most students
could only dream of. Since our graduation we are all living in
different parts of Europe, but when the time is right we may
give it another go!
Good luck with your studies – and with your ideas and dreams. Go for it!”
