Jack Parsons

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Jack Parsons
Born	Jackson Parsons 11th September 1993 Romford, Essex, England
💼 Occupation	Entrepreneur
📆 Years active	2015-Present
Title	UK's Chief Youth Officer

Jackson Parsons, (born 11 September 1993), is a British award-winning young entrepreneur, public speaker, and subject expert on youth. Parsons is the Founder and CEO of The Youth Group.

Parsons’ first business venture was a tuck shop set up in school, which eventually produced equivalent earnings to a full time salary of a doctor. Parsons later took on an apprenticeship at a local insurance broker, before joining a recruitment firm with a unpaid work experience placement, eventually becoming a top biller at the firm. Leaving the corporate sphere, Parsons founded Yourfeed in 2015, a youth platform which matched users with business based on their skillset which grew to £8 million in 18 months.

In January 2018, Parsons founded The Youth Group, an international youth-first enterprise which helps to hire, train, and mentor young people. Parsons has also advised a number of organisations and officials on youth issues and is known as the UK’s Chief Youth Officer.

Early Life

Parsons was born on 11 September 1993. He grew up in Romford, Essex on a council estate and lived in a single-parent household with his mother during his formative years. Parsons left secondary school with eleven GCSEs. Parsons’ father was a black cab driver in London.

Parsons became his own carer at the age of five. He had dyslexia and attended speech therapy sessions to improve his reading and writing until the age of eight. Parsons took up a paper round job as a means of funding judo classes. Parsons attained a black belt certification at the age of 14. In later childhood, Parsons lived with his father after his mother went to rehabilitation for alcohol addiction.

Early Business Career

Parsons took a business administration apprenticeship at a local insurance broker. After six months he was promoted onto the sales team. However, before Parsons could complete the apprenticeship, the company ceased trading.

Following the collapse of his apprenticeship, Parsons took on an internship at a recruitment firm. As the firm typically only accepted applicants with a degree, Parsons volunteered to work unpaid for three months. Parsons generated £60,000 in his first three months and later earned £700,000 for the company at the age of 21. Parsons soon became a top biller in the firm and remained so for three years, winning himself and the company multiple national awards including Best Newcomer to the Industry.

Despite his success, Parsons found himself unable to secure a promotion due to being substantially younger than most of the other staff. In this time Parsons realised there were many other young people in a similar position, struggling to find opportunities given their lack of qualifications.

Yourfeed

In 2015, Parsons created the social media platform Yourfeed. The purpose was aimed at matching users directly to businesses based on their skillset and ultimately seeking ways to encourage young people to showcase themselves and follow their ambitions to find their desired careers. Yourfeed accrued more than 200 brand partners, including Facebook, Twitter and Google.

Parsons left Yourfeed on 21st December 2017 due to disagreements with the board of directors and investors. The platform ceased operating 11th May 2020.

The Youth Group

Big Youth Group

On January 19th 2018, Parsons founded The Youth Group under the name Big Youth Group.

The Youth Group consisted of three entities: Big Youth Project, which was aimed at providing advice and mentorship to young people by connecting them with businesses, Big Youth Accelerator, which aimed to support young entrepreneurs by providing access to mentors and practical support on running and operating their own business, and Big Youth Academy, which aimed to support young people already in a career and wanting to change into a more purposeful career.

The Youth Group

On 18th November 2019, The Youth Group rebranded as The Youth Group. The Youth Group is a team of over fifty young people in London, working with over two hundred companies in the UK, with a support team of over a thousand ambassadors. The Youth Group has a network of 1.7 million young people around the world, from the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, New Zealand and North Macedonia.

The Youth Group reorganised The Youth Group’s services, launching four key programmes for young people: Mentor Me, Get a Job, Be Your Own Boss, and Mindset. The Youth Group also launched four key services for enterprise, Youth Recruit, Youth Support, Youth Engage, and Youth Verified.

Personal Life

In 2015, he gained experience in the corporate industry in his early twenties and decided to switch careers with the strong ambition to start his own company. He had little salary, no degree or knowledge of how to form a business and believed that money and education were not the only way to achieve his passion for making a difference to the lives of young people but through his motto of the three C´s: “Chaos, Consistency and Clarity”.

In 2018, Parsons had lost his grandmother and a close family member all in the same month. He was moving from Essex to London at the time of bereavement and had some mental health challenges. To deal with this, he posted about mental health on LinkedIn which received over 9,000 likes, 22,000 messages and 15 million views of young people and businesses reaching out.

Alongside his business portfolio, Parsons advises numerous organisations and figureheads. Parsons has been a patron of the charity EmployabilityUK since April 2021. Parsons is also a member of Creative UK’s Creative Sector Startup Loans Advisory Group. Additionally, Parsons sits on the Coop Inclusion and Equality Think Tank. Furthermore, Parsons is a special advisor to the New Zealand government.

Awards

Parsons has been honoured with awards over the last three years including Young Digital Leader of The Year 2018, Most Connected Young Entrepreneur, Top 50 Kindest Leaders 2019, Top 10 UK Young Entrepreneurs to Watch 2020 and Top 15 Young Entrepreneurs to Watch 2021.

References

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