3 Monkeys No Banana was a business venture set up by Adam + Dan alongside Shib Hussain, a fellow graduate now working as a planner at Hicklin Slade. We graduated in the middle of a recession. Not ideal. But we didn't want to sit on our backsides doing nothing waiting for Gordon Brown to re-jiggle some figures, and get the job market up and running again.

We also didn't want to get a job that wouldn't benefit us in our career. A job in McDonalds, although very appealing with a free Big Mac, wasn't where we wanted to be. So we set up a company, marketed ourselves as an advertising agency and set out to get clients. After much brainstorming and discussion, we set on the name 3 Monkeys No Banana. The No Banana could stand for anything such as no job, no bull, no messin' around. Truth is, we didn't know what it meant, but that was a part of the fun letting people guess.

We managed to promote ourselves and even ended up in the local press. You can view some of the articles here. As a small company, we knew we wouldn't get big work, but we managed to get a few clients. Staffordshire University Students' Union, Sofa Design, UK Wide letting agent and the Staffordshire Business Village. We also pitched for accounts, built relationships with other companies and learnt a lot about business and negotiation.

As the job market opened up, we decided to take the opportunities that came to us. We were offered a placement at WAA, and Shib was offered a job at Hicklin Slade as a planner. The company is now closed and remains something we can return to in later life once we have built up more experience within the industry.