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North East Dealmakers Breakfast 2010
Rural entrepreneur Ian Brown was on top form at Insider’s annual North East breakfast at the Biscuit Factory in Newcastle, where he shared with his vast experience of many different businesses with the audience.
A third generation farmer, Brown's family has leased their farmland from the Duke of Northumberland for 60 years. He explained how his family had spanned from a matriarch rather than a patriarch when his grandmother spotted an opportunity to start a village shop in their local community. As such, he is interested in the debate about whether entrepreneurship comes from the boardroom or the bedroom.
Although he reserves his Wellingtons for photo calls these days instead of farm work, Brown is keen to get stuck into as many business opportunities as he can. Speaking about the natural characteristics of an entrepreneur, he said that after being a businessman for so long he had morphed: “I feel as comfortable now when driving through the centre of Gateshead and Newcastle as I do in my rural landscape.”
Brown is on the board of two quangos – One North East and the Environment Agency – but these positions come to an end in December and March respectively. While he has enjoyed both experiences and the influence he has had, he is relishing getting his hands dirty with lots of personal projects.
“I got involved in One North East because I thought the organisation could be doing a lot better, but I’m ready to get involved in business again,” he said.
Brown is keen to be involved in the region as much as possible, and was interviewed for a board position at One North East on five separate occasions before he was accepted – proving his dogged determination to get involved in the region.
And he is never afraid to voice his opinion, even if it goes against the grain. “You’ll have meetings where everyone is saying everything is rosy, whereas I’ll happily step in and say: ‘That’s interesting, do you want to have a think about that.’”
He spoke highly of One North East, citing the region's success in getting the Finance for Business Funds in place for the area at a time when it was really needed. “The opportunities have never been greater in the North East,” he said.
“One North East has been good at spotting three of four sectors that offer opportunities for the region and concentrating on them, which is allowing the region to provide some specialist services globally.”
Brown has always had an enthusiasm for enterprise.One of his most successful ventures is the food company, Fresh Element. The idea for the business was pitched to him by three students when he worked for Business in the Community. He recalls: “I went back to the office, told my manager about the idea and was met with the response: 'It’s not your job to help them.’ My resignation quickly followed. It has been an interesting and sometimes expensive hobby, but it has proved to be the best thing I ever did.”
A spin-off from the company is the Six Restaurant, which is on the rooftop of the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead. Judging by the comments from the audience after Brown's speech, the restaurant is highly regarded, which combines high-quality food with an unpretentious attitude.
Brown talked about his expanding business interests, including his eco-build office pod company, Be-Pod, launched in conjunction with Newcastle Science City. These self-build eco-hubs are designed to give business people who want to work from home a dedicated place to work. They can placed in back gardens, or several of the pods can also be placed together to connect entrepreneurs with other business people.
Brown also has another project up his sleeve – a boutique hotel in Blyth. He said: “People say to me, ‘a hotel in Blyth, are you mad?'”
But he grinned knowingly as he explained his thinking behind the project. As a local resident, he knows it is a growing area, with Clipper (the wind power company) attracting plenty of people to the area. And as people visit for business, they will soon realise the draw of the place as a tourist destination. Given Brown's interest in sustainability and renewable projects, the hotel will be an eco-build project that serves as an example for other hotel builders across the country.
Questioned about the new political landscape, Brown said: “A business school lecturer once said to me: ‘Entrepreneurs welcome chaos'. It’s true, and whereas most people don’t like change, a coalition government is perfect for the entrepreneur.”
There is a lot of concern in the North East about the future of the regional development agencies (RDAs), and Brown said that scrapping One North East completely would be a mistake and that business groups in the region should have a say on how a local enterprise partnership should work.
“The name will probably change and it will become an economic partnership that business organisations can have a say in. We’ll have a lot less money and a lot of the rubbish will be taken away, but we’ll keep a lot of the really important initiatives that are world class,” he said. “One North East needs to keep identifying where the market failure is and focusing on that.”
His comments came as communities secretary Eric Pickles confirmed that One North East would continue in some form, but lose many of its decision-making powers.
Reflecting on the change to the political landscape, Brown said the coalition government could be good for the North East. “I’m not sure that things were that good for business under the previous regime as there was a lot of madness happening,” he said. “It's only by having a clean break that we can move forward. I think we may be surprised with what happens in a coalition, so let’s all go into it optimistically. I think we have a real good opportunity to say the North East is different; we’re doing some really good things here and we're a region that really wants to prosper.”
Much of that prosperity will come from nurturing the ideas of young entrepreneurs in the region, Brown believes. “Entrepreneurs are a different breed; they are creative people who have the attention span of a gnat and are constantly drawn to new ideas,” he said. “I love opportunity; I love the sound that it makes as it whooshes past.”
Brown believes there are hundreds of other people in the North East with ideas like him, and that the challenge now is to remove the barriers stopping entrepreneurs from moving forward and to harness their skills. “A region like this needs every single one of those people. They do it for creativity, not the money.”
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