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Tyneside The Entrepreneurs' Forum
Support Story

One of the problems that I suffered with for the first 13 years of business was that I wasn’t in the North East. I once went to one of the support agencies in London, and almost ran out of the room screaming thinking, why would a former bank manager who… read more

Challenge

I went through a really difficult time in London before starting the Amazing Group. I got ‘screwed’ (I think that’s the most accurate way to describe it) by my landlord. He suddenly demanded that I pay 5 times the annual rent, in a month’s time.… read more

Pearl Of Wisdom

When I used to make TV programmes, a guy I worked for said, “It’s very easy to make other people’s programmes.” It’s true because whenever I watch something, I’m quite often critical and think, “I wouldn’t have put that shot there.” It’s the same with… read more

Pearl Of Wisdom

There’s an expression, “You don’t choose to have a cat, a cat chooses to live with you,” and I think it applies to entrepreneurship. I believe that you don’t have any choice about becoming an entrepreneur; you either are one or you’re not: it chooses… read more

How I...

…restructured the business to ease cash flow uncertainty … read more

Secret

One thing that I didn’t do at the beginning, which I would have benefited from knowing, is think how I can exit from a business; how can I sell it and move onto something else? Not because that was my plan from day one, but I think if you approach it… read more

Secret

I always say you should hire people who are better than you. It’s a grave error to be egotistical in business, because you simply can’t afford to be. If you think it’s expensive to have good employees, try running the business without them. The better… read more

Secret

One of my favourite pieces of advice is, “Don’t work in your business, work on your business.” I had no idea what that meant to start with. Actually, I thought it was pretty ridiculous, how can I not work in my business? I used to think: I run it, I… read more

Mistake To Avoid

I’ve made mistakes with hiring people as I’m sure lots of people have. Again I haven’t trusted my instinct and thought, they must be good, look at their CV, even though my gut was telling me they wouldn’t fit in with the organisation. There’s an… read more

Mistake To Avoid

One of my biggest mistakes was not trusting my instinct. I think people who start businesses generally do it for reasons they can’t completely rationalise, but you do have an instinct to do things in a certain way when you face opportunities or… read more

Defining Moment

I never expected or planned to start a business. It was just the next logical thing to do. I worked for the BBC as a producer before I went independent, and I was constantly working for other people, making programmes where we always under-spent the budget. I never received any of the under-spend and I began to think, that’s a bit unfair.… read more

If we can you can challenge 10