Defining Moments

I moved to the North East when I was ten years old, and a lot of my growing up involved various experiments with my dad, such as creating a trampoline out of an old tarpaulin, bits of nails and half a clothes peg. At one point I wanted to be a scientific… read more

Defining Moments

Acumen is a social enterprise that helps people back into work, start businesses or develop their skills by working with various government agencies to deliver contract work which makes that happen for people. We started by using various contract… read more

Defining Moments

If you’re running your own company, there are certain constraints; you have to work within the available working capital, with the resources you have in terms of people. But, you are in a lot more control. When I was working in the public sector, I was… read more

Secret

If we’re going through a cash flow difficulty, I can either worry about that all the time, or I can go out and find more business that will make the organisation more stable- the big things never happen if you worry about the little things all the time.… read more

Secret

The most successful entrepreneurs I know- their eyes light up because they’re so excited about what they do, so that passion has got to be there I think. Also, if you have big ambitions, it’s all about being able to get the right people around you. Be… read more

Pearl Of Wisdom

If you’re thinking about starting your own business, the one thing I would say is to find out what you actually want to achieve. If you can see what your dream business would look like and feel like, all you need to do is believe that you can do it. The… read more

Pearl Of Wisdom

We’ve put a lot of people into self employment, and when people start to talk about their idea and want to put things in place to achieve it, that’s when it feels like it can really work. Starting a business is not about already understanding marketing… read more

Challenge

Growing the business was definitely a challenge. As you expand you turn over more and more money, and in our world of working with public sector contracts, a lot of that is about what we call defrayed expenditure, so you spend the money and then you… read more

Success

When we started, I had a great team around me who helped me with business coaching and office management. Registering a company is actually a remarkably easy thing to do, and we just had to take a deep breath with the finances in order to get going. We… read more

Success

After Northern Rock’s investment and I came to work on the business full time, I had a new board of trustees. Although we were working in East Durham, to make a real difference a lot of potential contracts were going to be for a much wider geographical… read more

Success

From doing physics degrees and running garden centres, I think I’ve now discovered what I love doing. Every minute of every day I spend doing my job is just so exciting and fulfilling. The stories that I hear and the people who I talk to are incredibly… read more

Aspiration

We’ve been asked to deliver programmes in other parts of the country, so we want to embed the company in the North East first, and then take it across the North West and down to the Midlands. My projection now for the company is to have £40m turnover… read more