Enterprising North Celebration Event
Welcome
Paul McEldon, NEEAL Chair
Paul has been involved in the startup game for thirty years and this is the most exciting and expansive offering for startups. They thanked the funders including North East Combined Authority and Gateshead Council and they know startups inspire communities who are more likely to buy locally and employ locally. They have dealt with some cracking partners including King's Trust, North East BIC, MBSL, Tedco, Project North East, Transco and UMI Design Centre who employ staff to deliver services.
The stars of the show are startups who have taken that brave step to start a business, he is in awe of all of the people doing that where the rewards can be absolutely amazing. Their experience of a startup was when they were in their teens and their dad who had bought a local café and he would become the chef there but his mam wasn't happy with this but he loved cooking but running a business was more difficult. He set up the business in Crook which he ran for five years, but lost all his redundancy money in the first year and the second year took a loan but by the fifth year made a bit of money from the business, they learned it is really hard work running a business.
The business his dad had brought real value to the community, he had to be innovative he started making pizzas in 1981 and people came from all over to get a pizza. His dad sold the business, and it became an Indian restaurant which is still in business today. Paul mentioned that people with a startup are brave and is so proud of everyone doing that and looks forward to monitoring progress.
Alfie Joey
Alfie is a communication coach and was a BBC breakfast host and standup comedian and even a toy demonstrator in Harrods and before that they were a monk and before that they trained to be a priest. They have done Britain's Got Talent, but they want to be like those doing a startup which they said it is so brave. The were asked on a podcast about a highlight of their career so far, they said without any hesitation which was being on the radio during Covid which they had the time to give the help the needed and was on a mission to help people, their inbox in LinkedIn was full of people asking for help, when things go wrong is when local radio is at its best, they come when they need help locally.
They helped provide solutions and answers for businesses was the highlight, they are much more excited about interviewing startup founders on stage or podcast to Olympians or Oscar winners who are brilliant, but startup founders have stories bursting with creativity and it doesn't get more exciting than that. Keep that passion burning and don't be afraid to talk about it. When they were training to be a priest they had an Irish priest in charge of communication skills and asked them if they wanted to see a rugby match and he took them to Murrayfield, it was Scotland vs France and it was exciting and everyone seemed to know the priest and it turned out they played for Ireland who gave it up to be a priest but they were stunned and had never told them.
alfie had seen a photo of them when they last played for Ireland which was hidden away, and he told the story about playing for Ireland and next time it was up in his office. You need to talk about your business, don't be shy, shy bairns get nowt, share what you're doing and ask questions that will add value to your business.
Presentations
TrendBible - Joanna Feeley
Joanna likes to talk about their business and share their story and their success story and they will share what success looks like from their business that started in 2008, it headquartered in Newcastle, and they set it up as a sole trader and in 2011 they turned it into “proper” business. They have people in Newcastle and other places, they are a trend forecasting company who work with high street brands and companies all over the world.
They are sharing five moments of their journey that demonstrate ups and downs of running the business, their business wasn't a choice they were working as head of trends for Tesco and their contract wasn't continued after they fell pregnant they had been a trend forecaster but wanted to come back to the North East, there isn't anyone here who is one who hasn't or isn't working for them, most competitors are in other cities and countries.
They started the business out of necessity but took a job working as a teacher while setting up the business. The way they wanted to curate their knowledge into a physical format where they could create a trend book with samples which took nine months to create the first one and they put their energy into it, they knew as a trend forecaster they could do this. They had to order a minimum of fifty but when they arrived they didn't know how to get them out, so they got funding to go to a big trade show in the United States, they thought they get it in front of the people there or people could sell the book. They took the book there and got absolutely terrible feedback, which they did write down, they did sell two of the books to JC Penny and TJ Maxx though!
They knew if they could make it matter to those two then they knew there was something there, they took the negative feedback and put that into a new book where they sold thirty-six which covered the costs and made money. They were still teaching but were building and earning enough to make the trend business work, no one was working from home and wanted to be in the North East and wanted to create their own opportunity.
Focus was if anyone asks about trend forecasting, they should jump at this chance and they were told to be as narrow as possible so they went into home interiors which they thought would be a big market and they haven't strayed from that. They have worked with companies and brands it is about how people behave and respond at home and they never regretted turning things away such as fashion. Their vision was to be the most trusted source for understanding how people will live at home in the future.
Scale was the tricky bit, the startup but they loved, when you get to around ten people you start to be asked about policies etc, so to scale a business is completely different to starting a business and you need to delegate, and they will do things differently to how you would do them. They were given a list of things from someone with all the things that were wrong with the business, but many of the impressions were incorrect so needed to understand why people work with them and how to connect to each other as a group which enabled them to get past that stage of ten people is a really big shift.
Belong, it is not just about the work, they knew how to be a trend forecaster but developing a culture was completely new to them and didn't have those leadership skills but learned those and have been able to employ the best trend experts in the world from places like San Francisco. They can do things that build a strong culture like away days and things like three-week bereavement leave, people will have something that goes wrong in their life and this is an opportunity to support people when they really need it. They have had people start as an intern and get into a role such as creative director.
Transform is they had hit their first million-pound turnover was just a month before lockdown and they lost 75% of their business, their long-term plan looked great but work was cancelled left, right and centre. They had a physical book that wouldn't be collected or sent, and they had to digitise the product, but the pandemic taught them to take more risks and turned it into an online trend platform and it is half of their income and they are selling it to companies in the world and they are the only home focused online trend service. They were also able to hire people outside of the North East where needed.
Don't take your valuables on the rollercoaster, check your blind sports, change is the better applies to startups, your emotions and resilience is important when founding a business. Get someone to do something you can't do yourself or the bits you can't do so you can focus on what you're brilliant at and build your network with other founders.
Me, Myself and AI - Pascal Fintoni
Using AI in business, reflections and updates. Imagine being somewhere in Swizerland in 13th March 1989 with a memo from Tim Berners-Lee about bringing things together with something called mesh and doubted it was possible which became net and then the world-wide-web and five years later they were given a project to make an internet brochure for first choice holidays and were given this as they were the only person who knew Microsoft Works.
The unfair advantage is we know how to use technology to give convenience but also to make connections and people are trying to circumvent human connections, but they don't want to do this. From the 90s for all businesses, it was wise to be interested and adopt websites, then search engine optimisation and social media marketing and it is always wise to see what can give you an unfair advantage.
If you get tech for convinced and connection right you build trust. Looking at the meaning of language, they are not a big fan of acronyms and AI isn't clear so the A stands for the are of the possible and I for imagination is the key. What can you do using this to move things forward, when something is hard to understand and complicated we project our human qualities onto it. If we simplify to make AI more attractive and understandable you want a cute companion in the office to make a meaningful human connection.
Although all the platforms are clever, we can go the other way, use AI to be more productive and build meaningful connections. What we'll have more is the idea being a team leader and have assistants to help you. They have two events that happened to them where they spoke about future of businesses about AI and change management but it was depressing to talk to people where you have been learning longer than people have been alive and the other was their daughter asking if it was true about fax machines and what happened, with email it helped save time and make more meaningful connections - you've been promoted so you can do different things.
Novice Assistant - The Rookie with role and scope of work is to research, rewrite, repurpose, the next is Expert Assistant - The Consultant where the role and scope of the work is to critique, coach and create. We have a converging of art and science.
Augment your information using AI, if selling a physical product, you can use AI to guess what is missing in between two images to create a moving image such as with Vidify. If you were a tour operator go online take own photos and use their adverts and use AI to replace the people in advert with your own faces such as the Jet2Holidays advert. Glasses are an important aspect to use them to make a positive impact one someone on a girl who is deaf where it can describe the words around them to transcribe speech in real time including their own words using AI.
Advanced form of Interaction, you can have a digital assistant such as ChatGPT and Gemini. Spotlight sales content. Create a prompt for an expert sales creator and then get the AI to write a case study and then you can have a conversation and find the places to contact about featuring a case study and then create a covering email to attract attention of editors, be able to devise a PR campaign in just minutes.
Not asking AI to focus on entire information out there but just focus on specific things such as key takeaways from a social media report. If writing is not your preferred learning style so the breakthrough is going to be using your voice such as NotebookLM, Microsoft Copilot and Google AI Studio.
What's next is digital agents, this is where they can work and act on your behalf to do things independently, you could ask it to find options such as booking holidays or an agent that could do an expenses form. If you're on Zoom, Teams, Google Meet but the future could be an AI clone which has been trained on your public profile that you can chat to. There is excitement for AI clones so can offload mundane meetings to an AI bot and with AI services you don't need technical skill, they can be convincing for a bit but don't quite look correct.
Digital Twins you could have a meeting where you can ask simple questions, you don't have to wait you can book a session for superficial simple questions to there, someone could book you for one price or your digital twin for half the price. The history of tech is to be dismissive first, then evaluate it and then go ahead and take it onboard. Are people concerned about co-existing with robots, people aren't prepared for it.
We are looking at convivence and the memo to ourselves is to do this without impacting meaningful human connections. We can feel really proud of our accomplishments with Tim Berners-Lee featuring in the Olympics opening ceremony, he designed it for a social effect to help people to work together and the goad of the web is to support people and connect them together, the invention of the World Wide Web is one of the most important accomplishments.
Showcase
Jane Adamson - Fresh Perspectives
It is about connection, ideas but it isn't AI that's a super power it is the outdoors that is a superpower. That it should be allowed to go outside to build strategy and help build changes and they are proud of their journey to take their vision. They were told they had a health threatening condition where they were told not to go anywhere on their own, those high-risk factors have done but they have been able to use funding and support to transform an opportunity for them.
Jane Fisher Associates has been going for eleven years but they wanted to create something new but needed someone to pick them up and keep them going, someone who could navigate and keep them going forward and Enterprising North's business advisors helped them. The funding has been critical but has been a daunting journey but a business advisor has helped them get to the end. The funding, even small amounts, can make a difference to get something from a vision to the finish line.
Fresh Perspectives is business growth powered by the outdoors and get leadership outside, there a business that want to go out there but need small changes to bring about big changes and everything they do is sustainable with one-to-one support, workshops and peer groups. They also have tread events where they trade breakout rooms for break out works, they do everything to drive their business forward which wouldn't have been possible without the funding. It is an opportunity to get the outside into business and make a huge transformation to power up business, is not just about wellbeing but about the superpower of being outdoors.
Ali Balcon & Scott Hall - AMS Welding & Fabrication
Scott and Ali founded AMS Welding and Fabrication who specialise in repairs, pipe work and more with different materials such as aluminium and steel. You can get a chance to see welding up close in their workshop. They have had projects like hand crafted roses and medieval maces and did a video where they smashed a glass bottle with it. They are looking for many jobs and have been contractors for a construction company and looking at becoming an approved supplier. Enterprising North and Tedco have helped with funding to get a pillar drill and other things to help them expand what they can do,
Aurea Neto - Oath Healthcare
Aurea set up their business for professional and reliable home care, which is crucial not just for individuals, but entire families and they help empower individuals to live independently safely and with dignity and have secured their first major contract with South Tyneside Council. Enterprising North and North East BIC has been crucial to their success including funding for furniture and electronic equipment. With continued support from North East BIC they will be able to reach out more and are excited to see how far they can go together.
Robert Little - Smash Life Challenge
Smash Life Challenge was the name given to Rob, during the lockdown they were living the dream and started to work on themselves and stopped drinking and started coaching people in the community showing if they can change so can you. Smash Life Challenge was created and to build a programme to help people and take them where they needed to go. They had great testimonials from people who have given up drinking and the training is making people look differently at their life.
Rob's aim is to get 1,000 subscribers on their channel on YouTube, with the right tools and mindset you can go from where they are and go where they want to be. The support from Tedco gave them a business plan, the virtual world was something they had issues with, and Sarah Mills helped with that as there is so much engagement on social media but takes hours to do this. Rob has a mission to help people, doesn't matter if you're right at the bottom or top they can help. They've done a podcast episode with a boxer, The Silent Assassin in their latest episode in memory of their nana.
Ask the Experts Panel Session - Pascal Fintoni - Pascal Fintoni & Associates, Will Lang - Purple Chilli, Gavin Spencer - Beach Accountants with Alfie Joey
Will from Purple Chilli which was started in 2019, they were touring a lot as a musician and travelled the world but had a family so started a doing silent disco that they could send out to people, Covid changes the party scene for them but they made some savvy business moves and help from Tedco they do Silent Disco for you along with other offerings but have around thirty five staff.
Gavin set up Beach Accountants in 2012 and has always been into accountancy and never wanted to do anything else and was first North East accounting firm to win accountancy excellence awards. It is about doing what you are good at and pass out what you are not good at, you need to have a good friend, and your best friend should be your accountant. You need to live your numbers as if you don't you won't succeed, it is important to understand your numbers. It is about making sure you understand your accounts, you should start your day with own finances if you don't do that yourself you need to get someone to do that for you, planning is the most important thing and you shouldn't forget to check your numbers.
Getting clients at the beginning is really hard, for Pascal it was a couple of things where he was super clear about what he wants to offer, so the temptation is to be very generous, it is not plausible and you can stretch yourself too thin so decide what not to do and reduce what is on offer and target specific markets, the message is to speak to your advisors you can't save the world just focus on one place first, which they learned the hard way by not getting any orders, one of their clients asked what it was they actually do, so you need to narrow down and have faith and clarity gives you focus.
Will casts such a wide net with Purple Chill so how they started but what they do is really narrow as a sales, marketing and logistics company. They will put so much money into the business where the return is so many clients, so they put things in a box with instructions so people can't get it wrong at the other end. When they started in 2019 they had ambitions of hitting 100 bookings per month by 2020 but Covid hit so when lockdowns happened no one was partying so they looked at NHS and schools mailing lists and took the headsets which can give joy to people with a free hire and they had massive up take, it didn't cost anything as the client paid for the courier.
Gavin started as people like working with people and talking with each other is key and have to be able to trust your accountant and go on the journey with them, social media is critical you have to get your name out, follow this up with a good website and they want to come to you and talk online or face to face but it is about bringing out your personality as behind every great business is a great person.
Pascal with getting the balance right with marketing, there is a massive shift in social media and people want to reclaim that space for meaningful connections and as a business you are a bit of an intruder so have to have content that adds value, advertising is not just you exist but it something you have created that will make a difference to someone. With a small amount of money you can get valuable feedback with market research, you need to be part of the community, think about what your contribution is as a social business.
What has worked for Will is pay per click advertising where can test stuff and see what works such as keywords, auction bids and pricing groups can be tested, they can go out and change appropriately based on the given markets, it is all about testing to see what works.
Free organic social media marketing isn't free if you're spending all your time doing it, Gavin loves networking and LinkedIn where there is a lot in that space, have to be always forward thinking and watching audience, is it Facebook, LinkedIn and who are the target audience and what their trends are and where they are going, check out all of the social media options as one of them will work for you, but be very clear about who you are looking for and you are hitting the target market you are trying to attract and response time is extremely important.
There are changes coming with tax, this kind of stuff can be daunting, Gavin talked about what is coming and the big change is coming to sole traders from April 2026 with an income over £50,000 and the year after will be £30,000 will have to make tax digital where everything done electronically and will be doing quarterly reports to HMRC so will be doing five returns per year rather than one. Check out accounting software and see what best works for you, may be something you get with your business accounts, but with real-time accounting you can see the implications. There is not a date set for a limited company for making tax digital so may be a better option for now but there won't be penalties in the first year but they make more from that than tax collected.
Strategies and habits for small business owners for long term sustainability that works for Will is that he struggles with forming habits, but if look at what you want to achieve, you may look at your goals and see they aren't happening but if look at symptoms not cause then can miss what's going on so they look at their processes and looking at changing their systems, you can also look at your identity as a company, what do you want to achieve and how do you achieve that thing. A process that has been really good for them, a lot of what they do is left field and they engage with different things but can also plan things and if plan something they are happy with they will do it, making themselves get into a systematic structured approach.
Pascal said he has made himself accountable to the community, if you're busy working you can miss out on things, so he has committed to giving updates twice a week on what's going on in digital and AI. They have two things which is a weekly article for a long read, the challenge with social media with small micro sized content is it is too small, so they supplement this with longer articles and have a podcast such as Film Marketing Academy and Two Geeks and a Marketing Podcast. They give themselves permission to break the rules, they do ninety-day business plans rather than two-year ones, so they do ninety-day sprints.
Gavin is a straight-lined organised person but it is about planning, set yourself time and do monthly planning, you might know your numbers but you also know what is in your sales funnel, timeline, networking events, that time is about being you and seeing what you achieved and feel good or bad about that and how you can make that different for next month and the next few days, they have a year plan with fifteen objectives they want to do as a long-termist they have a one, two and five year plan. If you're analysing on a monthly basis, but as long as you do the planning, you'll be successful.
Pascal gets value from keeping working on communication skills, there is a book "Exactly what to Say" which cracks the code of how to engage in conversation. Gavin mentioned a book "Ten times is easier than two times" which is worth checking out. Will has started listening to "Atomic Habits" which he said set off a proper lightbulb moment for them which talked about if don't have systems in place to gets somewhere you won't get there.