Have faith in the happy clappers
So much in business history has been about making a leap of faith. Having a world-beating idea is no good unless you can market and sell it.
Believing in an idea and having the personal drive to sell it to customers and empower your staff to flog it is the most important aspect of any business. But you don't need a numpty like me to tell you that. If you're in business you live and breathe it every day.
If there's a common theme running through this issue of our magazine then it's business people having faith in their big idea.
All of the people we have featured in our 42 under 42 feature this year share a vision in their own ability and what they are doing.
When Bernadette Spofforth (Working Lunch, page 20) started investigating digital radio as a new consumer market it was because she saw a niche for her ideas, her touch and her approach to make a step into a new area for her company. Thanks to her, a digital radio is something you actually might want to own.
And those we have revisited know what works, so they try it again. Take Mark Hallam, whose business we've followed for four years. He built up an internet hosting company Business Serve to be one of the most innovative businesses in my home town of Lancaster. From an original idea that started in his dining room Hallam has sparked a generation of budding internet entrepreneurs in the North West's Bay Area.
He's now doing it again at Iomart, and giving hope and heart to housewives, ex-van drivers and people who want to get on. He's a Lancaster entrepreneur who still believes he isn't taken seriously because at his heart he's a salesman. He's sold everything from milk to double glazing and most recently he's built a boiler room full of eager sales people who sell internet connections and websites to small businesses. Someone has apparently sneered behind his back that he's "a happy clapper". Well thank the heavens for happy clappers everywhere, or the internet would still be a bulletin board for techies.
We have often come across people from the quangos who want to know how they can encourage young people to consider a career in business. They want to know how the Business Link and Small Business Service can deliver its key performance indicators.
Instead they should spend time with the businesses we've featured in this magazine this month. They should organise school trips to these companies to meet the people who run them. Get kids to work on a market stall for a month. Then take them to gaze in awe at the tin in the car park at Mere Golf Club and say "if you work hard this can be yours."
It might sound like a stupid idea, but it has more chance of stimulating economic growth in the North West of England than John Prescott's Northern Way.
Michael Taylor, editor
