Latest Interviews
Ed Beckmann – ‘Helping Rural Business Grow’.
Posted: Tuesday 1st May 2007
Ed Beckmann, for those who weren’t at the Wired Wessex networking event last month, was the guest speaker we invited along. And since he gave such an interesting talk, we only thought it fair to interview him afterwards…
As it turned out, Ed was very busy getting ready for a presentation on the day, but we managed to catch him for ten or so minutes, and here’s what he said:
Anyway, do introduce yourself… “ Sure! I’m part of the Rural Enterprise Gateway. It covers rural Hampshire, which is mainly the whole area north of Southampton and Portsmouth, and our main aim is to help people who are looking to start up their own business.”
As for his background, Ed has somehow found time not just for one career, but several. “My background… I have a lot of experience in a wide range of fields. My original training was in engineering, but later on I retrained to be an accountant, which I did in both private practice and commercially for ten years. I then moved into the IT support world – I was running an IT department, and I got heavily involved in computerising financial and other systems. From that I moved into the training world, in both systems and behaviour and organisation. So that’s a wide range of things, from how people go about things to making money!”
It sounds like you have a burning desire to try out new things. “One reason is that. Another is that I have a broad range of interests, and it being down to how business has changed. So, for example, the IT world changes so often, it leaves you with a choice to either specialise in a particular kind of software or hardware, or you become more focussed on the people using it. And my interests lay in the people. So, I’m quite comfortable about working with people and training and mentoring too, but in the broader world of business.”
But lots of people specialise and it’s quite rare to meet a ‘polymath’ like you. It must put you in a unique position. “It certainly puts me in a unique position for dealing with any kind of enquiry initially. I have wide experience, so I can relate to a lot of things people come up with. But what I resist doing is telling them the answer.
“I’m aware that you can think you’re a master of a lot of trades because you’ve got experience of them, but I’m also well aware that it’s been a few years since I ran an IT department. So yeah, it gives me a great advantage in understanding roughly their world, provided that I limit my questions to my experience.”
Next, do tell how you got involved in the Enterprise Gateway… “It was an e-project that came up over a year ago. They wanted someone to start up the gateway and move it into Hampshire. It had been successfully piloted in the rest of the South East, and they were doing it in Southampton and Portsmouth as well. My biggest interest is in rural businesses, so I applied for that post. I was working with smaller businesses anyway, in a similar fashion, but I always find the early stages of a start-up and the exploration to be the most fascinating parts of the job, and I can add progressively better value once there starts to be lots of systems in place and a larger number of employees. And that’s when specialist, I believe, come into their own. You start getting the problems that need them then.”
It sounds like your job is to make yourself redundant as soon as possible. “I think you’re right in that, and that is very true. The biggest part of my role is to help people to become confident enough to believe in what interests them and try it. Then, for them to evaluate it. So it’s firstly self-belief and confidence and secondly ‘will it really do that?’ and ‘why do I need to it?’ And from then on, if the people are still dependant on me, I haven’t really done my job properly. For me it’s recognising when they have got either the skills themselves or they know where to go for the specialists. So yes, it’s a self-redundant situation…”
Moving on, a lot of Wired Wessex readers didn’t attend last week’s event in Winchester. Could you run through again what you said? “What I ran through with the other night was that I consider there to be four steps in making your business become what you want out of it. And as some people in the audience said, it becomes not just a job but a way of life.
“Step one is deciding what you actually want. There’s lots of material about creating dreams and having visions. But I put it into hard facts by saying that most of us have seen a job description. So before we started up our own business, let’s write up a job description and be aware of what we want to earn in the longer term and what holidays we want and what kind of lifestyle and – really important – who are we going to be working with? If you have a business where all the customers have irritated you, then perhaps you need to go into a business with a different sort of customer. So, what you have to do is say ‘what do I want my working day to be like?’”
Indeed, and stating the obvious is the hardest thing to do for some. “Step two is asking ‘well, who’s it for? Who’s going to be interested in that?’ So you’d have to work out specifically who your business is for. Who your customer is. And to avoid as much as possible saying ‘well, actually, I’ve got very broad skills and I can do anything for anyone’. Because, while that may be true, as a marketing message, no one has a reason to call you. They’ve got the reason why they COULD, but they can sometimes think ‘we might be able to scratch the surface, but they can’t help me in depth’.”
Indeed, and then there’s the small matter of paying the bills. “Step three is really what the ‘break even’ point is. How do you get your lifestyle, with the number of people who would buy your services, knowing what they’d pay? Now, in my experience, the level of market research people do can give you a bad inkling, if you’ve got a target market of 20,000 people and you need ten of them to buy from you each year, then probably it’s worth a go! But if you identify that you need to pick up 100 new clients every week, and they all need to spend £200 then, possibly, it’s going to be trickier.”
Ed himself thinks customers are A Good Thing, but is not afraid to drown the kittens. (Not literally though.) “So, we’ve discussed what we want, how many people will pay for it and does that add up? Then you have to think about what customers that are, frankly, not paying their way. Because very often it’s good to – I mean, it’s tempting to keep a customer you do a lot of business with, who you believe will introduce you to others or who was your first customer. And it’s that sanity cheque where to get to where you want, you need every customer to buy from you twice a month, on average £200 each, and there’s someone who’s only spending 50 quid. If so, do you really still need them or should they go to another person? Are they actually taking you away from what your goal is?”
It sounds like a hard thing to do… “Quite a lot of the audience that evening identified they had dropped some who were a burden and they did have a strategy for very politely turning them into more loyal customers or ex-customers. So that was quite reassuring to know that sometimes the hard decisions were being made.”
It’s like you’re telling businesses to grow up… “Yes, I think growing up is a fair comment. Being in charge or taking charge – I’d rather put it like that. They quite often act in a grown-up manner but they are lead by others. So if being grown up means deciding what you know what you want and getting rid of what’s in the way, then sure! That’s very much so. Until you know what you want, you are kind of a passenger in business anyway.”
And with such words of wisdom, the interview draws to a close. But surely Ed and the Enterprise Gateway have some more ideas in the pipeline? “Our plans for the future are to hold some events in the rural area in the next couple of months. Really going through all the local towns… Inviting people to an evening to say ‘OK! We need this in our local area. What’s stopping me from making this happen?’ Really saying, ‘well, what do we want?’ We want to raise that awareness: that while some things are worth thinking about, some things are worth doing!”
Ed is keen to knock a new generation of business people into shape too. “We’re also doing more work with final year students to bring in the belief that they can go for stuff.”
But the ethos in any case remains the same. “In closing, really, we’ll carry on with that message, which is not to necessarily call it business, or work or whatever, but decide what you like to do and find someone who will give you the pointers to make it happen. That’s really my biggest message, because there are no good or bad ideas, but just better ways of making them work.”
Well said, and now, some last words. “Really, I’d invite anyone to think of those messages and if they think we can help them any further, then please give us a call on 08454 58 64 56 or look at our web site [http://www.ruralhantsenterprisegateway.co.uk], which is a good flavour of what we’re about and what events we’ve got to offer.”
And with that, he had to dash off for the presentation. A busy man indeed.