COMMENT
Business Buzz
with Harry Pearson
If only Action Man had worn a bowler hat!
Harry could have had a career as a captain of industry if his childhood toys had steered him towards high finance instead of football. Or then again, perhaps not...
In the front cover feature of this issue of Tees Business, you can read about how, as a child, Rachel Burke owned a“ corporate Barbie”, which came complete with cellphone, laptop and briefcase. That doll was an inspiration to her and today she is director of compliance and risk at Tracerco. Oh, and the Tees Businesswoman of the Year.
Sadly, when I was a nipper, the boy’ s equivalent of Barbie, Action Man(“ He’ s not a doll, Mam. He’ s an action figure.”) was never equipped with anything so practical by way of outfits – even though there were dozens of them to choose from.
If only the 12-inch tall, scar-faced, fuzzy-haired, eagle-eyed little geezer had come with a bowler hat, a pin-striped suit, a brolly and an accounts ledger, he might have inspired a whole generation of boys to become titans of industry. Instead, the costumes available would lead you only into avenues where long-term employment was altogether less likely. After all, who in the last 40 years has been hiring World War II sailors, jungle explorers or cowboys? Well, OK, but apart from The Village People …
To be honest, even if I’ d had an Action Man who came with the wild hair, moustache and briarwood pipe of Sir John Harvey-Jones( ask your dad), I doubt it would have helped me become a business leader. The simple fact of the matter is that my entire family were missing the entrepreneur gene. When it came to an eye for business, we were all born needing binoculars. As my Uncle Joe once remarked:“ If I’ d invented water, I’ d have lost money on it.” Or, as his wife, Auntie Pat, put it:“ If he’ d been a hat salesman people would have been born without heads.”
Some people, it’ s fair to say, just have a nose for business. All my nose is good for is for resting my glasses on.
I was alerted to this discrepancy many decades ago when I was lucky enough to be given a lift to a football match by one of the North-East’ s most successful businessmen. He had been born in a two-up, two-down on one of the region’ s most notorious council estates, left school at 14, and 30 years later was living in a country
Backtrack – Action Man figures and Barbie dolls have entertained children for decades, as well as providing inspiration to Tees Businesswoman of the Year Rachel Burke.
mansion surrounded by hundreds of acres of parkland.
When I got in the car, I asked him how he had made his fortune. For the next hour he gave me an insight into the workings of the mind of a natural-born capitalist. He told me he’ d been working as a plasterer when he discovered the cost of construction insurance.
“ It was obvious there was a discrepancy between what firms were paying and the risk to the insurer,” he said.“ I reckoned you could easily shave four per cent off the premiums and still make a tidy profit. So I set up my first company.”
I asked how old he was when this idea had come to him.“ About 20,” he replied.
I thought about myself at that age. Would I have seen that gap? Unless it was playing a guitar, kicking a ball or wearing tight jeans, no chance.
He went on. Hiring a car in Ireland had opened up a similar insurance possibility with car rentals. Then he had been in Singapore and noticed that official football club kits could be bought in Southeast Asia so much cheaper than buying them here, and shipping container-loads to the UK could net a profit of“ a few quid per shirt”.
He talked like his until we pulled up into the car park, at which point I half expected him to have a brainwave about the width of the bays(“ take six inches off each one and you’ d open up ten more spaces, at £ 1 per hour …”). Looking back, though, I suspect he’ d already got to that.
Harry Pearson’ s latest book The Farther Corner – A Sentimental Return to North-East Football is out now.
154 | Tees Business