By Simon Honeywood, Readysalted
I’m a southerner who has run a business in the North East for over 20 years. In that time I’ve noticed something that nobody here really says out loud.
It isn’t a capability problem. The businesses here are as good as anywhere I’ve worked with. It’s a confidence problem, and it shows up in a very specific way.
The London reflex
Listen to how businesses in this region talk about themselves. There’s real pride, and it’s deserved. But London always comes up. “We can do anything they can do down there.” “You don’t need to be in the capital to get this standard of work.”
Both statements are true. That’s not the point. The point is that we’re still saying them.
A business genuinely confident in what it does doesn’t reach for a comparison. It just gets on with it.
What I’ve watched change
We was lucky enough to work with the Dynamo founders in the early days, helping with the brand and building the first website. There was a genuine buzz about it. A region recognising what it already had rather than apologising for not being somewhere else.
From mining coal to mining data, as Paul Watson put it. That transformation was real and it happened here, on its own terms.
The cost of waiting for certainty
Where we still hold ourselves back is in caution. Businesses here are exceptionally good at waiting.
What if there’s a downturn? What if the market shifts? What if something happens we can’t control, and we’ve just committed to a campaign, or a conference, or a hire?
There’s a North East instinct that says we’ll feel it first if things turn. Sometimes that’s been true. But it has quietly become a reason never to fully commit to anything.
Certainty doesn’t arrive. The conditions are never perfect. Staying in your lane feels like prudence, but over a few years it’s a slow decision to stand still while others move.
You can spot the ones who back themselves
I’ll be honest about something. The business owners I most enjoy working with are the ones with genuine energy about what they do. They’re ambitious, they care, and they want the thing done properly.
You can usually tell within one meeting. When a conversation is only about cost, who’s cheapest, and there’s no real sense that the person is behind what they’re building, that tends not to work for either side. Not because of budget, but because the drive isn’t there.
The businesses that back themselves are a pleasure to work with. They make better decisions, and they get better results.
So back yourself
Book the stand. Run the campaign. Make the hire you’ve been circling for six months.
And if you know you’ve got a weakness you’ve been aware of for a while, bring in someone who can address it rather than hoping it resolves itself. That isn’t an admission of failure, it’s what confident businesses do.
Confidence isn’t recklessness. It’s acting on what you already know to be true about your own business.
www.readysalted.co.uk