What are we looking for?

If your business needs some input to grow, get in touch and we can work together to fit it into Pitch Up!’s circular communities.

Tim:

Pitch Up! is really an opportunity for people with enthusiasm who have an idea, or already have an existing business that could benefit a cyclical system. I guess it just really needs the enthusiastic attitude that can get them through the toughness of getting these things started because generally there’s a lot of energy and a lot of passion required, just to get these new ideas off the ground and going. There’s a bit of realism that is needed, to be aware that this stuff takes time and effort. But with the right time and effort we can make some really exciting things happen.

Sam:

The idea of Pitch Up! for me is to challenge our preconceived ideas of what’s possible and what could be produced from this land. And the scope of enterprises that we’re looking for is endless. But we want people who share our values. People that value our soils, our biodiversity and our integrity. And also the social interaction with other businesses and communities in the area.

Just as an example of the diversity of the sorts of businesses and producers that occupy space at Balcaskie; we operate our own butchery, but we also have an organic brewery, a taproom distillery. We have a Pilates studio and gym. We have workshops that make orthotic insoles for sports injuries, we’ve got a guitar-maker, architects, 3D printers… The array of people and the skills that they come with is almost infinite and I don’t think we could ever have set out and written a list of those because we wouldn’t have known that they existed.

Tim:

I’m really amazed by the ideas that people come to us with. The ability to see how their ideas can integrate into a whole system is the bit that we really need to work on – but we can help them with that. Because it’s not normal for people to think about how they can integrate with other activities. We often are trained to think very individualistically instead of interdependently and actually what we’re trying to think about is much more, ‘How can we be more interdependent with each other?’

Diversifying and mixed farming are not amazingly new ideas to bring to farming, but the way that we’re trying to do it is to integrate much more, instead of having lots of businesses that are occupying their own little world. Every business activity is going to have the main thing it produces and also co-products. What we’re trying to do through this idea of enterprise stacking is to utilise the co-products and add value to those through some other business activity.

I understand that most applicants probably don’t know exactly what we’ve got or how it could integrate. So people need to be aware that we might have to do that thinking for them. So don’t shy back if they can’t see how their business plan might integrate, but just be open to the fact that we might see how it can. Instead of saying, ‘Right, you’ve got to tell us exactly how your business can integrate into our business,’ because they might not necessarily know, but it’s more of an openness to the fact that it needs to be flexible enough to be able to do that, then we would work through, from our side with the future applicants.

Sam:

We are looking for somebody who is keen to take something that we don’t necessarily value and turn it into something that everybody values. I think that would be a real win-win. Pitch Up! is really there to open up all sorts of opportunities. We’re looking for people that come to us with a passion for an idea and they have an energy to drive that idea and make that happen, and a realistic understanding of the energy that it’s going to require. Because often there’s a sort of energy early on but then the realisation that that’s going to take up a significant proportion of time. So we’re ideally looking for people that have already gone through that early phase.

Tim:

One piece of advice for me this year is thinking about the market. If they can bring a following of people with them who are already interested in their product as well, then it makes their whole idea much easier to get off the ground and get going. It’s not a, ‘You must have it!’ but it certainly makes my eyes light up when I see people with that level of following and understanding of the products and the enterprise they want to get into.

Sam:

There are people out there who’ve got amazing ideas and don’t have the access to the land and the space that we do. And we’re perhaps not utilising it as efficiently as we could be. And enabling people to come in and start a business and develop a business in a rural area, there can’t be many better ways to earn a living than to start your own business and then develop it in a place that you want to live and work and invest your time and energy. And if you can do that where you’ve got support from the estates as well, it’s a bit of a win-win for everybody. Because there are a lot of hurdles, when you’re starting a business, and I think if we can iron some of those hurdles out with either experience or pooled resources or with shared knowledge then there’s a real strength for that in bringing those minds together.

Tim:

It sort of reminds me of the old Michaelmas Fayre, where once a year, the people from the local community, local farms, got together and that’s when they changed jobs. And if November is the month for Pitch Up! when people come to farms to pitch their ideas for the upcoming season, this might be a modern take on that and it could be something really exciting, and make this stuff normal. Because at the moment it’s not that normal…

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