Conleth Maenpaa worked in recruitment before a career turn saw him up sticks from London to Newcastle - founding Lindisfarne Festival with little prior experience in the music and events industry. Originally from Cambridgeshire he first discovered Newcastle and the North East as an economics student at Northumbria University in the early ‘90s.
What was your first job (and how much did it pay)? My first job was babysitting when I was 14. I was paid £1.50 an hour which at the time I thought was a fortune for watching TV and eating food. The kids were in bed when I arrived, so it was an easy entry into the money-making world.
What is the best advice or support you’ve been given in business? There is a book called “Who moved my cheese” – a simple and very powerful short story for life and business. The moral of the story is about being adaptive, embracing the unknown and never thinking you have cracked it as you can easily become irrelevant if you fail to evolve.
