Probably when I was at university. I set up my first business selling baked potatoes to Newcastle United fans from the window of my student flat outside St James’ Park. Our idea was to improve the diet of the fans and provide a tasty alternative to the normal match-day fare of burgers and hotdogs.

How did that lead into the position you're in now?

I went on to work in rural development and regeneration and was always interested in projects that could be sustainable and trade after funding had finished. There was always a tension between social and financial objectives for many projects.

How does your enterprise work?

We train locals in IT and web publishing and provide cheap computers and broadband services for them. We have a community website that people can contribute to as well. It helps the community stay connected and promotes social inclusion.

The website is also used to deliver innovative services including text message alerts when roads are blocked by snow, a local market place for selling and buying unwanted goods and a lift sharing service. Our local police team ‘cybercop’ uses the website to keep the community up-to-date with local policing issues. We fund ourselves through providing consultancy, selling broadband and cleaning up old computers for the council to sell on.

What are your ambitions for the future?

We are working with the local hospital to establish a social enterprise that will offer e-health services. This significant project aims to improve patient care by allowing more people to be treated closer to home.

In setting up the community website and providing Web 2.0 services, we have experienced many unexpected challenges that have been costly and were avoidable. We aim to advise many more organisations on how to avoid these pitfalls via our specialist consultancy services, saving them money.

We will continue to work with other communities throughout Cumbria, providing training and support to enable them to develop websites for their village or town. This will also embrace the testing of on-line services for public sector organisations.

What other social entrepreneurs/businesses do you admire and why?

Mike Berriman who set up the Option C car club in County Durham www.optionc.co.uk. He has had so many problems in his life over the past few years, it's fantastic that he has been able to triumph over adversity and drive his enterprise forward.

Ruralnet conference is always great to attend, as is the annual Cooperative Congress. I also use websites with good technical information - theregister.co.uk normally has good articles.

I read journals like Regeneration magazine and the Institute of Directors’ magazine and I buy the Guardian technology supplement on a Thursday.

What advice would you give to budding social entrepreneurs?

Don't be afraid to try to get your ideas off the ground even if people say they will never work. Discuss your ideas with as many people as possible beforehand - it's more likely that people will offer to help or offer useful contacts than steal the idea.