Jo Dennison Drake: The deaf entrepreneur who sold her dream home to fund a hydroelectricity generator in Cumbria (BSL)

My name is Jo Dennison Drake. I’m profoundly deaf and I have been deaf from birth. I have been separated from my husband for the past 9 yrs and we have two daughters age 20 and 32, a son in law plus a grandchild of 3 yrs old. I am now in a  relationship with a partner called Keith, we’ve been together for almost 5 years.

I’m based in the Cotswolds about 20 minutes to the east of Gloucester in a lovely old typical Cotswolds village quite high up so I have gorgeous hilly views from my home.

Growing up, I felt lost and confused at three mainstream primary schools with ‘hearing impaired units.’ During primary school days I only had one friend at school. Attending Mary Hare Grammar School from the age of 11 was a real life saver for me and I blossomed with a bunch of wonderful friends right through the school, with many friendships continuing to this day now I’m 63!

Nowadays I co-run a business in hydro electricity as we have our own hydro electric scheme up in Cumbria. To explain how we came to have our own hydro electricity business, I must go right back to the start.

Back in 1988 my husband Bev and I bought Broadrayne Farm. Bev was an antique dealer and we wanted to buy the farm to acquire the space required to start our next business in creating copies of antiques and lamp bases out of resin and then decorating them to look like antiques.

Together we started to renovate buildings on the farm one by one.  We also had a beck (river) in a gorge and speculated right from the start a dream of having a hydro electric scheme and indeed we did investigate it.  At the time it was going to cost around £50K for a 49 kWh scheme.  We shelved the idea as wasn’t viable for us at that time and no money left after buying the farm and doing it up anyway.

We converted one of our end cottages on the farm into a Bed and Breakfast and got married in 1990. We converted one barn into a holiday cottage which became a holiday let.

We felt we needed to diversify our business platform so we converted the big barn initially into a workshop/finishing room/store for our resin based products. This business took off very fast and we ended up with six members of staff.

We were not prepared for the popularity of our resin based products that looked like antiques – and exported to over 26 countries and in Britain. Our products were going into all the top hotels and shops including John Lewis, Peter Jones, Harrods etc.

We even had to make 12 umbrella stands in a hurry for a princess who wanted to gift Christmas presents to people in Saudi Arabia so we had to take them by car to the airport for export as things were done in such a hurry!  Crazy!

We ran that business for 4 years before it became too much of a giant. We were told we needed to move to the coast for cheaper labour costs, which we didn’t want to do so stopped.

So the big barn workshop was turned into a 4 star, 24 bedded holiday hostel opening in June 2000, with every bedroom having a bathroom – which at that time was unheard of.

9 months after we opened in 2001 Foot and Mouth struck effectively killing our business in tourism for cottages and the holiday hostel!  It was a very awful time where we wondered how we would survive with mortgage etc.

I attended all the training sessions by a tourism rescue package anxious to get ourselves back on our feet. Within a year or two we were booked solidly in the cottages for every single week of the year and the hostel business took off like a rocket too with bookings more or less solid every weekend.

At some point in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s decade we became focused upon tree planting up the beck and engaged with the Friends of the Lake District and the Forestry Commission. We then gained funding for potentially over 10,000 native trees to be planted which was followed through.

Fast forward to the present day, I currently do all the administration for our hydro electricity business and monitor the hydro power house remotely by computer to check all is working okay and as well as in person when I go up to visit the site which is in Grasmere, Cumbria.

With my partner Keith, we walk up to the weir and clean the coanda screen if it’s possible as if the water flow is too fast and deep it’s too dangerous. We get rid of stones, leaves and other natural debris that sometimes sits on the coanda screen.

I also flush the filter in the turbine and Keith helps me with greasing all the bearings.  We also do land management on site as it’s important to be able to access the land and check the health of our young trees and also make it easier for our lovely kind volunteers from Friends of the Lake District, who help us with managing the trees and their growth.

The hydro electricity scheme we run is a very simple system where some of the water is captured via a coanda screen and electricity is generated through a step-by-step process. This electricity is measured as it’s created and goes through the power cable to the electricity transmitter that the National Grid are in charge of but is owned by local electricity companies.

The National Grid then sell this electricity we generate to the local electricity companies who subsequently sell it to their customers all over the place.

The hydro plant that we have is one of the most green sources of energy as it’s the longest lasting, with good maintenance it can run for over a 100 yrs.

Regarding my deafness and any communication issues, I will always ask others to repeat themselves and if that fails then I smile and use pen and paper if I am really stuck.  Emails have been an absolute Godsend and text messages on my phone are brilliant.

I don’t use the phone for calling as I can’t do it despite my Cochlear implant which I had at the age of 59.

It is funny to recall the early years when I was helping at antique markets and fairs and later on in the tourism business where I found I was able to understand foreigners who couldn’t speak a word of English. This was because I was able to read their body language and communicate back. This used to amaze my husband time and time again. I think deaf people read body language all the time unconsciously.

I come from a very long line of entrepreneurs on both sides of my father’s family and my mother’s side too to some extent as well. All my life my father was very entrepreneurial, using his salesman skills, imaginative thinking and my mother also worked for herself to a greater degree working independently as a reporter almost all her working life.

Bev was also entrepreneurial himself so it was natural to fall into line, and mentally I was never going to work for anyone else to be honest.

Thinking about it, I don’t think deaf people have equal clear access to information in these topics especially those with a less than the average reading age. The education system I feel is seriously failing many young deaf people and children especially with the lack of sufficient funding for teachers of the deaf to be with deaf children.

For any deaf people who are budding entrepreneurs, my advice would be to do your research very carefully. Get people who are good at reading your adverts, sales and advertising material etc to check your material.

Check if there’s likely to be a market for your product or service and where you can get your idea product made. Be sure to plan very carefully each stage of the way.

I recall the Maya Angelou quote;- “I’ve learnt that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people never forget how you made them feel.”  So look after your customers in other words!

Even for those people who don’t go into self employment please believe in yourself and understand that if you are prepared to work hard, that you will succeed and may you succeed more than you thought you would too!  Good luck everyone!

To see the hydro electricity business take a look at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmIYKqK9GHs

Jo: I would like to give credit to my parents, family, friends and many more important people who have given me support, belief in myself and encouragement along the way.