PRIME business club

“Services are falling away thick and fast. There are fewer post offices, fewer bus services. Villagers were in danger of becoming isolated from one another.” This was the thought process that sparked Ann Davidson into creating My Village News, a local magazine which is attempting to bring her community back together.

After being made redundant from her job in newspaper advertising, Ann, 57, saw a need for a magazine in rural Cheshire where she lives. What started as a small idea is now well on the way to becoming a big success story. The monthly magazine My Village News has just celebrated its first anniversary, with 12 issues published.

“We started modestly in May last year with 24 pages”, says Ann, “and delivered to two-and-a-half thousand homes and businesses. Now we are averaging about 50 pages - and we deliver to over 5,200 homes”.

Ann and her husband John deliver all the issues themselves, which takes about eight days a month to do. What makes the task more arduous is that My Village News is aimed at a rural readership. In rural communities houses aren’t always easy to reach. Indeed, many free newspaper teams don’t bother to find the more difficult country addresses, but Ann and her husband feel it’s important to deliver to everybody. They laugh about the trials of finding the elusive letterboxes and the long drive-ways. “We’ve got to know the dogs - and which ones are friendly and which to avoid!”

Local advertisers fund the magazine. Ann believes one reason the magazine is doing so well is that people are moving away from buying from large chains, preferring instead to put their trust in local retailers and produce. For example Ann’s father’s freezer recently broke down - and one of the magazine’s advertisers not only delivered a new freezer and set it up, but packed up the old freezer and put it out for the council to collect. As long as people are happy to support their local advertisers, Ann is confident the magazine will be well funded.

However, My Village News isn’t all about business. It also contains free listings for local events such as fetes, proms and charity events, reviews of local pubs and eateries and editorial features. Ann and her husband write and produce the magazine entirely themselves, sending the final disk to the printers in nearby Nantwich.

Ann’s advice to others thinking of starting a business is to do plenty of research first. For example, Ann came to the conclusion that delivery had to be a high priority, to make sure enough readers were genuinely receiving copies. This would then increase the chance of advertisers getting a good response – which is what drives the long-term commercial viability of the business.

Ann turned to PRIME for encouragement after a friend suggested them. “We went to see PRIME within our first three months. I wanted some advice about the insurance I’d need to cover my business. I used PRIME to discuss ideas and thoughts, and used them as a sounding board. They are very approachable, and always returned my calls.”

Ann suggests making full use of your own experience. “After being made redundant, your first instinct might be to do something completely different. But consider the experience that you have gained in the workplace, and think about going with something you are familiar with. Selling advertising is second nature to me.”

Compared to Ann’s old office routine working on a newspaper, the hours that she works now suit her much better. She can fit magazine work around looking after her grandchild.

Garry Stephenson, 55, has set up an innovative photography company just months after being made redundant.

Garry, from Cannock in the West Midlands, was made redundant at Christmas from his job inspecting motor homes for a large local vehicle importer. His company SkyHiFotos.co.uk offers photography from an unusual angle – taken from the top of a special 50-foot mast.

Garry himself stays on the ground, controlling the camera from a laptop which shows the precise view being photographed. The Canon digital camera is attached to a motorised tilt-and-swivel head tilt he can control with his mouse. Garry is fully insured and is using professional equipment designed for this application – the extensible aluminium mast has wide legs and can be secured with guy ropes and pegs for extra stability when fully extended.

In addition to taking high shots made possible by this equipment Garry will also take ground level and interior shots to offer a full service. “I’d like to specialise in aerial photography”, he says. “But when you are first starting out you’ve got to do what you can – and go where the money is.” That said, he is keen to get work that allows him to develop his speciality – hence the Sky Hi name he has chosen for his business.

He first got the idea from the Internet. “I saw a pole advertised, then looked into what types there were, what they could do and what they cost. I found that I could get something suitable for not much more than buying a good fishing rod and all the kit.”

“For me it ticked all the boxes. Firstly something I could start almost as a hobby, but then secondly something I could work with as a business. And then thirdly something I could keep doing into retirement.”

Garry had always been a keen amateur photography. And indeed, over the years he had done some weddings for friends.

But aerial photography is what got him seriously interested in taking up photography as a means of making a living. It gave him what marketers would call his “unique selling point”.

“I could be a wedding photographer – along with about 200,000 others”, Garry explains. “Or I could be an aerial photographer – and one of about probably 50 maximum in the UK.”

Garry got little warning of the redundancy from his previous job. He heard in November that his employer was thinking about redundancies and then got his notice at Christmas. He received the basic statutory redundancy package (see below) rather than an enhanced package, so he needed to start earning again soon.

“At 55 it’s very difficult to get a job unless you want to be stacking shelves at Tesco or Asda. That’s not what I am. I was already thinking I could be doing something in photography. But when the redundancy came along it pushed me into it faster.”

Garry did get some advice on turning his hobby into a business from the Institute for Innovation and Enterprise, based at Wolverhampton University. He got a total 10 hours one-to-one business mentoring spread over a number of sessions.

“It was useful in that it took me in directions I would not normally have gone – it opened my eyes to other possibilities. By yourself you tend to get into a fixed frame of mind.  If that doesn’t work you sort of fall flat on your face. With mentoring your thoughts open up to more possibilities. So eventually you do find your own niche.”

Garry’s advice to others is to get your business underway whilst still in a regular job if at all possible. “Get a couple of contracts in place fast to get the money flowing in. Work it around your existing job if you can, before deciding to go fully self-employed. It’s easier if you are already in work. I wasn’t quite ready when I was made redundant.”

Contacts:

Garry Stephenson sales@skyhifotos.co.uk
Tel: 01543 425753, 07523 897968 (mob)

Innovation and Enterprise
University of Wolverhampton University
Tel: 01902 518960
Email: innovation@wbs.wlv.ac.uk

More about redundancy pay and notice

How much notice you get and the amount of redundancy pay you are entitled may be written in your contract of employment. But there are legal minimums which you are entitled to anyway, and these depend on your age and how long you have been working for that employer. Legally you are entitled to one week’s notice for each complete year (up to a maximum of 12) if you’ve been continuously employed for two or more years after the age of 41.

The rules are fairly involved. There’s a useful calculator at the Direct Gov site.

If you are faced with redundancy it is also worth checking out the independent site Armchair Advice.

Elizabeth King, 51, and Vanessa Payne, 39, run a new car wash service in Cheshire. The business is based on Vanessa’s professional expertise in car valeting and Liz’s hands-on approach and willingness to learn something entirely new.

The two women were friends before deciding to run a business together. “We are both horsey and we actually met when I bought an Arab mare from Vanessa, who was then living in Cumbria,” explains Liz.

When Vanessa subsequently moved to Cheshire, the two women realised there was a potential business opportunity for them in the local area. Vanessa had several years’ experience in car valeting, while Liz had noticed the growth in car traffic and realised there was a gap in the market.

It has taken Liz and Vanessa almost two years to get their business up and running. Finding the right premises was a particular challenge. But they have now launched Arclid Car Wash, based in the village of Arclid, between Sandbach and Congleton, not far from the M6 motorway.

“We have done a lot of local research on valeting and car wash services and we are in a good spot here to capture trade,” says Liz. “We did start to look for premises nearly two years ago, and at one point we were waiting for some new units that looked promising. But then these premises [in a former garage] came up and they are better because we now have a workshop, with the pits, as well as offices and a waiting room area.”

While Vanessa has a professional background in car valeting, this is a new business area for Liz, whose main experience is in design.

Read the rest of this entry »

Karen and Errol Spires, who are aged 46 and 60 respectively, are a husband and wife team who have gone into business together. They run a fish and chip shop in Grimsby, the historic seaport on the south bank of the Humber estuary in Lincolnshire.

In the 1950s Grimsby was the largest fishing port in the world. Although the industry has been in decline for many years since, Grimsby still has the UK’s largest fish market and many food producers are based in the town.

When they decided to move into self-employment, Karen and Errol had both been working for some years at a local pizza chain. The idea of running their own business was suggested to them by Karen’s stepfather.

Read the rest of this entry »

Linda March, who is over 50, is currently setting up a rather unusual business. Called Court Support, it provides a service to witnesses attending a Court of Law or similar hearing.

Linda attends Court with the witness. She supports them throughout the experience by explaining the court process, helping with their testimony or statement and dealing with resulting press queries.

Linda previously worked for a public sector organisation and delivered a similar court support service for the staff. This service was well received by both staff and their managers. There seemed plenty of demand for this rather specialised area of public relations.

When her job came to an end Linda thought that this was an idea she might be able to turn into a free-standing Court Support business. It would give her the chance to put her energies into something new.
Read the rest of this entry »

Being Scottish, Eleanor Dowds, 53, probably appreciates the well-known words of Burns about the best-laid schemes of mice and men “going aft agley”.

Having worked for more than 30 years as a nurse, Eleanor, who is based in Cheshire, has been planning a move into self-employment for her middle years – but her plans have had to be put on hold for the time being.

“I had planned to take early retirement, which is possible in the NHS at 55, and that would free me up to have a career diversion, into building up a business,” explains Eleanor.

The new career that Eleanor has been planning is in the home-staging business, making homes more appealing to potential buyers. Eleanor and her husband have direct experience of enhancing homes, not only through having renovated two houses in which they have lived themselves, but also through having bought and renovated two properties to rent out.

Using a combination of workmen and their own efforts, Eleanor and her husband have carried out a wide range of renovations, including installing central heating, rewiring, plastering, installing new bathroom and decorating. This has been possible, explains Eleanor, because until recently, she was working only three days a week in her job as a nurse in a local hospital operating theatre, giving her the time she needed to work on her house project.

Two years ago, the couple moved into the house in which they now live and carried out extensive renovation. “It was as we finished that work that I realised that I could probably develop this as a business,” Eleanor says.

Read the rest of this entry »

Harry Dennis set up his own business in October 2005, when he was 51. Based in Stockport, Harry has worked in the chemical industry his entire career and has now built on his experience by setting up an environmental consultancy, Dennis Environmental Ltd, which specialises in waste management, in particular waste minimisation and hazardous waste for the chemical industry.

“I was working for a company in Manchester that was transferring a lot of production over to India and China,” explains Harry. “Eventually, the company announced that the site where I worked would close and I decided to leave almost immediately. I had no plans to take early retirement.”

Instead, Harry decided to capitalise on the skills he had learned most recently in employment.

Read the rest of this entry »

Brenda El-Leithy, 59, is a good example of someone who has had to re-learn skills in a changing market place.  Her business, Mind2Mind, provides hypnotherapy and personal development workshops.

Brenda had run her own personal development business for several years before personal circumstances required a move to Wales, away from her base in Sutton, Surrey. When she returned to Sutton several years later, restarting her business meant learning new skills.

“When I came back, the whole business scene had changed,” explains Brenda. “The whole environment is now very different and I have had to look at different approaches.”

As part of her re-skilling, Brenda attended the London Metropolitan University’s Forward at 50 course for women setting up their own businesses, and found it very useful in giving her new ideas.

In the past, Brenda used to advertise her personal development workshops and services in glossy magazines. “This time, networking is the key,” she says. “It was emphasised on the course - and I have certainly discovered that networking is absolutely vital. Now, I advertise in the local paper every two weeks, but the rest of my business comes from personal recommendation and networking.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Mike Lloyd has demonstrated that business ideas can sometimes come from unexpected places. After a career advising other people on how to set up their own businesses, Mike has now, at 60, found himself running his own business, delivering flowers.

“I committed a cardinal sin,” comments Mike. “I went into something that I knew nothing at all about. It meant I really had to hit the ground running and learning about this new business has been hard work.”

Mike has set up Flying Flowers Network, a delivery service for florists in the North Somerset area. It is not something he had expected to be doing. For many years, Mike was a business advisor. He has worked for PRIME, and his most recent job was working as a regional development manager for the InBiz organisation. “It was an interesting job, working with socially disadvantaged clients and helping them into self-employment,” he explains. That job came to an end when he was made redundant, following funding cuts. “It was a purely financial decision and entirely amicable,” he says.

Initially, Mike was not too concerned about his change in circumstances and intended to get another permanent job. But it was harder than he anticipated. “I had lots of experience and first-hand knowledge in a management role, supervising staff, so I thought I would apply for a similar job in the south west,” he says. “So I started applying for jobs, but got nothing. Then, one Sunday, my wife and I were at a garden centre and I saw an ad from a new florist, wanting a driver and I thought that would that would do me until something else came along.” A week later, Mike had begun his new job, as a van driver.

“The first job I did was a delivery to a local undertaker. When I arrived, three separate florists’ vans were also delivering flowers,” says Mike. “I could see at once how inefficient that was, so I suggested to the florist employing me that if I invoiced him, rather than working directly for him, I could do deliveries not just for them but for all the local florists and that way, I could help them to reduce all their costs.”

Having had this idea, Mike did an outline of his business plans and spent three months researching the market. “I needed to see if anyone else was doing this, and no-one was,” he says.

The chief objection to Mike’s new delivery service was one he anticipated: all the florists he approached said they already had their own delivery van. “So I had to go away and regroup,” he explains. Researching the market further, Mike discovered that all the local florists belonged to different telephone ordering services. By delivering these orders himself, he could save the florists money. In order to make this business viable, Mike has had to discover a great deal, very quickly, about the flower business and how it operates. “The florists have been very good,” he says. “They tell me about the way things work.” But it has still been a challenge. It’s been a vertical learning curve,” he admits. “But I now work for nine florists and have three part-time workers.”

In four months, Mike has trebled his turnover and the business is now self-sufficient. “I haven’t had to put any money into the business,” he explains. “The trick is not to spend too much in the first year and not to borrow if at all possible.”

Mike is now anticipating a rush in the run up to Christmas, and then a quiet period afterwards, in which he wants to get a website up and running and get uniforms made for his staff.

“The challenges have been the same as for any new business, except that I have had to learn about a completely new subject,” he points out. Mike feels his background, which includes 26 years in the police, has helped him in different ways. “I know a lot of former police officers, many of whom are now self-employed and who are willing to help out with the odd afternoon or day, so I can turn that on and off as demand ebbs and flows,” he says.

Setting up the business has been demanding and involves long working hours. “My first delivery is at 8am and the trick in this is to develop a circle of routes, so I can move round one and then another,” explains Mike. “I’ve generally finished by 5pm, so it’s not a bad working day, but of course the downside is that I have to work on Saturdays. In fact, I have suggested Sunday morning deliveries, at a premium, so I now also work about one Sunday each month.”

Mike has delved deep into this market and now knows a great deal about flower selling in the UK. “I keep things simple and I keep asking questions,” he says. “I’ve learned things I knew nothing about, in double-quick time. It is really exciting.”

While it may seem to have put Mike under pressure to start a business in a completely new market, his reaction to the experience is different. “My previous job was a highly-pressured job,” he says. “I was earning a good salary, but I was having to travel constantly. Now, I think I could do this job for another 10 years. The other morning, for instance, I had just made a delivery and had a spare 35 minutes, so parked by the sea, had a double espresso, read the paper and thought - this is the life.”

Mike may be enjoying his new life, but he believes it is important to keep one’s business feet firmly on the ground. “If you spot an opportunity, you must rationalise it,” he advises. “You need to do the research and development. Then you need to incorporate all that into a plan and stick to the plan. If that doesn’t work, you need to write a new plan - and then stick to that.”

He also believes it is a mistake to expand too fast. “I think it’s a good idea to move on steadily, rather than rush on,” he says.

Norma Vondee, 54, is an artist. She creates mosaics and mosaic sculptures and has run her own mosaics business, Norma Vondee Mosaics, for the past five years. Her biggest struggle continues to be the contrast between the business side of the work and the artistic side.

“I still find it difficult that I have to spend two days a week trying to get the work and only three days a week making the work,” comments Norma. “I’d really like to be spending five days a week making the work.”

Graham Siggs is 61. He started his own electrical testing service two years ago and intends to keep his business going for quite some time yet.

“I have a quality product that I intend to sell as long as I can, and then sell as a going concern,” Graham comments.

Graham is based in Somersham, near Cambridge, and his business, HuntsPAT, is a testing service for portable electrical devices. It’s a business that Graham finds easy to run and that fits in well with his substantial experience and his desire to continue working after the age at which he was forced to retire from the civil service.

Read the rest of this entry »

For Sally Walton, it was a combination of external and internal factors that prompted her to set up her ecological design business, Carry-A-Bag (www.carry-a-bag.com).

Sally, who is 55 and based in St Leonard’s on Sea, in East Sussex in southern England, had been working with her husband for more than 15 years, writing books on a wide range of topics, most connected with home decoration and improvement.

Five years ago, the events of 11 September 2001 effectively put an end to this business. “We were very involved with one big publisher whose books were aimed at the US market,” explains Sally. “But that year, no-one went to the Frankfurt Book Fair. The US market turned in on itself. So I had to find something else to do.”

This time coincided with Sally’s own feeling that for 20 years she’d been giving people ideas about interesting things to make and do and it was now time for her to do something for herself that she was interested in.

One of the books she had written was called Eco Deco and looked at how to created stylish items for the home from recycled materials. “I did a lot of research for the book into recycling and got very enthusiastic,” explains Sally. “So then it all came together. I knew I wanted to start a business where I was physically making something, and that could build on my existing knowledge of ecology and recycling.”

Initially, Sally sold her first few bags to local businesses, including a friend who opened a local store. She then approached her local enterprise agency, 1066 Enterprise, mainly to get advice about funding her business.

As a result, Sally went on a six-month, Learning and Skills Council NES programme. “I hadn’t thought of going on a course; I just wanted some money,” she comments. “But the agency convinced me that it would be helpful and in fact I thoroughly enjoyed the course. I completed changed my attitude and I found it very empowering.”

One of the aspects of the course that helped Sally take a more focused approach to her fledgling business was the computer studies. “We had to look at spreadsheets, which I had dealt with before, but very much on the creative side,” she says.

The course finished in February 2006 and Sally then began test trading until June. The cost of the course was free, and Sally also got £1,500 towards setting up her business, which she used to buy business stationery and towards the cost of her website (www.carry-a-bag.com).

“For the website, I used Republica Design, who were also just starting out, and my training as a designer really helped in clarifying my ideas about the website,” says Sally.

Sally invested the rest of the money in buying two second-hand but reliable sewing machines and her first rolls of fabric.

Sally has a modern approach to marketing, based on personal networking. Her four children have jobs in the fashion and media worlds, and this has given Sally a highly useful set of contacts to whom to market her products. “My eldest son is a creative director and all his friends work in the area of product promotion or fashion styling, she explains. “I realised it’s a pretty small world. I realised I knew a lot of these people and could send them a bag or information about the bags.” In addition, Sally’s husband is an artist who draws musicians, so Sally also has contacts in the musical world, and has promoted her products to them.

Targeting media professionals, as well as those in the fashion and music business, has proved a highly-effective a way of promoting Sally’s brand into her potential customer base. “My marketing strategy is entirely based on promoting my products to everyone I know and to everyone my children know in London and the media,” she explains.

“The first thing was a piece in Country Living magazine and I could not believe how much came out of that,” she comments. “From the moment the article appeared, things just went ballistic. It was fantastic. And that is exactly the customer I’m aiming at. I’m thinking of the Country Living woman and the young fashionable local shopper, in trendy places, like East Dulwich. I’m very clear about who my customers are. We were asked on the course to identify our ideal customer and mine was Jamie Oliver’s wife, Jools.”

The initial publicity has been followed by several more articles, including one in the Saturday Telegraph, and more are in the pipeline.

This has provided Sally with an excellent start for her business and she has learned the value of flexibility. “The business plan is more or less on track, but some goals have changed a bit,” she says. Originally, Sally planned to move the manufacturing of the bags out of the country, as the business expanded, but she has now decided they will be made locally. “I don’t want that sort of business,” she says. “I want the hands-on feel. I will be employing local people and I may set up a workshop.”

Sally’s biggest challenge has been staying focused on her primary goals for the business, rather than getting distracted into other projects. Within five years, she would like to have a concession within a major upmarket department store in this country and possibly in New York.

“I keep on planting the seeds,” she says. “I haven’t focused on trying to make money before, but now I am enjoying this challenge. It has been a huge change, from researching and writing books to running a business. Now that I’ve started, I would like it to be successful and being quite wealthy would also be nice!”

“You mustn’t paint yourself into an age corner. I don’t really feel any particular age. I just feel part of the business environment.”

Those are the views of 53-year-old Hugo Rose from Colchester, who has set up a web-based parcel-minding service, MyParcel.

While Hugo may not feel his age, he is certainly putting to use his 20 years’ of experience in the wine and mail order business.

For many years, Hugo, who was recently a runner-up in a national competition for online businesses being run by those over 50, worked in the wine trade. “Anyone involved in the business would swiftly understand that there is a thorny problem in the area of delivery,” he points out. Many people order their wine from specialist wine merchants, to be delivered to their home. But when customers aren’t in to accept delivery, cases of wine are too large to go through the letterbox and too valuable to be left on the doorstep.

Hugo decided that he could do something about this problem and, at the same time, fulfil his own ambition of running his own business. “If you are turning 50 and you’re not the managing director, then you do have to make a decision,” he comments. “I could have stayed put, done another 15 years and then retired. But I always wanted to run my own business and I couldn’t see the job I was doing developing any future. I was looking for a greater challenge than simply nursing my pension.”

Unlike some who start businesses later in life, Hugo was not forced into the move through redundancy or other changes, but had to make a clear decision to move into self-employment. “I had a good job and there was no need to leave, but I had a business idea with potential, which I could do from scratch with a blank piece of paper,” he explains. Hugo had to weigh up the risks of setting up his own business against the potential risk of remaining in his existing job and, as he points out, while it might have seemed safe to continue in employment, there was no guarantee that it would be a smooth run through to a comfortable retirement.

Having made his decision, Hugo began work on setting up his business, MyParcel. The vital component of the business was the increasing reliability of the internet as a business tool. “I realised that I had something with potential national reach, which would require a sophisticated website to do a lot of the work,” he says. “The website is the back office, essentially, and means we can achieve that national reach with relatively small resources.”

Hugo resigned from his full-time job in June 2004 and began to develop his business. Having registered the company name, Safekeepers Ltd, in order to start the business off and get some business stationery, Hugo then spent time working on the name for the service itself and settled on MyParcel in part because it was both available and registerable as a trademark.

The idea of MyParcel is to provide pick-up points for undelivered mail-order parcels, so customers can collect them up locally, at their own convenience. “We have started with five depots and I want to build up to 20 or 25, so cover the whole of the London area,” says Hugo.

“I think it is important that in the first year of leaving work, the next steps are carefully mapped out,” he adds. “You’re pushing off from the side, but you don’t want to push off into a complete fog. I was careful to set up some consulting work, which would keep me afloat for the first year or so.”

The initial phase of setting up the business has required investment by both Hugo and private investors. Hugo used some of his own resources, has gained investment from private investors and has also diverted some of his consultancy earnings into the business. He did not borrow money from banks, calculating that they would be unlikely to lend to a completely new business with no track record. “Banks don’t provide risk capital, that’s just not what they do,” he points out.

The main planks of Hugo’s business development have been a significant investment in website development and negotiating with the company that provides the storage points. “We don’t own the bricks and mortar of where our service is run from, so there have been a lot of meetings to sort out the details of that,” he says. “I was already aware that self-storage depots were springing up everywhere, so I targeted that industry.”

But more important than either the financial resources needed or the specific components of the business itself has been the need for personal commitment, according to Hugo. “I felt the business was achievable with commitment and enthusiasm and self-belief is very important, because it leads others to share that belief,” he comments. “It does almost go without saying, but you really do need an unshakeable belief in the potential of what you are doing and a clear view of how to do it.”

Hugo acknowledges that having got the business registered, it then took another year or so to actually get it up and running. “Everything takes longer than you would like,” he points out. With the company formally launched in 2005, Hugo is now employing two former colleagues from the wine trade to assist him in the new business on a part-time basis, and is now looking to consolidate the business and begin to scale it up.

“Starting something that hasn’t been done before has been a challenge,” he comments. “It is a challenge at a personal level and there have been hurdles and difficulties all the time, but if you believe that you have a service people will want to use, you have to remind yourself of that and recharge the batteries.”

Hugo also recommends others to spend some time away from everyday life when contemplating making the leap into starting something new. “In a job, it can be hard to think yourself into another place,” he points out. “And you are not choosing an easy life, but what I have learned over the past two years is that I can get used to the idea of uncertainty. I now have the confidence that comes from that, and feeling that I have the contacts, knowledge and skill to deal with whatever the future throws at me.”