Turning chutney into cheques (and dreams into dosh)

I could do it though, couldn't I?

I could bite the bullet, take the leap, make the first move towards setting up my own business, whatever that business might be.

I've sort of done it, several times.  B and I looked at premises for a soft play centre.  We registered with an estate agent.  We worked out the maths.

I set up the website for my millinery (since taken down). I worked out the maths.

We fantasised about a wine shop.

And, you guessed it, did the maths.

Because the maths doesn't add up.  My friend J summed it up in three questions when I had just started working as a consultant and was pondering a move to millinery:

How much could you sell a hat for?
And how long would it take you to make that hat?
And how much do they pay you an hour to be a lawyer?

I don't want to sound as though money's the be all and end all, but we have four children, and a house, and all the outgoings that follow those five very expensive things, and we are, at the moment, pretty well paid.  We have, at the moment, security.  We have pensions and health insurance.  We have life insurance and employee rights.  (Well,  B has all those things).  We (he) have paid holidays.  I have the ability to work when I like and as many hours as I want and still be there to pick the children up every day.

To start our own business, to say goodbye to the jobs we have, and the security (and in my case flexibility) that comes with them, is a risk too far.  At least for us.

Perhaps if we really loathed our jobs; if there were more of an impetus than a vague feeling of grass-is-greener-ness and a yearning towards creativity.  More than an unformed desire to build something that is ours.  More than an envious impulse when we watch friends go it alone, or read about this or that entrepreneur;  perhaps then we'd do it.

But for now, no.

But it doesn't stop me dreaming.  And so, when innocent, whose founder Richard Reed recently hosted BBC3's  Be your own boss, in which he searched for start up businesses in which to invest , asked me to blog about the moment that inspired me to turn my passion into pounds, I laughed.  Probably bitterly.

And I said to them (and their very nice PR who had already sent me a box of goodies):

I just wanted to (possibly) warn you in advance that I may end up writing something that's totally not what you want.  The thing is that I have lots of these entrepreneurial ideas, all of which involve me making something lovely at my kitchen table and finding there's massive demand, I get featured in Grazia and I suddenly wake up a millionairess (sp?!) but after several years of inspirational moments which lead nowhere, I'm now rather jaded and cynical about what I read somewhere were called chutney dreams. 

That's not to say that Richard Reed's story isn't inspiring, just that I don't have a passion to pounds moment at all, and I've actually been pondering writing a blog post about that very subject for a while - I've worked out, sadly that what produces the pounds is being a lawyer, even if that's far from being my passion! 

And they said, Ok, fair enough. Would you like to talk to Richard to see what he says about all this?

I told you they were lovely.

So I did.  And, rather depressingly, I was right.  Mr Be Your Own Boss, successful businessman and now telly star Richard Reed, co-owner and founder of multi-million pound company innocent and recent author of an e-book of tips and hints on setting up your own business , (who had, possibly misleadingly, been told I was an "influential blogger" (whoops!)), didn't say,

 "Oh yes, you should definitely go for it. Everyone can succeed in business, and everyone should set up their own business, it's the best thing ever.  Now, how would you like to spend your first million?" 

What he did say was more honest and sensible than that.  Of course it was.  He said that in creating innocent he and his co-founders had very little to lose. They were young and had no responsibilities.  They had good jobs with every confidence that they could go back to them or find another one if it didn't work out.   While it felt like a huge risk at the time, with hindsight, he said, it wasn't. 

He said business success was about finding the business idea that gave you the lowest possible risk (I looked at my outgoings) with the highest possible upside, which didn't necessarily or purely mean financial. 

The great thing about running his own business, Richard said, was that it drew on every aspect of his brain.  He said he had a creative brain but a "talentless" body: he has lots of great ideas but he's not "creative" in the way we usually think of it. Running a business, he said, was an enormously mentally creative endeavour; one that allows him to draw on every aspect of his brain, to be both ruthless and empathetic, creative and analytical and he loves that.  

That's it!  A real upside.  I could do that.  I'd love to do that.  Because I think my chutney dreams aren't necessarily dreams about macarons or t-shirts, they're dreams about creativity.  But I also think that if I were purely being creative, sitting at my kitchen table crafting, the bit of my brain that does, if I'm honest, quite like being a lawyer, the bit that relishes the wordiness of this blog and of the letters I write for clients, that secretly enjoys working out complex tax calculations, or wading through impregnable legislation, might get just as frustrated as my creative side is now.  

If a business can give me all that,  I want it.  So I thought about our various ideas, and I thought about the various upsides (autonomy, creativity, productivity, right and left brains working together), and the downsides (money, security, very (very) hard work) and I thought,  

No.  That's not for us.

Not yet, anyway.

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Innocent did, as I said, send me a box of goodies.  But this post, or something like it, has, as you can probably tell, been brewing for a while.  It's also probably not what they wanted me to write, but hopefully they'll forgive me.  

I owe them huge thanks too - for the goodies, but mostly to Richard himself for being so nice as to take the time to talk to me when he really didn't have to.  We were already massive fans of innocent and consumers of vast quantities of "moothie", but it was still a huge delight to find out that their "really nice people" image isn't just good PR.  
 

Chutney Dreams

I have a dream.

I have several dreams actually.

Chutney dreams.

I can't remember where I read about chutney dreams, and an intensive (five minute) google search has brought up lots of recipes of varying attractiveness, and a weird site allegedly telling you what it means if you dream about chutney (I didn't click), but nothing about the chutney dreams I remember.

But you know the ones anyway.  The dreams that sit on the shelf, gathering dust.  The ones you take out every now and then, look at and think "I should do something with that", before putting back and reaching for something more sensible and practical.

The dreams where you make vats of delicious chutney (or macarons, or fascinators) at your kitchen table, which is then, quite by chance, tasted by someone fabulously influential, and featured in the Sunday Times Style magazine (among other national media) and before you know it you're the chutney queen of the Scottish Borders, supervising a team of happy employees, making fabulous preserves from fairly traded, locally sourced ingredients in a socially meritorious way, which are shipped (obviously we wouldn't air freight anything) around the world, resulting in you becoming a household name, multi-millionairess, beacon of the community, and all round good egg.

Then you wake up.

Or, perhaps, you're awake already.

I have these dreams.  This blog is one of them, if the truth be told.   I'm still waiting for the book deal.

The millinery was a dream too.  And so were the t-shirts.

And the pudding restaurant (still think that's a genius idea). And the soft play centre (we got as far as a back of the envelope business plan on that one before realising that it wouldn't actually make us any money).  And the wine shop and café (that one's for when we win the lottery and don't mind that it wouldn't actually make us any money.  We've identified the premises and are enjoying researching the stock).  And the macarons, which you may notice are my current fantasy of choice (still rather proud of my Hallowe'en ones). 

 

I think it's the creativity that appeals: the idea of crafting something, of a life spent lovingly making beautiful things rather than shoving bits of paper around in between heating up fish fingers and tidying bedrooms, and of being recognised for it.    The ability to use the bits of my brain that aren't exercised by children, husbands or the Inland Revenue.

So I dream.  As I potter, and bake, and stitch, I dream.  It's a creative outlet in itself. 

But for the moment they remain just dreams.  However real they may look in the pictures.  They're just dreams.

And the winner is....!

Shall I tell you, or shall I leave you in suspense...?

Who has won £90 of running shoes from sportshoes.com?

Well.  There were twelve comments (I thought counting my own replies might not be in the actual spirit of the thing) so I used an actual random number generator (random.org) this time (rather than asking my children to pick a number, which is heavily weighted towards three (three and three quarters, actually) and five, and...

Number one!

That's you Iota.

Enjoy.  I'll get in touch to sort out how you get your lovely shoes.

And if you still want my old ones you're welcome to them. 

Mysteries of Modern Life (No 3)

Whatever happened to gravy browning?

And am I the only person who misses it?  Pale beige gravy just isn't the same...

On being careful what you wish for.

I wanted a simple way of reducing my impact on the environment....

I got this:

Like I said: you should be careful what you wish for....

But on the upside, the Gallery tomorrow is Old.   I think this fits. 

Warning: holidays may be bad for your health.

I'm going to give up going on  holiday.

I am going to sit here, stay here, and not go away ever again.

It's not because I don't have a lovely time.  Quite the contrary.

B and I spent this weekend in the Lake District.  We rented a fabulous, fabulous house (where friends of ours spent the first few nights of their honeymoon many moons ago. We even rented a silver Corsa to get there, which  made us feel even more nostalgic for those same halcyon days). We walked up hills.  We sat in pubs (it was raining, ok?).  We ate and drank lovely food.  We pottered around markets. We spent lots of quality time together (ahem). I even managed to have two baths.  That's more than I think I've ever had in this house.

The children (and my parents-in-law) stayed here.  

It was utterly wonderful from start to finish.

We got back yesterday afternoon, after a detour to see our new nephew (hooray!), and since then I have been unbearable.  I know this, because B has gone out.

I have been grumpy, and impatient, and simmeringly, irritatedly cross.  The weight of the world is sitting on my shoulders. Nothing anyone can do for me is good enough and everywhere I look things are accusing me: do me says the laundry, iron me says last week's laundry. Dry me says the teetering pile on the draining rack.  Fix me says the pin board I bought in a junk shop in Cockermouth, full of crafty inspiration, and now empty of time and energy to use it. The fridge cries Fill me and the week's meals say plan us. The emails I've ignored flash read me.  Deal with us say my work files.  Everywhere I look something else cries tidy me. Play with us whine the children and talk to me, the husband.

And I think  Stop the world! Stop my life! I don't want to do any of it any more.

And it's all the holiday's fault.  Because the holiday was a break from my life: which makes my life somewhere I don't want to be.  Even though, I know, I have an incredibly blessed and lucky life all told. 

Yet a holiday, and it was true of this one, and also, astonishingly, of our last family holiday, all six of us driving two thousand miles to France and back, makes no demands on me.  I wake up in the morning with nothing on the to-do list, whether that be lovely things to do (ring an old friend) or dull ones (fill in the tax return), and that emptiness is liberating.  That freedom is soul-lifting.  And so the return to real life feels heavy, as I though am weighted down again, however enjoyable the things I have to do may actually be.

I find myself yearning for another life.  On our return from France I found myself breaking down in tears and screaming for it:  how different it would have been had we not moved/moved somewhere different/if I did another job/ if B did another job/ if we won the lottery/if I were a better parent, and yet, of course, that life would be the same, because even in the Lake District, France or Outer Mongolia, washing has to be done, meals have to be planned and talking to friends remains one of life's great pleasures.

Getting grumpy with my life for being a life, my life, gets me nowhere.  But it doesn't stop me doing it.

I am hoping that writing about it will help.  Failing that I'll just have to stop going on holiday.

WIN! Running shoes worth up to £90!!

It's what it says on the tin, really.

Apparently I can give away a pair of running shoes from sportsshoes.com to the person I like most...

What you could win...

Well, sort of. There has to be an actual competition, and I still, in a rather Angela Brazil-like way, believe in fair play, so the play will be absolutely fair.  Random, but fair.

I started running years ago, and I've done it on and off (more off than on, if the truth be told) since. I don't go very far, very fast or very often, but it's becoming (famous last words) something I actively want to be doing. 

Because I've had a revelation recently - I've realised I like running.  I don't know when or how this happened, but the last two times I've been I haven't had to convince myself to go, despite wind and rain.  And, while the main motivation for running remains, as it always has been, the pay-off in cake-consumption it allows, it's also suddenly more than just something I have to endure.

What you can't win.

If I try and analyse why it's become more than just the burning off the extra slice of white chocolate and cranberry brownie,  I think it's space for my head, without being space to worry or stress.  The thoughts just seem to slip in and out, so I can think about things without lingering over the ones I don't want to think about.  Analytical thought is impossible when you're concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, but yet I come back with a clearer head than when I left.  I enjoy the fresh air too, and the countryside.  I found two new brambling patches on Monday, although I haven't been back since, so I suspect my blackberrying chance may have gone.  I'm bonding with and smiling at all sorts of strange people as well - fellow runners, dog walkers, elderly ladies in strange tracksuits.

Whatever it is, I'm enjoying it, and I don't want it to stop.  So, for your chance to win the prize (a pair of running shoes from sportsshoes.com up to the value of £90) all you have to do is leave me a comment letting me know why you think I should keep going....  

Yes, you lot are going to be my motivation, so make it good!

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The small print:

Please leave a comment by the end of the month (31st October!) giving me some motivation to keep running.
The winner will be selected randomly from everyone who leaves a comment.
The winner will be able to choose a pair of running shoes of their choice up to the value of £90 from sportsshoes.com. 
The shoes will be despatched direct from them to you. 
Any questions ask me....