lifecoach
CAREERS
Is it time to reinvent yourself ?
“Having a family brought home the importance of doing something more than just for money”
Starting over to set up your own business isn’t as daunting as it may seem. All it takes is one great idea, as Chris Nye finds out
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or many people, starting up their first business is the most significant step they will ever take in their professional lives; it’s as life-changing as leaving home for the first time or having a baby. It is also a time of reinvention: abandoning the safety of paid employment and taking on such a big, new challenge changes your outlook on the world – and how the world sees you. Nearly all of us have dreamed about reinventing ourselves yet few are brave or confident enough to take that leap into the unknown. Making the right change is all about understanding yourself – and what you want from life. These successful business owners have transformed their lives and found the job of their dreams.
Doug Stewart, Green Energy UK
For most of my career I was in the motor industry, but by 2001 I had sold my car dealership and was looking around for something to do next. Having a young family was a catalyst in two ways. Firstly, because it was at a one-year-old’s birthday party that I got talking to someone who was doing a PhD in photovoltaic physics. After three hours discussing solar energy I was fascinated 80
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by its potential. Second, having a young family really brought home the importance of doing something that was more than just for money. The idea for Green Energy UK – supplying clean, green electricity – started to take shape. I soon realised that solar power alone would not be enough to sustain a business, but my research turned up all the other ways electricity can be created: wind and hydropower, of course, but also biomass, energy from waste, anaerobic digestion, and combined heat and power. When I discovered that I could buy electricity and sell it through the grid, I knew the business idea could work. We started Green Energy UK in 2001, initially supplying electricity to friends and former colleagues. An early decision was to give up to half my company away to customers, both to reward them for being greener and to promote customer loyalty. So the first 100,000 customers will receive 400 shares in the company, making us accountable to each and every one. These days, Green Energy UK supplies thousands of homes and businesses across the UK. We have grown year on year, focusing on word of mouth rather than advertising. Just as satisfying is that we are reducing reliance on fossil fuels and helping
to cut carbon emissions. We are continually introducing new technologies to the market through our partnership with ‘generators’, the people who create our electricity. They’re leading the green energy revolution with some amazing sources, including building and construction waste, old vegetable oil from caterers, even farms – it’s great to know we’re turning pig effluent into energy affluence! Plus we have people generating electricity from home via solar panels or turbines and selling us their surplus.
Doing it your way
We manage our cash closely, evaluating our risk strategy to make sure that we are not at the mercy of volatile market movements. Yet it is still a ground-breaking and innovative company – we formally survey our customers every two years and encourage feedback through newsletters and our AGM. We provide business customers with a certificate to show their customers that they are green-powered, and we provide homeowners with ‘making a difference’ stickers. I think that’s the kind of approach that comes when you’ve had a change in career; you have the confidence to do things your way. Our customers share that vision – and ultimately share the business.
Doug Stewart
Business Green Energy UK, greenenergyuk.com Started company 2001 Start-up cost £50,000 Employees in 2010 14 Annual turnover £5 million
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CAREERS
Sandy Paterson
I had been a geography teacher at Gordonstoun school for around five years, and was head of geography, when I started to feel that I wanted a change. There was no dramatic epiphany, just the gradual realisation creeping over the horizon that instead of teaching in a school classroom, with all the bureaucracy that implies, I could be making a living from something I loved. When I finally gained my Mountain Instructor Certificate, the highest qualification in UK mountaineering, I knew it was time to make the decision. My wife was very supportive, my parents rather more concerned. It was certainly daunting losing a good salary to start a business that depends on people choosing me from all the other companies, and clicking on my website. I officially launched in September 2009, having spent the summer organising my
Daisy Silva
Sandy Paterson
I’d been a teacher in the probation service, helping offenders with literacy and numeracy, but also motivating them to believe that they can change their life. Together, my friend Julie Murphy (above, left) and I have 30 years’ experience of teaching and mentoring offenders and people who’ve suffered domestic violence. We’re also qualified life coaches, with private clients who we help with techniques such as neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). The idea of Chain Reaction Coaching was to use motivational techniques usually associated with business executives and sport stars with our more disadvantaged clients. We set up with the help of a brilliant Business Link adviser. Typically, business people might be looking to improve their work-life balance or to speak more confidently in public, while probation service clients might need help getting back into work. Yet in many ways the techniques are similar. Throughout our 82
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lives we constantly take information on board, like a computer. But because not all of it is positive, we start to think we can’t do things, that there are barriers. NLP is about getting people to reprogramme their brains and talk to themselves in a different way. Then they start to realise that they can do things,
“Both sides of the business are incredibly rewarding”
whether that is stopping comfort eating or going for a new job. Imagine you haven’t worked for years, don’t have the first clue about looking for a job on the internet or working as a team. We provide the tools to help people find their way out of that trap. Starting the business was hard work but incredibly exciting. I regularly had to kick Julie out of my house at 1am because we were so busy writing for the website or
creating newsletters. We decided to go into it as a limited company, using a PR company and with a really good website, because we need to be taken very seriously by large companies and local authorities. Both sides of the business are incredibly rewarding. We help business people make a life that is about more than financial success. And in the community, simply giving money to jobless people isn’t enough. Authorities are starting to see that they need to tackle the mindset and emotional state, so we have workshops to help young mums find a job, and a pilot scheme Intensive Alternative to Custody offering an alternative to sending young males to prison. This might not make us rich but having come from Brazil 16 years ago, not speaking English, working as a cleaner and waitress until taking my teaching degree, I am passionate about this country and the opportunities available. People say ‘Why would you come from playing volleyball on the beach in Rio to rainy old Manchester?’, but I think it is an amazing place.
“I realised that I could be making a living from something I loved”
specialist skills just to get out. The snow has been up to our waist at times, and you need to know how to use ice axes and crampons, and to avoid avalanches. You meet all sorts of clients: teenage brothers training for a long-term project to climb the Matterhorn together; solicitors coming up from London for a weekend of winter mountaineering; Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme groups; all sorts. There’s an incredible feeling of satisfaction when you take someone to the top of their first ice climb, or a mountaintop they’d never normally get the chance to see. There are elements of my old life teaching – being able to explain some of the history, environment and geology of the mountains is a big plus. But there’s also a bigger buzz because you know people have chosen you, and you get instantaneous feedback from seeing the joy in their faces. That happens less frequently in a classroom! There are downsides too: if you have a cold and you’re teaching it isn’t really a problem: but if you’ve got to be on Ben Nevis for 12 hours that’s much harder. So far, I have been very busy and hopefully that will continue through the summer. I’ve had to turn away as much work as I have taken on, passing it on to other instructors, which is a good sign. By the end of summer I’ll have a better idea of the market and be able to formulate a five-year plan for the business. There has been a drop in salary, but it’s magnificent being out on the mountains, whether the weather is good or bad. Helpful Banking
Start your own business
PHOTO: LUKE OSBORNE
Daisy Silva-Stafford, Chain Reaction Coaching
Business Sandy Paterson Mountaineering Instructor, sandypaterson.co.uk Started company Sept 2009 Start-up cost £2,000 Employees in 2010 1 Annual turnover £24,000 (projected)
PHOTOS: NICK DAWE
Business Chain Reaction Coaching, chainreactioncoaching.com Started company 2010 Start-up cost £3,000 Employees in 2010 4 Annual turnover £60,000 (projected)
website, marketing, contacts, insurance, tax, that sort of thing. I offer bespoke instruction and guiding in everything from basic skills such as navigation, up to rock climbing, scrambling, winter mountaineering, snow-holing and guided ice climbing, usually in the Cairngorms but all over Scotland really. Since early December I’ve been working flat out; there is no such thing as just ‘walking’ in Scotland in winter, you need
lifecoach
If you’re ready to set up on your own, there is nothing to stop you. But before you set out, remember that having NatWest as your business partner makes good sense. At NatWest, we provide the support and expertise that can help you develop and run a successful business. Come in and talk to one of our advisers about getting started, visit natwest.com/biz or turn to Core page 8 for more information. Sense 83