Early days
I started my life on a dairy farm in South Wales and grew up with a real love of animals and the countryside. The farm was owned by my grandparents and even when we left I trundled off back to Wales to spend my summers with them. I used to trot about on a Shetland pony and there was a huge pig that I loved. I used to sit with her and cuddle up. She treated me like one of the piglets and even though she once ate my welly (it had come off), she was very kind to me. I remember that very same day my mother putting me into the bath fully clothed!
Growing up with the bard
We moved around a bit with Dad’s job but settled in Stratford upon Avon when I was 10 and that is where I was very fortunate to have grown up. I look back on those halcyon days with great fondness, Stratford was really quite rural with lots of country walks well within reach. These days there are many new housing estates and Stratford just cannot handle the traffic. The river was my favourite place, in amongst the trees and the wildlife.
Early career
My career really began at a mobile phone company called Talkland. I went to work as a credit controller but after about six months they had decided to centralise to London. My boss said “we can make you redundant or you can try sales”! So I thought I might as well try sales, in for a penny in for a pound. Sales was a big step into the unknown but wasn’t all that difficult, plus they gave me a company car, an expense account and a brand new Nokia brick (a multi-use item – lethal weapon/building material). I had very definitely arrived!
Before I knew it I had won some very decent accounts and along with that a couple of holidays and even went off to Jamaica for a week.
I was promoted to account manager based in Bristol to manage larger corporate accounts in the Southwest, I lived in Clifton and enjoyed Bristol very much.
Travel
I also travelled independently around South Africa and Australia – some good tales there that I will save for another day.
Vodafone days
In 1996 Vodafone bought Talkland and I joined the Vodafone sales force. I became a national account manager and was promoted further up through the ranks over the years. I moved to London where I worked in the City looking after blue chip accounts.
Other things were afoot in London and in 1998 I got married to John at Chelsea Registry Office, which involved a Rolls Royce, a London Bus, a fire engine, a great restaurant and a lot of partying!
In 2005 I won an award for the Vodafone Corporate deal of the year for my work with Deloitte. The deal was worth £5m and was the largest single revenue deal ever done in the history of Vodafone Corporate. Everything was rosy in the garden but I didn’t want to do it any more, I had a dream ….
France
I wanted to go off to France and buy the worst ruin I could find to renovate – well that wasn’t the plan but it was how it transpired. We found the house of my dreams, it was run down (understatement), with trees growing through the roof and about 6 acres of land and woodland. John and I sold up, packed up and moved to France. We set about hiring builders and it was only then that I really discovered that corporate life, by comparison, was a bit of a walk in the park!!
Our builders were slow, actually they barely turned up but they were very good at restoring and choosing the right materials. Several years later our beautiful Quercy Farmhouse emerged from the rubble, returned to it’s former glory. Absolutely gorgeous, a very proud moment!
A big adventure
Now what to do next? We were going to turn our huge barn into Gites for the rental income. But was this too many eggs in one basket? Then John said “what about my dream?”… what did he mean, he couldn’t also have a dream surely? But he had – he wanted to live by the Mediterranean and sail.
So we packed up our very old soft top Landrover (named Olive) and headed off from Southwest France on the adventure of a lifetime. First we travelled across some very snowy alps, very dicey at times and eventually reached Northern Italy; we stopped a place called Susa (very nice Pizza). Next we headed across Italy into Slovenia, what a fabulous place and so very friendly, we loved Ljubljana a very beautiful city.
Did I mention this was in a Landrover called Olive? Bumpy? Yes!!
After some very dodgy mountain roads with potholes, sheer drops and lorries taking too much space we arrived in Serbia, where we encountered scantily clad ladies hanging about on the hard shoulder – not blackberry picking aparently! After losing all of our cash at a service station, (the tank of fuel was €200 more than the pump price and the bouncers were very persuasive) we headed into Bulgaria. We reached Sofia in the middle of night and found a hotel – luckily it was Mafia owned so our soft top car was very safe! Eventually, after encoutering several donkeys and carts on the motorway, we arrived in Turkey.
By now my backside was complely numb from Landrover travel but we still had a long way to go to get to Kalkan, a fishing village on the Turquoise Coast in the South of Turkey. In the end Olive delivered us unscathed – what a trip! There we found a gorgeous little villa with an incredible view of the Mediterranean! It was another one of those “we’ve arrived” moments! Plus it was the perfect rental property.
My first website and the beginnings of a business
The property needed to be marketed and for that we needed a website! I discovered back in Vodafone days that I found websites intriguing when our techies installed a shopfront intranet for Deloitte. HTML was new but I had learned French, how hard could it be? So I got myself some Microsoft website building software and set about building a website for our villa.
It was successful! We got bookings through the website and the villa remained fully booked for the 7 years that we owned it. A hosting company, 1-2-3 Reg, somehow picked up my website and I won a prize for my first design – how good was that? Even better, this led to friends and their friends asking me if I could build a website to rent out their holiday properties. I realised I had the makings of a business.
In 2006 I started to design and build simple HTML websites and I loved it! Luckily I am a very quick learner, I bought lots of books, did lots of online courses and I worked hard, often into the early hours. I wanted to be better than my competitors, delivering on attention to detail so that everything was seriously buttoned down. I had other things going for me too thanks to Vodafone – professionalism, a commercial background, some seriously excellent customer services skills and a work ethic that was going to take me above and beyond.
In 2008 we moved back from France to the UK and settled in Cornwall, right on the coast near to Falmouth. I bought a snazzy computer, Adobe software and lots more books and went on courses that I couldn’t afford but the investment would be worth it. My Design Principles degree module influenced me the most and taught me how to design properly. Coding courses made sure I could professionally develop what I designed. In 2009 I started to work with WordPress and over the years have become a specialist.
Then it happened I landed a dream client and it was amazing! I was on a roll, getting high quality enquiries.
Cornwall pics here
Moving up country
A few years on we moved! I updated my details on Google and lost my ranking overnight because so much of my ranking was associated with Cornwall. Once I stopped panicking I took action, I joined every networking group in a 30 mile radius and I marketed myself like there was no tomorrow. I was not giving up! Repeat business came and new business started to come again.
Through networking I started to collaborate with copywriters, photographers and other experts. Really turning my business from just me into ‘we’ and providing a much more seamless and professional experience for my clients.
Nearly 2 decades on from where I started I have never had the knowledge, skill and experience that I have today. My clients benefit from inspirational and bespoke design, plenty of exciting ideas and positive suggestions and arguably one of the best customers experiences that exists!
The mischief hasn’t stopped either, we have just finished renovating our very last property, a lovely stone cottage with the most gorgeous cottage garden. Who knew I would like gardening as much as I do? I guess it’s easy when the subject is so inspirational and seems very happy to grow!
Speaking of inspiration, we have gone through a business re-brand and found the real essence of our business and what we do. The Cottage Garden Studio is born out of love and determination and we are so very proud!
What’s not to love? Work with us …
