I reflected on my move out to rented offices last May. It was lovely during the summer months but then, as winter drew near, my still-really-too-young-to-manage-every-night-alone-after-school, teenage daughter, having forgotten to take her key to school, would be shivering on the doorstep frantically texting ‘mother’ to demand where I was. And then there was dinner to consider. I couldn’t nip into the house and throw a few ingredients together and let them cook themselves between emails and telephone supervision sessions.
I started to spend less time in the office and was bringing my work into the house to do at home. Suddenly, the office was overspilling into the house, the teleseminars competing with Wii’s Guitar Hero and general teenage angst and frivolity as song after song by the Lancashire Hotpots blasted out from my best quality computer speakers.
So about 5 weeks ago, I had a brainwave! Yes one of those rare occurrences. I could get an office built and insulated in the garden and reclaim my house. I researched. I had a budget – a small one. And the company I found turned out to be THE best I could have ever wished for. They were Paul and Colin from Clear-Scape (or their new name – Custom Building), Nottingham. I had several chats with Paul over the phone. I kept asking, ‘Yes, but Paul, can I have celotex insulation?’ or ‘Yes but Paul, can I have a long window next to the door?’ Eventually Paul had to put it into words I could understand. He said ‘Jenny, what I’m trying to tell you is you can have anything you want. Just tell me what you want and I’ll design it and cost it for you’. So unlike Henry Ford, I had to start believing that the choice was mine and that I was in control. And not only could I have what I wanted, but they would build it and hook it up to the electricity for me too. I’d already scouted around quite alot and realised that getting all this included in the price they gave me was, well, amazing! Were they fools?
They were definitely not fools. I left them in charge of the house for the weekend and they fed my cat for me! Meanwhile I took the opportunity to go back to my college roots in Liverpool to see my dear old friend, Tony Cawley who was running a workshop called ‘Healing Metaphors for the Body’. “A-may-zing” as a certain strictly judge might have been heard to say. I’ll share more on a teleseminar coming up sometime in June where Tony will speak more.
So is my business more efficient now? Well, there’s still a ‘shed-load’ (forgive the pun) of sorting out to do but at last I have a dedicated home for my work that suits my home life, my working life, and isn’t going to keep charging me rent month in month out. And at last, I’ve also dealt with about 30 years of paperwork that has been accumulating in outside storage….the dustmen should be developing muscles in all the right places. So now you know what’s been keeping me quiet this last week….hold onto your seats because next week I’ll be reminding you that I’ll be talking to Patrick Dieter, my next teleseminar guest from the US.
I’m just snatching a few last minutes in my old high street office while I’m still paying for it to post this entry. If you’re considering doing what I’ve done, please take a look at Paul and Colin’s site or meet them on twitter. Thanks lads! You’ve done a great job.
