Food For Thought

The worst thing about living in a beautiful, affluent, rural town like ours is how easy it is to forget what's on the other side.

A walk along the high street and you can be greeted by a collection box for the local choir; pop into Waitrose for some weekend groceries and you can choose which little slot to press your green charity coin (given to you upon payment at the till) into for a nearby organisation; you may be stopped by a wildlife trust representative asking about how many birds you've spotted along the moor.

Walk into any Tesco in central Liverpool and you will no doubt find a huge crate at the entrance filled with foods and a shopping list on the wall asking for Food Bank donations.

Until recently, I was fairly ignorant to this, all the more so having young children who only watch children's TV all day. I haven't watched the News in centuries and I just hadn't come across poverty in years. There is certainly no obvious Food Bank around here. I had heard of them but, with limited exposure to the news and very few trips to inner city shops, I just hadn't really paid them very much attention.

It was my aunty who brought it up in conversation one day. (She reassured me that I wasn't the only one who knew little about just what was going on in the country.) My aunty is a midwife and is out in the community most of her day. She has had training to spot vulnerable people and, as part of her training, she attended a workshop to introduce her to a wide range of services offered to people who need social and financial help. These services are largely unknown and it is really down to the likes of midwives, health visitors and social services to direct the relevant people to the people that can help them. The workshop introduced her to (amongst other things) Food Banks and the more and more important role they are playing in society in the UK.

For those who don't know about them, Food Banks were set up to give people the opportunity to buy some staple groceries and donate them. The donations are taken and given out to people as an emergency supply. The people who benefit from the Food Bank donations have usually been identified by Social Services and given a voucher to go and collect 3 days' worth of emergency food. At the Food bank, they may also be offered advice to help get themselves out of their particular situation and may be pointed in the direction of another service that could help them.

I knew that I really wanted to help out and started keeping a look-out for Food Banks local to me. And I never did find one!

It was through looking on the internet that I found out that I could donate through a local church and I have been donating there ever since. I put a few signs up in work and was overwhelmed by everyone's generosity. Like me, most of them hadn't really known about Food Banks, and if they had, had never actually come across one. Yet, being given the opportunity, they all wanted to help.

It seems a little amazing to me that those who can maybe afford it more than others ie. People living in more affluent areas, aren't given the chance to donate. This is probably because there are fewer people in that immediate area that need the help, but as all of the food is non-perishable, it makes little sense to me not to have a little box set up at the entrance of, say, Waitrose, Booths, Marks & Spencer.

3 weeks after giving regular donations to the Food Bank, I couldn't help thinking that I wanted to do more. Having two young children, with very good, healthy appetites, I don't understand why less privileged people should go with having less healthy meals. The Food Bank are very good in requesting tinned vegetables and fruits and pasta sauces, but this just doesn't appeal to me. I felt myself placing my family in the same situation and wondering how I would feel about the bags of provisions I was offered. Extremely grateful of course, but wanting the absolute best for my two little kiddies who have no say in anything and who have no reason to miss out on the very best that life has to offer. I started to feel guilty about everything that I cooked them, picturing the bags of pasta and the tins of peas I was offering to the church every Thursday.

One day, a colleague came in to see me to talk about the Food Bank and he mentioned that his wife had put a link on Facebook to a lady who advertised her leftovers on Gumtree to people in her area. I read the article and was truly inspired. I contacted Caroline and after a long Facebook conversation, we realised that we both wanted the same thing!

I sent a Facebook message to a few local friends who I trusted and who I knew cooked good, healthy meals for their families most nights, to ask for their ideas and for their support, and the overwhelming majority said that they would happily freeze their leftover portions to donate to us. One friend offered the use of her freezer, another friend offered to provide food cartons to store the meals.

I am by no means taking anything away from the Food Bank. They do a fantastic job and as long as there is poverty, unemployment, homelessness, bedroom tax, benefit cuts, there will be an important place in society for the Food Banks. Our idea is certainly not an alternative to the Food Bank. In a way, our organisation is serving me too. I'm the one that wants to do this, I'm the one that will be left with a sense of pride and a sense of happiness to be helping out – that's my selfish ulterior motive.

What we hope to do is provide meals for people who haven't the facility to cook healthy meals for themselves, for whatever reason. I envisage us serving food to families with young children, young professionals who can't meet their mortgage repayments, the unemployed, pensioners, the homeless, ex-prisoners trying to get their lives back on the straight and narrow. It's certainly not for me to judge why they are standing at my doorstep accepting food from me. Just to be there in the first place, tells me all I need to know about them.

Caroline and I are so excited about this. We have registered our 'business' and hope to start dishing up in the next few weeks. We have so far decided to target churches and Children's Centres believing them to be the most in touch with the community. The hope is that they will either send people to us (Which I would love as it would be great to meet people in the community) or we will be able to take food to the Churches for them to distribute.

I would dearly love to meet the people that live in the areas that we work and live in. It can be so easy to walk around with your eyes closed. I would love to get to know the local families. I would love it, if by Christmas, instead of dropping my Christmas present donations off to the Salvation Army, I could give them in person to the families.

Hopefully this doesn't all sound too fantastical. I just hope that it all comes off and that we can make the tiniest little difference to the people who need to know that people still care.

Being Your Own Boss

6am – the alarm goes off, it's black outside, it's freezing. A snooze is out of the question, and peeling back the duvet, stepping out into the cold air, blindly walking the very few steps to the bathroom, my day begins!

7am - Alex and I are standing at the bus stop with all of the other Earlsfield zombies, two packed buses already having shot by without a sideways glance.

7:30am - we resolve to walk until we either get to Wandsworth or until we catch a bus with room to squeeze two little ones in.

7:45am – Alex and I are standing chest to chest, diagonally, relying on the crush to support us, hardly daring to breath in the bad breath of all of the morning commuters we are pressed up against. We can't see anything but we know where we are, feeling every jolt, every bend in the road and every pot-hole to identify our location.

8:30am – jumping off the bus which has been stationary on Fulham Palace Road for over 20 minutes, we walk to Hammersmith.

9am – late for work, we jump on to the empty Hammersmith and City Line train to Ladbroke Grove.

9:30am – get into work late.

7:30pm – home

So, despite both of us having fairly well-paid jobs which we really enjoyed, in 2008, Alex decided to leave the BBC to set up shop from the living room, leaving me to commute on my own!

Alex had worked as a freelance web designer alongside his full-time job for many years and eventually, he decided that he had enough work to sustain a decent living and took the leap into the world of self-employment.

We were living in a little flat in Tooting at the time. We had bought it only 3 years before. Our little flat, which had cost us a small fortune, consisted of a small living room, a small bedroom, a small eat-in kitchen and a small garden. We had bought it as a bit of a wreck and had flown a Polish guy over who lived with us for two weeks and re-plastered, painted, tiled, added picture rails and daido rails, and who we fed and looked after and paid a good amount of money to. We landscaped the garden and made it totally beautiful, painted our front door, built in wardrobes and designed and constructed a fantastic TV cabinet, shelving units and office desk in the living room. This is where Alex sat for the next year.

Alex's work was varied and local and Alex happily worked on two small projects at a time. He enjoyed the freedom and found no problems in making ends meet.

Later in 2008, having decided that we needed more room, that we had no chance of having more room whilst living in London, and that we had to move up North, Alex set his office up from the spare room of our brand new, three bedroomed house in leafy Knutsford.

Having sold our flat with a considerable amount of equity, we had a stunning wedding and honeymoon, and I stayed at home with no job, to organise our new home, explore our new surroundings, bring a Labrador puppy up, and make Alex sandwich creations every lunch time. We had a wonderful time and Alex enjoyed more work, local networking events and a feeling of being welcomed into a strong and affluent community.

There comes a time when every good business must take the risk and make the move to expand.

Alex's time came when we had our first baby and he found that he had more than enough website requests to divvy out between two people (and I wanted my spare room back).

The decision wasn't as easy as that in reality. It's a big, brave step to decide to take on your first employee and to start paying rent on an office. It's a massive financial leap! I can't even remember our conversations about it as we had a brand new baby in tow – there must have been so much head scratching, to-ing and fro-ing and calculating going on. Whatever the discussions, Alex moved into his office in Altrincham, joined by a young, friendly and talented web designer.

The web designer that Alex chose to work with made the move fairly easy. He was easy to get on with and quick to do the work. It was fun going to see Alex in the office, and Alex loved it when I took our gorgeous little boy, Dylan, in to see his daddy and play on the computer with him.

Of course, there was always a strain. It was imperative that there was always enough work coming in. We had the responsibility of an employee to pay, we had rent to pay, and we had ourselves to pay. Budgeting for holidays and sick pay was always an issue, and one that we didn't always prepare for.

There was also a certain amount of control that Alex had to hand over. He had to accept that the designs that his employee did weren't always going to represent Alex's taste, and this was hard for Alex to deal with. However, in allowing the business to progress, it was just imperative to let go a bit and have the trust and confidence that the work was being done.

It all worked out!

2 years later, Alex took on another employee. It was necessary. There was too much work coming in for just the two of them to deal with, especially now that the jobs were larger, required more management and more maintenance. Alex had found that the more work that he took on and the bigger clients that he attracted, the less time there was for him to knuckle down and design some websites. He was spending his day writing quotes and proposals and briefs, having meetings, updating existing websites and chasing invoices. There was just no time for Alex to do any billable work. And Alex's working day was continuing long into the night and into the weekends. I found that I was taking Dylan out on our own for one day of every weekend just so that Alex could get his head down with no distractions.

We had another baby on the way. I told Alex in no uncertain terms that things had to change. I needed help around the house more and I needed help with the children at the weekend. I needed time off too!

When Betty arrived and things weren't showing any signs of changing, Alex enlisted the help of a business consultant. It was a good thing he did too, as little did we know that we were about to experience some of the worst financial months that we had ever had. We all worked together on a cash-flow forecast and a business plan and saw that with the rent that we were paying, the extra cost per month of an additional employee, Corporation tax and our Vat Return looming, we had to put a plan in place.

Around about that same time, Alex came home one day, white as a sheet. We were putting the kids to bed and I noticed his silence. His eyes were red, he was the closest to tears that I had ever seen him.

“It's not the finances,” he explained, “I just have so much work to do. I just haven't got the time.”

He had totally burnt out. He saw no end to the massive mountain of work he faced. He spent his day being shouted at by clients wondering where their websites were and why they were taking so long. He spent his evening being nagged by me to spend time with the kids. He spent his night at his computer drinking mugs of strong coffee.

It was decided that I would be employed by the Company as an Office Manager.

I would take a lot of Alex's administration work away from him - chasing invoices, monitoring cashflow, bookkeeping – and I would introduce some new systems around the work place to record timekeeping and efficiency. The hope was that by taking away these duties, Alex would be able to get some of his own work finished and become more of a Manager and concentrate more efficiently on sales.

At the same time, it became apparent that we needed a cash injection and that meant a trip to the bank.

Thankfully, after several trips to the bank, we were granted a large overdraft and we felt the pressure ease. We weren't out of the woods but Alex had enough time to actually think about what needed doing and when, without the burden of having to chase cash around.

In working at my desk, sitting next to Alex, I was filled with admiration and respect for him. He had so much weight on his shoulders. As well as having a house to run, two small children to feed, clothe and entertain, a bossy wife to please, poor Alex had two members of staff that needed paying on time, in full every month, and numerous clients to satisfy, all with their own deadlines and all with no care in the world for his time.

We had always run the office in a non hierarchical way. Of course, Alex was the manager but we had taken on employees of similar ages to ourselves and who had similar talents to Alex, and it was never a case of wanting to own them – our job was to make sure we brought enough work for them to do so that we all got paid at the end of the month.

However, in introducing our cash flow and timekeeping models, it was revealed to us that the staff were not bringing in enough money to cover their wages. Alex's projects were carrying the business and the hard work that he was putting in, and his push for covering the wages every month, was what was paying for everyone else.

Alarm bells started ringing.

It was then that things changed in the office. Alex and I had to become the Managers that we hadn't been before.

After many consultations and research and speculation, we took our staff into appraisals, we started keeping personal records of who was bringing what sales into the company, and what everyone's utilisation rates were, not to spy on everyone but to ascertain just where things were going wrong and how we could improve things to make every hour of every day more productive.

We also adapted our contracts to favour our project management so that there was less chance of clients adding little extras into the projects that we hadn't quoted for; Alex stepped right out of his comfort zone and started charging more per job (an amount much more appropriate to the size of Company that we were becoming and the time that it was actually taking per job); we introduced targets and budgets for our staff.

We are only a month or two in but we are seeing some good results. We are attracting bigger clients who can pay more. However, with that comes all of the project management and slow payment processes. We have also found that our staff are more focussed and have much higher utilisation rates.

It's the tip of the iceberg so far – we have so much more work to do, but we feel we are on the right path. For the time being, I still can't quite see the day when our debts are paid off; I can't see a day when Alex and I will be able to take home a wage which will cover our outgoings and then some; I still can't see a day when the last week of the month won't be a mad dash for the bank to move money around to cover wages and a last-ditch attempt to claw some money from our debtors.

We are doing this for the future. One wonderful day, our children will have the choice whether to go to University or to train as web designers and follow in their dad's footsteps. One day, Alex will step down and our kids will be able to decide whether to take over or to sell up. When Dylan has his first school play, Alex and I will both be able to attend. When Betty has her first day at school, we will both be able to pick her up. When the kids get chicken pox, I won't have to ask the boss for time off to look after them, and make up the hours later. When the kids' friends ask them what their parents jobs are, Dylan and Betty will be able to proudly tell them that they have their own Web Design Company.

It's a heck of a tough journey, but we look forward to the day when we can say 'it was worth it!'

It seems amazing that it has only taken 6 short years to get to where we are now. We are by no means the biggest company in the town and by no means have we had the quickest growth, but to think of our morning commute through rush-hour London every day, being stuck in traffic jams, a 12-hour day, then to Alex happily ensconced in working on some lovely little local websites from the peace and quiet of our newly decorated spare room, to now having the responsibility of two staff members and an office to pay for, always aware of how much money is in the bank and how much more we need before we can afford to pay everybody – well, we are nearly there aren't we...