What will I do when I grow up - says the 45 year old woman!
What will I do when I grow up? (Says the 45-year-old woman!)
I have always rather envied those people who have a burning
vocation; they knew the career they wanted to follow and went
for it. If, like me, you have never really known what you want
to do, the years fly past and you still have to earn a living.
But doing what?
I did well at school and it was assumed that I’d go onto
university. I wasn’t happy at home and being keen to move out I
end up leaving school after 5th year to study for a degree in
Hotel and Catering Management at Strathclyde Uni. Well my heart
was never really in it and I dropped out after 1st year, against
all advice.
I went to live with my aunt in north London and found a job in
the newsagent’s kiosk in the Strand Palace Hotel. I was very
keen to visit Greece. I’d a very romantic notion of it. None of
my friends were interested so it was either go alone or not at
all. I saved up from my meagre wages and booked an open return
on the coach to Athens in June 1978. I think it cost £25 return.
I planned to travel down through the Peloponese and then do some
island hopping. I was not impressed by Athens but had already
paid for a 3-night hotel stay in there. The train journey down
to Kalamata in the Peloponese was wonderful, a narrow gauge
railway, the carriages had wooden slated seats. I was the only
tourist on the train. I then visited Crete, Rhodes, Kos, and
Kalmynos. It was in my next port of call, Samos, that I met my
husband. He was doing his 2-year military service. Although I
did think that I’d fallen in love, I thought be sensible you
have heard all these stories about holidays romances. Suffice to
stay I was back in Samos a few months later. He finished his
national service just before Christmas 1979 and we were married
in Glasgow in February 1980.
We had been so intent on just being together that we hadn’t
really thought through how we were going to live. My husband had
studied at a naval college before his national service but we
didn’t want him to go and work in the merchant navy. He couldn’t
even work when he first came over to the UK, until his work
permit was sorted out.
We decided that the best way to save up the money for the
deposit for our own home was for me to do a “live-in” job as a
housekeeper. We would be provided with a small flat to live in
and have virtually no expenses. We managed to stand that for a
year and had saved £5000, enough for a deposit on a place of our
own. My husband now had a steady job at the Hyde Park Hotel, so
we could apply for a mortgage.
I continued with a succession of menial temporary jobs. By 1982,
I was getting fed up, so enrolled in a secretarial course at a
private college. This paid off; I found a job as PA/secretary in
a publisher’s office. Little did I know but this would be the
high point of my career to the present day. I worked a 32 and a
half hour week, was reasonably paid, I had an office junior to
do the routine tasks and work was great fun. The company
published 2 magazines, one was a naturist magazine, Health and
Efficiency, and the other a bodybuilding magazine.
However we were living in a one bedroom flat with no garden in
East London. We couldn’t afford to buy something bigger or in a
more salubrious area. We were thinking about having a family, so
when my husband saw Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire advertising
for staff, we though why not move to Scotland, housing would
certainly be a lot cheaper. My husband got the job at Gleneagles
and he moved up, leaving me to sell our flat in London. He lived
in staff accommodation at Gleneagles and started house hunting.
He found a house in Muthill, near Crieff. It was quite large so
I decided to try my hand at bed and breakfast and we registered
with an agency that sent German kids over to the UK to stay with
a family and receive English lessons. That wasn’t exactly a
roaring success. In 1986 I saw an advert for market research
interviewers and decided to apply. I did my first survey in
Pitlochry. It was quite hard at first but I did quite enjoy
being out and about and chatting to loads of different people.
However I discovered I was pregnant in the Autumn of 1986 and
when I went for my scan was informed that it was twins! My
husband was in his 2nd year as a mature student at Stirling
University. We thought it would be better if we could move
nearer Stirling, as he needed the car to get to university and I
would be pretty stuck in the village with twin babies. Our house
in Muthill took ages to sell but we moved to Tullibody, in
February 1988.
In the spring I went back to work as a market research
interviewer. It fitted in well with family life, as I would go
out to work evenings and weekends and we didn’t need to pay for
any childcare. As the boys grew up and had a nursery place when
they were 4, I thought I should be doing something better than
trailing around asking a whole load of questions. I saw places
funded by the European Social Fund for women to study for an HNC
in Admin at the local college. They were even offering free
creche places. I had been thinking about going back to
university and was advised that it would be easier to gain
admission if I could provide evidence of recent study.
The year at college was harder work than I had envisaged, then
the 4 years at university, studying for a business studies
degree, were even harder, and I was still doing market research
most weekends. Now I hardly thought I was going to be headhunted
into a top management position when I completed my studies but I
did think I’d be able to find a semi-decent job.
After looking around a bit for a job, I decided that I would try
to start my own business. I wanted to work locally weekdays
during the day. I knew that there was a strong demand locally
for domestic cleaners and thought I would try setting up a
domestic cleaning service. Sure enough my research was correct
there was demand and after a few leaflet drops locally and a few
personal recommendations, I started to advertise for staff.
After a year and a half I had 7 part time staff. However things
were not going smoothly, I was doing cleaning every day myself
and there always seemed to be at least one staff member off. The
quality began to drop if I was always on hand to crack the whip.
I was hardly making any profit and was spending around 30 hours
a week just cleaning, never mind wages. weekly rotas, leaflet
drops. I realised that I would have to expand to be profitable
but couldn’t find reliable staff to maintain quality. I’d been
doing quite a lot of work cleaning rented staff accommodation,
between lets for a company that was relocating to the Stirling
area. They were having a new office custom built for them. The
office manager verbally assured me that I would have the
contract to clean the new office. I thought that this would be
the salvation of the business, as I could easily supervise
employees while on one site. The logistics of the domestic
cleaning were very complicated. However the contract never came
to fruition. The office manager told me that my business was too
small to take on the contract and her deputy told me that they
were legally bound to take on the cleaning contractor that the
whole business park used. Who knows what the truth was but
basically I was left in the lurch. I decided to give up the
business.
I drifted back into market research telling myself that I would
just do the more interesting social survey work. I started with
a company who only did social surveys and was told there was
plenty of work available. I think I had about 3 jobs from them
over 6 months. When I was doing a sex survey for them in Perth I
bumped into another interviewer. She told me that the company
she worked for were about to start a big social survey where the
same families would be interviewed every year for the next 3
years. I phoned the area manager the next day, we hit it off and
things seemed to be going well. After a few months the area
manager asked me to apply for the position of deputy. Believe it
or not, as deputy manager I was still paid by the hour. I
actually had more hassle, made less money and had less
flexibility than working as an interviewer. I still had to go
out interviewing and would get home in the evening to a pile of
faxes and phone messages, when I just wanted to relax.
I lasted around 6 months as deputy. I rationalised that I had
tried studying, tried a promoted post, I wasn’t that ambitious
and no employer seemed prepared to offer me a decent job, so I
would have to be realistic and just plod on as an interviewer.
Well that lasted for around a year then the area manger was
forced to retire at 65 and the new manager wanted to greatly
reduce my work on the annual social survey and force me to do
all other sorts of surveys I wasn’t interested in.
I was wracking my brain about what on earth I was going to do to
earn a crust. I had started thinking that I would like to start
a travel business. It was a growth market, I wouldn’t need any
employees, and I could work from home. The Internet was really
catching on (this was 2002) and I thought that it would allow
me, to gain some market exposure, even as a small fish. I also
thought it would be wonderful to work in a field in which I had
a great personal interest. I signed up with a flight supplier as
a travel broker in August 2002.
That was almost two years ago. I am still working as a market
research interviewer and the business is slowly growing. It’s
been an ongoing dilemma to me, whether to give up the
interviewing and just concentrate on the business. At some
points I have been doing market research six days a week, so
really have not had much time or energy to devoteto the
business. However I have been loathed to give up the steady
income. By the same token if I don’t focus on the business then
it will never really take off.
My initial business was Europe a la Carte. I thought that there
was a niche in the market to assist people who were looking for
something different to the traditional package holiday, put
together a tailor made trip to Europe. It is possible to do this
yourself on the Internet but it’s pretty time consuming. I
reckoned that there was a significant minority of people who
would value some assistance with planning and booking their
trip.
From enquiries I received I began to realise that there was
demand for cultural and activity holidays in Europe. The sister
site, European Cultural & Activity Tours, was started in January
2003. May aim was to build up a good selection of holidays
offered by small specialist suppliers throughout Europe.
I have to say that I am extremely lucky that one of my sons is
really good on the computer. He has designed my sites and
databases. My other son has also helped me with newsletters and
photos.
I have begun to get more bookings and last week I had my first
repeat customer. I have learnt a lot in the last two years about
IT, the Internet and marketing. I have tried my hand at writing
articles for the websites.
I have had some interesting trips to meet up with suppliers and
visits to the areas that I promote. I have worked really hard
but I haven’t really minded that as I have, on the whole,
enjoyed the work. I am working toward my dream of having a
profitable business in a field I find fascinating. I believe
that I have found what I want to do now that I am grown up!
About the author:
Karen is a travel consultant and writer specialising in travel
in Europe. Her sites are: www.europealacarte.co.uk
www.europe-culture-activity-tours.com