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Nicola Shares Stories Of Starting Over At Sixty

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Playing Hookey! A Birthday Roadtrip To Areopoli…

One of the things I love most about being self-employed is having total control over my own diary.

My brother Alex arrived from Australia for a few weeks, having just been made redundant from his high flying corporate job after 18 years at the same company.  He’s already enjoying job and consultancy offers already, but after months of waiting for the axe to fall, he needed a change of scene.

On discovering it was my birthday, he found out my favourite thing to do is go to Takis’ Fish Taverna in Limeni Village, on the way to Areapolis.  He booked a night in the hotel there for the three of us so we could enjoy a leisurely drive down, lunch at Takis’, a night in Areopolis and dinner at the restaurant Rick Stein ate in, in the Venice to Istanbul tv series (episode 5.

However, just on the very day we were supposed to go, the “medicane” hit, this is a Mediterranean hurricane and we had to move the booking to the following week.

Just one of the amazing things we saw that trip was a live turtle, swimming around in the sea off Taki’s, enjoying some of the squid trimmings as the fisherman cleaned that day’s catch.

 

 

And here are some of the pictures from that day.  Such a beautiful place to spend most of my time.

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Choosing A Book

Sighing in exasperation, Nicola realised she’d read everything in the “Starting A Business” section in Books Etc, Oxford St.

She’d either read them all or didn’t like the look of them, titles such as “How To Incorporate Your Business” being too dry, by far.

She was looking for the secret you see, the secret of success in business, the one thing that had eluded her thus far. Little did she know that she was making a fundamental error about businesses, every time she set up a new one.  A fundamental error that doomed each to failure.

“It has to be here somewhere” she muttered as she glanced at her watch.

Nearly out of time on the one-hour lunch break allowed and her sandwich and cappuccino not even bought yet.  Time was nearly up and a long afternoon at her job loomed like a prison sentence.

“What’s wrong with me?” she thought wearily.  “Why do I spend all my time dreaming of owning my own business?  Why can’t I just be normal, go to work like everyone else and be grateful to be earning at all, with spare time on the weekends?”

Nicola walked out of the business section, past the self-help shelves, the section she never looked at as she imagined it being full of yoghurt weaving and macrame “how to”.

Just as she walked past the final shelf a book dropped on the floor in front of her, for all the world like a tiny book elf had pushed it out himself.

Nicola loved and respected books and was nothing if not tidy and so she didn’t want to leave the book on the floor to get kicked around.  The few staff in evidence looked busy enough.

As she looked for the right section, she glanced idly at the cover.

“Swimming With Piranha Makes You Hungry” by Professor Colin Turner was the rather cryptic title.  While Nicola idly pondered whether there should be an “S” at the end of piranha, little did she know that this book would change her life forever.

She turned it over and realised that it was a book designed to encourage people who worked in corporate life to set up a business on the side of their day job, with the ultimate goal of breaking free of Cubicle Nation.

“Preaching to the converted, there, Colin my old love!” she thought, but as the book was under £5 and she didn’t have anything to read on the tube, she bought it quickly before going to buy her lunch.

Over the next couple of days, Nicola raced through the book which was entertaining and thought-provoking but ultimately containing nothing new for this veteran of “How To” books.  However, she had a nagging feeling she was missing something so she read it again.

And again, and then again.

Over the next few weeks, she read that little book about 10 times while not quite sure why she was doing that.

One day, just before arriving at her stop in Kensal Rise, Nicola noticed a little drawing near the end of the book.  Here is that drawing exactly as she saw it.

She immediately realised that this drawing held the secret, the one thing she’d been looking for, all her life in all those books.

It showed her the difference between being an employee and saver, and an investor.  She immediately wrote a 5* review on Amazon.

Nicola started out on a journey to learn how money works, how success works, how business works. How successful people think.

This led to buying a 12 bedroom hotel “no money down”, starting four six-figure businesses, one of which “The Money Gym” went on to become her own first book and mentoring programme, which changed hundreds, if not thousands of people’s lives.

Then, fifteen years later, an email arrived in her inbox from a Professor Colin Turner, who had just been sent a screenshot by a friend, of her review written all those years ago.

“Fancy a chat on Skype?” he said.

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Making An Entrepreneur | 001 | A Helicopter Overview

Dear Phoebe and Nelson, in the light of Steve’s sudden demise, I wanted to start to write my memoirs, to tell you more about my entrepreneurial journey so far. Why would I want to do that? Especially as you don’t really like to read yet, and may never actually read this at all?

I believe that, by telling you my story, but also, more importantly by sharing the books, tools and techniques that changed MY life, you can improve your lives too, maybe by becoming a full-blown entrepreneur or business owner, or maybe just to start a little something on the side of your day job.

That’s ok too.

Did you know that, if you just buy 1 x one bedroom flat a year, for five years, rent it out and just sit on it, in a normal housing market, you will most likely become a millionaire in 10 years? That’s better odds than the lottery but still people blow so much money every week on buying tickets.

They are just buying hope!

And actually, if you start to take action, you can get that for free!

What about a “not so normal” housing market?

Well, if it takes 15 or 20 years, would that be OK?

So you don’t have to give up your day job, you just have to open your eyes, ears and perhaps most importantly your MIND, to become financially successful as well as happy, fulfilled human beings.

But creating an extra income on the side of the day job, especially online, can boost your ability to do things like invest in property.

So let’s get started shall we?

My entrepreneurial journey starts with the huge influence my mother had on me. You know her now as a distant grandmother figure who you don’t know, but who sends you money (always welcome) and confusing emails sometimes.

My mother Patricia was a raging entrepreneur by nature and never could sit still, always looking for a better way to do things, how to improve things, always moving furniture or rooms around and even houses and countries all through my childhood.

She was a talented performer and a dancer in musical theatre, a career she had to give up to become a wife and mother. This is where the first of her lasting legacies to me came from; she really impressed upon me that you must never be dependent on a man. When I think about how tough women had it in those days – and we are only talking about the early 60’s. There’s a popular programme now called “Call The Midwife” that really shows clearly how difficult it was for most working class women.

I was born in 1961, went to school in the 60’s and 70’s but I left school as a delinquent under-achiever who scraped five ‘O’ Levels but could have done so much better. I was always in the A stream by the skin of my teeth but hanging out behind the bike sheds with the smokers and the bad boys and girls.

No college, no sixth-form, no idea of what to do. I jumped from job to job, always searching for the ‘one’; the job where I would shine, where I would fulfil the true potential I knew was there.

When I started my first ever business at the age of 8 years old my idea was to rent out, or even sell, the many paperback story books I had already accumulated from older relatives, second hand shops and jumble sales. I started well recruiting my 6-year old sister, Heather, now an international opera singer and still dining out on the story, on a payment-by-results basis.

I moved from one start up business to the next, always searching for my big break. No training, no business skills, no idea. However I was a voracious reader and in between the horror and sci-fi stories, I was buying “How To” business books and occasionally bought a ‘self-help’ book such as ‘How To Become A Woman of Substance’ and ‘How To Love A Difficult Man’.

It took me 28 years to realise that I needed a business mentor or I would probably never achieve any business success at all. I was growing up in a family with no money and no business people in it, much less successful business people. My early business ventures were pretty much doomed to failure.

I launched a flat-finding agency, I produced New Romantic waistcoats and became a freelance fashion designer supplying designer shops. I also helped my severely non-entrepreneurial husband start his own dance music compilations record label, Esoteric Records, with moderate success for about 3 years.

Things improved a bit at the age of 38 when I saw the light, took responsibility for my own success and results and started my quest for financial freedom. I met a pivotal mentor who recognised the entrepreneurial fire in me and gave me my first taste of being paid by results – uncapped commission payments, heady stuff!

I have told the story many times of how I met my first mentor, who became one of C4’s first “Secret Millionaires”, Gill Fielding.

Gill had loads of experience of creating wealth through investing in property and the stock market, and she’s an utterly brilliant speaker but, having come from the corporate world herself, she didn’t really know how to start and grow a new business from scratch, on a shoestring.

We started a company together but after 6 months amicably agreed to go our separate ways, Gill wanting to reach more people to “light the spark of financial possibility” as she calls it. Gill bought me out and, in the process, gave me the first inkling that an idea, turned into a business, might have an asset value.

Next I bought my run-down hotel The Acacia for half a million pounds but “no money down”, gutted it and started to market it online. I regularly quizzed my accountant and my bank manager about the businesses they saw every day.

What separated those that succeeded from those that failed?

I got some very interesting answers.

I’ll tell you the rest tomorrow as that’s already an awful lot to read!

In the meantime you can find me at any of the following places online:

Twitter | https://twitter.com/nicolacairnx
Facebook | https://facebook.com/nicolacairncrossuk
YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/user/ukmarketingmentor

Warm regards
Nicola

p.s. I’ll tell you more in my next blog post – are you enjoying the story so far? If so,
just hit the comments link and let me know?

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Steve Watson Remembered | One Year On

Dear Steve, I can’t believe it’s been a year.  I would say “already” but boy, has it been a long one!

The last 24 hours have been the longest of all, remembering each painful hour what we were doing only a year ago.  Wondering if I could have done anything differently?  Wondering if I could have somehow saved you?  If only I could have stopped you going out for that walk… If only you had come back to my house instead of staying at your flat…. If only, if only….

The pressure eased emotionally as soon as we got past 4.47 am on the 12th March, when I’m convinced you died, as I woke up suddenly from my jet-lagged stupor and for no reason at all before falling back into a deep, dark sleep myself.  This time was about right according to the ambulance men who came so quickly and kindly when I called.  After I found you, asleep for ever, curled up peacefully in your flat.

As I’m going to try and move on now, after a year of thinking of you all the time, I thought it would be fitting to share the words I spoke in the church, with Phoebe and Nelson standing like dark clad stormtroopers either side.  I was so proud of them and so would you have been.

I love you.  I’ll love you forever.

Nicola x

“Steve Watson was a strong man with a big heart, especially kind & welcoming when it came to children, teens and random heart-broken friends.

Nothing was too much trouble for Phoebe, Nelson, Chloe and Spencer or their friends.   Food, lifts, homework, you name it.  

He was a reluctant DIY’er but he especially loved making the exploding volcano for Nelson and we all recall the hardboard skate-ramp with fondness too!  Well, perhaps not the neighbours….

In their school years, he’d prop the kids on cushions in front of the Simpsons and spend hours straightening Phoebe’s hair or de-nitting  them with the ear-buzzing electronic gadget – we used to call him “Teasy Weasy Watson” he enjoyed it so much.

And who can forget the “summer of knitting” in 2006?

Phoebe in particular loves fine dining and cooking now and that’s Steve’s influence for sure, but he could also always be relied on for a sneaky trip to McDonalds drive-in too.  Not to mention the too-scary horror movies he’d let them watch when I was working away from home.

As so many have mentioned on Facebook, he was the embodiment of a old school ‘gent’, never leaving the house without being smartly turned out, some money in his wallet, and smelling great.  

I loved it that he liked nice quiet sports, golf, horse-racing and, of course, poker, which he taught me to play too.  He had a brilliant sense of humour, he was the life and soul of any party even though he was actually very shy.  You DID often find him in the kitchen at parties but that was his favourite place, where he felt totally at home.

He was so brave, he genuinely wasn’t scared of anything, as was proved the night the burglar alarm went off and he ran down the stairs in his Calvin’s brandishing his golf club and shouting swear words at the top of his voice!    

We had so much in common, music, books, tv crime drama, films, software, business building….

Although he used to hate the sci fi / fantasy genre, loathing the “Harry Potter” & “Lord Of The Rings” series with a passion, only really putting up with them for the kids sakes.  Star Trek was our only common ground.

Steve was a real shock to my system, he constantly surprised me and there was never any shortage of things to talk about. 

Steve challenged me on just about everything and I’ll never forget when he announced – in front of the kids – that there was no Father Christmas and how did I feel about lying to my children!

But sharing our lives with him made me more empathetic, a much better mother. He always reminded me that they were separate little people not just “the kids” and that my behaviour with them now, would set the tone for our future together. 

He used to ask me, “Did I want to be right or did I want to have them in my life when they are adults?”

I first met Steve in 2003 when he ran my favourite restaurant and he was the love of my life for the last 11 years – although they were stormy and tempestuous years for sure.

He was spontaneous and exciting and he brought out a more adventurous side in me as I was known in my family for being a bit of a “Victorian Mum”.  

One hot summer day when he came with me, as he sometimes reluctantly had to do, we got off the train from London and he just walked straight into the sea in his suit.  I have never laughed so hard in my life.  

With Steve, it was always “my way or the highway” and as a dyed in the wool feminist up to that point, I kicked back against that – but somehow his way was the way I always chose (in the end).  

I used to go to London to work and speak but when I got home, flushed with adrenaline, I’d be given a glass of wine and instructed in no uncertain terms to “now, leave your jackboots by the door, love!”

Now I’ve got to make my own way and that way will be so much dimmer without him.  Who am I going to drink “tankinis” with in the late summer  sunshine and who will I dance to Disclosure with, at Wild Life Festival?

He will also be missed at our family birthdays (where no cake request was too much of a challenge) and at our Christmas Night parties which became legendary not least because of Steve’s own brand of demon dancing.

PAUSE

Well, Steve, where are you now?  You are either nowhere (as you believed) or zooming off round the Universe having the time of your life.  

I really hope it’s the latter, because it will annoy you so much that you were wrong!

When it gets tough without you, I will just keep hearing you say “Nicola, just grow a pair and stare the “effer” down!”.  I will do my very best to do just that, Steve.  

Your funny little family that you always called “The Clampits” all love you very much and we WILL miss you terribly.

Goodbye.”

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Is It Working Yet?

nicola-steve-wildlife_1024

Judith and I have just recorded the Christmas and New Year edition of the “Own It!” podcast. We recorded them back to back and used the Christmas edition to look back over 2016 and the New Year edition to look forwards, both from a business perspective.

As we move towards Christmas, that commercially fabricated day that really only means anything to people with young children or big families who all like to get together in one house each year, it’s worth a bit of a personal review I think.

Specifically a review of “Is It Working?”

The Christmas adverts ubiquitous on TV at the moment are making me think about it all, all over again.  Making me think about the grief thing, certainly more than I was back in October or November.  In those months I was just enjoying being somewhere different, somewhere prettier, somewhere warmer than England.

So is being here actually working?

Is it helping me get over my grief, or at least come to terms with losing Steve?

Is it worth being in a foreign country, albeit a beautiful one, for 6 months, with no sights of home, no home comforts like central heating or a car, no friends or grown up children to hang out with?

What does “working” even mean in this context and what would “working” or “not working” look like?

I think I felt somewhere, deep down, that a change of scene away from all the vivid memories of Steve and I spending time together in various locations in Shoreham over the last 13 or so years, would help me get used to him not being around.

That it would put some time and distance between the unimaginable horror of finding someone you love so much dead.  Just curled up on the floor like he was sleeping (but not being able to wake him) and knowing that, even though the ambulance was on it’s way, it was just too way too late.

From the unimaginable horror (and I choose that word very carefully) of getting up each day, looking out of the window and seeing everything looking the same but knowing that everything has changed – and not in a good way, not in a way I have any control over, not in a way that feels like it’s going to come to an end any time soon.

When we came out here to Greece, I was in so much pain from that loss all the time, every minute, from my first waking minutes to the moment I went to sleep, the pain of losing Steve and the pain of not knowing how I was going to carry on. I kept saying “yes, I’m feeling better” to kind enquiries and I even managed to fool myself occasionally that yes, perhaps I was feeling a bit better.

But I wasn’t really. I felt appalling. All the time.

I just wanted it to stop.  But I wasn’t brave enough to make it stop and I wasn’t selfish enough to make it stop.

How can emotional psychological pain hurt so much physically?  How can it feel like your heart is, quite literally, broken?

Have You Joined The Secret Death Club Yet?

Unless you have experienced this kind of loss, it’s impossible to explain how it feels and I know this because I used to be totally immune to it too. Even when people I was quite close to, lost people they were close to, I felt sad for them but it’s impossible to feel it in the same way, when you have never felt it yourself.

Perhaps its like having a baby, you look at all the other new mums – or any mum at all really – with renewed respect because you know, you KNOW, what pain they have experienced. It’s like a secret club.

I’d never been a member of the secret club of loss, grief, bereavement.

No that’s still pussyfooting around it. I prefer to call a spade a spade.

I’d never joined the Death Club.

My biological father died when I was about 7 and he was in the Merchant Navy so we never know him really.  He was just a big man who came home occasionally and threw his weight about in the discipline department, scaring us.  There was no upside to his visits home.  I only remember one of them, luckily.

The only people I’ve lost apart from that is my grand-parents. I was living in London and immersed in having babies and being newly married when they died, quite quickly within a couple of years of each other. I only spoke to my Nan on the phone occasionally and I saw her about 2-3 times a year, as we just didn’t go down to Worthing very much.

Just before Steve died, my sister Heather nursed two friends through the last stages of cancer, back to back. She took up the mantle of carer for them because their families were not stepping up and there was no-one else. She’s a very kind soul, my sister Heather, with a strong sense of duty, although she’s a straight talker nowadays too, death does that to you.

It’s not just the endless hours you have to devote to doing lots of little errands and jobs, not just the sitting around watching TV shows you hate (but they love), it’s all the physical stuff, the really horrid stuff, both treatment and symptom related kind of stuff, the stuff nobody talks about. The stuff nobody else knows about, unless you have also been been a member of the Death Club.

Heather felt some very complicated emotions after both deaths and she was offered grief counselling (two lots!) by the hospice which she took and found it very helpful.

I was also offered counselling via the doctors / mental health team after I broke down on a doctor one day (while talking about something else entirely) but didn’t find it at all helpful. To be honest, the counsellor was very basic level and I’ve done so much reading and personal development work, as well as a two year spell in paid therapy back when I was married, that a half hour a week talking about breathing in one colour air and breathing out another just didn’t help me at all.

We have also, as a society, distanced ourselves from sickness and death with fewer and fewer people being cared for by family, at home. This must be making it an every bigger psychological shock when someone dies. Because when Death is distanced like it is, it’s very easy to fall into acting as if it’s never going to happen to you or anyone you love.

How Big Is Your Grief?

They say you feel grief in direct proportion to the effect the loss of the person has on your day to day life.

If that grief equation is true, I shouldn’t be feeling so bad because Steve and I had a volatile relationship and when we didn’t live together, we often spent a couple of weeks not seeing each other at all, while we calmed down from some stupid row or other. I often accidentally wound him up and he certainly knew how to press my hot buttons. We had a very complicated relationship.

Even though we became great friends after Steve came to run my hotel and then even more so after my marriage finished, it took years for us to become anything more to each other.  His self esteem issues disguised as arrogance and his own fear of loss were so great. His beloved younger brother and best friend had both died suddenly when he was in his late teens so he knew exactly what loss and grief feels like. His first serious girlfriend had also, around the same time, hurt him very badly and all of this added up to him fiercely resisted getting into a place where he could EVER be hurt again.

I am quite often attracted to emotionally unavailable men and though I saw the warning signs, and while I tried to resist, you can’t help who you fall in love with.

In the years when we shared a house, with him acting as stepfather to the kids, then the years when we didn’t live together but we still spent so much time together, then the last year or so when we were together all the time and working out if we could possibly ever live together again, he’d dominated my waking moments when not working or with my kids.

He was my best friend, we had so much in common, from our troubled childhoods to our taste in TV and Films, to our mutual love of house music and playing Texas Hold’em poker. He was one of the most intelligent men I know (and certainly the most emotionally intelligent person I’ve ever met).

He saw straight through me, he KNEW me, even when I thought I was putting a great front on for the world, even when I didn’t REALISE I was putting a front on for the world.

He made me more spontaneous, less of a scaredy cat,  he made me have more fun.  This picture above is the photo I love most, it was taken at Wildlife Festival in 2015 and while we were trying to be grown up and sensible, it was his idea to go last minute, he was ready to buy overpriced tickets – from the touts if necessary.  Luckily there were still tickets on the door!

That’s why I know I’m unlikely to fall in love again. He’s going to be an impossible act to follow. I don’t WANT to ever fall in love again.

This blog post was luckily interrupted at this point by a random power cut. Good job too, because writing that last bit made me cry at that point. There was a power cut, my computer was about to run out of battery and Nina the Cleaner had just finished so we went for a walk to the village.  We sat in Bar360 in the sun, drinking hot coffee (me) and hot chocolate (Sarah) because they have a gas ring and can heat water! We have experienced 3-4 power cuts in the 3 months we have been here and – typical Greek efficiency – apparently there’s a website where you can see if they are scheduled and how long they are going to last. We need to get a camping  gas ring for making tea during them, or something…

What Next, Going Forwards?

So while I’m never going to allow myself to fall in love again, I’m going to need to build a local social life from scratch, and I just wasn’t ready to do that.  Going to the Co-Op was a huge emotional mountain for me. This is why I thought coming here would give me a holiday from feeling like I need to go out and get social, before I’m good and ready.

Then when I go home to England, after travelling a bit, when I do, I could move to Brighton perhaps?

Apart from one or two business people I meet for lunch occasionally to catch up, and the lovely Sue in the Co-Op, the teens behind various bars in Shoreham there is only my oldest friend Kim locally, who I never see unless it’s for a haircut once a month or a quarterly “girls night out” for dinner. All my other friends are online, globally and I really only see them when I go to events.

I’m not that good at being pro-actively social nowadays but I’m going to have to change my ways. Social media contact alone doth not a real people orientated social life make!

I also know I can be lazy so I’ll need to make it easy for myself or I simply won’t do it.

I will have to make it really easy to have something to go out of the house for.  In Brighton I’ll have a huge choice of live comedy, live jazz, all kinds of theatre, art galleries, great restaurants, shops, supper clubs etc., all within easy walking distance which will be healthy too.

Living in Brighton would make it easier to meet new people and easier to meet up with people, after they have been met.

Hey, it looks like it IS working, living here, because I’m starting to imagine not just a future without Steve, but apparently a fairly fun filled future too.

While I have a picture of him beside my bed, along with one of my favourite pics of the kids, his death is no longer the very first thing I think about in the morning or last thing at night.

I think about him regularly throughout the day, but more happily, as an amazing person who was in my life before but isn’t any more.  The pain is a bit less or it’s changed from piercing to just very, very sad.

So apart from sending present for the kids, we’ll largely be ignoring Christmas this year and perhaps next year…. well, I might be ready for it again!