Be Your Own Boss - The Beginning of the Journey (Part 1)
I don’t know exactly where to start really. The last four months:
Has it been exciting: Yes!
Has it been busy: Extremely!
Has it been stressful: At times.
Most importantly, I think it’s been life changing and it’s not often you can say that about a Summer.
How did it all start? I received a message asking if I would be interested in featuring on a new TV Programme. The full details initially were a bit scarce, and I wasn’t sure if I would be a good fit. As with all things these days I believe it is important for me to be honest and upfront about my conditions and how I live my life. I didn’t want to scare the production company off, but at the same time I didn’t want to present to them a false representation of who I am. My disabilities are a fundamental part of what makes me who I am now and the longer my life goes on, the more I’ve come to realise that, maybe not accept it yet due to the nature of how it happened, but realisation? Yes.
After a few conversations and what I would loosely term a form of online ‘interview’, more details of the show emerged. It was a completely new show with what I believe to be a unique format. It is extremely difficult in this day and age to use the words ‘new’ and ‘unique’, let alone in the same sentence.
But here we are, a Small Business Champion, Holly Tucker, awarded an MBE for her services to this industry, extremely successful entrepreneur with a wealth of knowledge about how to grow a business. And I was being offered the opportunity to meet her, discuss my business and be offered advice on how I could improve things further, all within an environment of support and positivity.
At this stage I must be totally open and honest. The TV part to me became incidental, the focal point became this once in a lifetime opportunity to meet someone of this stature and listen to every single word of advice I’m given and act upon it if I was going to get my small business out of this plateau I found myself resting on.
A short time later I received a phone call out of the blue whilst working on a serving board. “Leo, I just wanted to let you know that you have been successful and we’d love to have you on the programme’. At first I felt a bit numb and didn’t know what to make of it all apart from a continual stream of ‘thank you, thank you so much’. Must have sounded like a right idiot. What did bring me right back down to Earth was the next line:
‘Just looking at the diary and are we ok to come to yours next Tuesday to film!’
Holly Tucker was going to come and visit my Workshop.
I looked around at the bombsite that it was, frozen in fear and muttered the word: ‘OK’.
What have Iet myself in for? I was thinking I’d have a couple of months to get everything sorted if I was fortunate enough to be selected. Instead, I had around ten days! This was the starting point of one of the most hectic Summers in my life.
Firstly, I had to put together a parcel to send to Holly. It was to be something that encapsulated and represented my business in a box and enclose a message to Holly with a brief summary of what Hand-i-Craft is. I had some good ideas for this, promptly made a bespoke serving platter, packed it as I normally would and feeling content in what I’d done, set about trying to find out if my Workshop actually still had a floor that you could see. Time literally flew by, but I was determined to be ready for Holly’s visit.
Fast forward to the following Tuesday. The Workshop looked pristine, Pam had taken the day off work to help and support and our English Bulldog Zeus suspected something different was happening today. The film and production team arrived, made friends with Zeus then set up to film some opening ‘talking heads’ stuff and some ‘in action’ footage of me making a mess in my newly cleaned Workshop. Well, I guess it had to happen at some point.
Shortly after Holly arrived, it was so lovely to finally meet her and I immediately felt at ease. Not often I can say that these days around new people, but Holly has what I can only describe as an ‘aura’ about her that puts you in a good place. If championing small businesses wasn’t her life’s mission, she would have made an incredible therapist.
Whilst the production team got everything set up for the next stage of filming, Holly and I chatted about anything and everything. It was great, very relaxing and put me in a good place, ready for the next stage, whatever that was going to be. Entering the Workshop ready to film was what I can only describe as a ‘interesting’ situation.
Let’s be clear.. I spend quite a lot of time in here on my own, listening to music whilst making things and I’m ok with that. I spent over 25 years of my working life as a secondary school teacher with thousands of people everyday, ‘organised chaos’ springs to mind.
But here I am now, in my Workshop, with six other people, packed in like a sardine tin! Yet, I felt OK with it and I put that down to Holly’s personality, demeanour and character. It should have felt weird, really weird and yet it didn’t.
What transpired wasn’t really a filming session, it became a conversation between me and Holly and there just happened to be a film crew there recording it. Cast your mind back to the start of this blog and that is exactly what I was after, the programme became incidental, the conversation became the focal point.
We talked about what happened, the car crash, the aftermath, the breakdown, the surgeries, the treatment, the therapy, finding a new skill, the new hobby and the birth of a small business. I got upset, I cried and I think at some point most of us did. In the past I was very guarded about anything relating to my personal life and here I am opening up to a relative stranger with a small group of people watching us. And here is the weird thing: it didn’t feel weird, it felt almost cathartic.
What maybe I wasn’t ready for Holly’s response. She listened attentively, she responded with care and compassion, but overall she spoke with positivity. Praise for what my business has achieved up to this point, praise for responding to what I’ve been through and praise for my resilience. I don’t often look at my life in that fashion and hearing these words, I cried a little more.
Holly focused on the positives of the business and then took out her marker pen and flip chart to take about how we can build on this solid base. She presented four points of an ‘Action Plan’:
Let’s bring the USP of you front and centre, rebranding the business to reflect that.
Focus on a small range of products
Packaging Upgrade!
Workshop of Courage. . .
Let’s deal with the easy one first, point three. Now up and to this point, I would have described my packaging at best: functional. It did it’s job and that was about it. When Holly received my package I can’t begin to imagine what her initial thoughts were. In retrospect am I embarrassed now with the way I packaged my parcel to her? Errrrrr yes. However, it was a true reflection of how I did things at that time. Holly explained to me about the ‘theatre’ of opening a product giving it that ‘premium’ feeling to the customer. My current method of packaging would make Amazon parcels look like something from Fortnum and Masons.
Ok, let’s look at point one: me. Although the business is not just about woodworking, it is about me, how I live my life and the unique nature of how I build my creations. Holly talked about how powerful that is and how I should be fronting that for my business. She suggested a rebrand to reflect that:
Single Handedly Made
I liked it, I liked it a lot.
Hand-i-Craft as a name was born from conversations me and Pam had six years ago. We settled upon it, adopted the name and Pam designed the logo that I loved. However, as I found out it wasn’t without its difficulties. Firstly, people didn’t know how to pronounce it, we always intended for it to sound ‘hand-eye-craft’ to reflect the single hand and eye co-ordination, but most people called it hand-y-craft. Plus if you search ‘handicraft’ there are literally tens of thousands of companies using that name. I forever found myself correcting people to the point I gave up. Trying to get that name onto the socials was also a right pain, we ended up with every social media handle having a different name. It was a mess, I knew it, but was in denial for ages. The logo was also an issue, folk were forever pointing out that it was a right hand and I use my left hand. I kept having to explain it was a mirror of my left hand, like putting my hand up against it. Again I gave up and let people think what they wanted.
Holly comes up with Single Handedly Made and not only did I like it, it was growing on me literally by the minute. I could see the name having a positive impact, but at this stage I couldn’t visualise how it would look.
Holly checked and all the socials and web domains had singlehandedlymade available as a handle, with the exception of Instagram, but a simple singlehandedly_made sorted that. If you Google ‘Single Handedly Made’, even though it is only two days old, I think you’ll find me at the top of the search! How good is that from a small business perspective.
The range of products needed thinning right down as well. I was trying to be all things for all people from custom table builds to simple candle holders. I was spreading myself too thin and I knew it, I just needed to be told it. Holly offered some suggestions and that set me off on a pathway of research and development, creating prototypes and improving designs.
Finally, she talked about a ‘Workshop of Courage’. She told me I has this incredible space, and I should open it up for people to come and experience it. I’d never even thought of this, but it got my brain ticking.
We then had the opportunity to talk these through with Pam. She spoke openly about how our lives had been impacted over the last seven years and what my woodworking passion meant to me, even though it can present its own set of difficulties. Holly talked about how amazing Pam’s support for me had been and the changes she’s suggested regarding the business. Pam liked them, she liked them a lot.
As Holly and the production team departed, I was in equal measures shattered and uplifted. I could see a positive future for the business for the first time in ages. One stark reality did hit me quite quickly though. A rebrand is a bold step and it’s a one-off opportunity that needs to be done right. I couldn’t do this on my own, I needed help if the rebrand of ‘Single Handedly Made’ was to be a success. . .
