Ceri Gillett reflects on how her experience as a woman and a mother in business, has enabled her to quickly adapt in this crisis and to support other women in business.
I’ve always felt a little out of my depth when it came to talking about business. It’s my hugest passion but someone else always seemed more qualified than me to take the reigns. My business is small & local. For the last five years, we had worked tirelessly to build it up & at the start of 2020, the catering company that my partner James & I built was fully booked until the end of September.
This was going to be our busiest & most profitable year yet and as a result, we’d needed to take some business decisions around growth. We had a new vehicle custom-built, we decided to take on some premises. I’d started a support community for mums and parents in business just like me, I’d recently run a successful crowdfunding campaign and had some training opportunities booked in locally. 2020 was going to be our year.
On the evening of the 15th of March, I sat in an airport hotel as our holiday got cancelled. We returned to the safety of home & bunkered down. We knew the lockdown was coming & we had plenty of late-night chats about how a few weeks cancelled bookings would affect us. We weren’t shocked when they started to roll in but it was the speed that took us by surprise. Within a week our calendar told a different story, we had no bookings till September & no bookings meant no income.
Losing all our work wasn’t something we had planned for and believe me over the years we had planned for most scenarios, a pandemic never came up on our radar and the result was paralysis, neither of us knowing what step to take next. Crawling into bed wasn’t an option as homeschooling took over our days, everyone was rallying to be at the 9 am PE with Joe & I was wondering if we’d lose our home. I did the sums, they made my stomach churn.
I wasn’t going to let the ship sink without a fight
As the government announced support plans, I felt unsure that we would get enough support and a new kind of energy kicked in. I had spent almost every single weekend of my son’s life building this business and the last 12 months working doubly hard on my passion project. The only feeling that stuck around was that I wasn’t going to let the ship sink without a fight.
Being unable to work & needing to earn an income I needed to stop focusing on all the things I couldn’t do & instead find out what I could. I could work with people in my local area. Food was an essential service & food suppliers were something I was already familiar with. I scribbled down the items I would want to receive in a veggie, fruit & salad pack & I ordered them for myself. When they came I was able to work out my pricing & take the first photos of my stock.
I became quickly thankful for all the stuff I taught myself to save money. I’d spent a year building Mubo, my business support group. I had been teaching people like me how to get their businesses online, selling via social media & many other skills that I now found invaluable. The same night I received that first food bundle I sat in my kitchen after my son had gone to bed & designed a logo, set up a website that could sell the stock and organised our social media presence. I posted in various local groups and listened to my phone chime as the first orders came in.
I was now a delivery driver & I was in business.
For the last eight weeks, I have travelled across the counties near my home dropping boxes of fresh produce on the doorsteps of customers who can’t leave their homes. I’ve received cheery waves from their windows, had thankyou cards & even cake left on doorsteps for me & I have seen some of the most beautiful places covered in a quiet that I will never experience again. I’ve spent my days delivering and my evenings offering support to other business owners, many of them women, like me who can’t operate at this time, they’ve navigated furlough scheme, claiming government financial support & working while having their children home full time. It’s been something none of us could have imagined.
The sick feeling in my stomach has gradually left, I’ve been able to pay the bills, avoid getting any financial support and also save some money for the winter when things will no doubt, be tough for us. I’ve felt guilty, I’ve questioned if I am doing the right thing leaving my home and choosing to work but also I’ve found a more unexpected benefit, I feel more confident. I don’t feel as awkward talking about ‘my small business’ or the challenges because I’m proud of what I’ve been able to achieve during the lockdown. I’m proud because I’ve helped countless households and I’m proud because I tried to do something to save our business. I just hope the customers stick with us because I can’t imagine doing anything else now.