How would you feel if you had been made redundant twice and gone to 60 job interviews without any success at all? Most people would quit I think.
This is exactly what happened to one 35 year old woman in Aberdeen, Scotland, who thought her only option might be to resign herself to going to sign on at the local job centre, week in and week out, with no hope of ever landing another job.
However, this particular woman wasn’t ready to give up just yet, and instead of looking for someone else to give her a job she decided to start a business centred around one of her passions.
As we all know, most businesses do fail pretty quickly, which means it wouldn’t have been any surprise to see this woman from Scotland back down the local job centre within a few months.
Not so… and in fact, she went on to start a business that now makes a cool £84,000 a year. Even better, she has 5 people working directly under her. She went from “looking for a boss” to “I am a boss” in only a short amount of time.
It just goes to show you the power of becoming self employed and taking control of your own financial situation if you ask me.
What is this business anyway? Well, she lives in Aberdeen and what is the one thing that almost everyone in that part of Scotland likes more than anything else…Cheese Toasties of course, preferably mixed with haggis to give it a proper Scottish flavour.
This was all made possible by a generous loan from the government funded Start Up Loans Company.
Usually the government are useless when it comes to this type of thing in my opinion, but on this occasion they seem to have got it right.
With the Start Up Loans Company you can get a loan up to £25,000 to start a business for a fixed interest rate of 6%. Not bad if you ask me, and a lot better than what some independent loan companies would offer you.
Back to the story and this Cheese Toastie shop owner from Aberdeen has just been chosen as a spokesperson for SULCo (Start Up Loans Company) who want to use her story as motivation for other wannabe British business owners.
SULCo are looking to provide self employed people in the UK with 50,000 loans over the coming year. They have already lent £345 million to startups, so we are going to be witnessing even more good things over there.
I think this story can serve as inspiration to anyone who is going through a tough time and considering retiring to the local job centre.
Don’t give up just yet. No matter if you want to start a business, become a freelancer or contractor, or simply offer your services in the gig economy…you can do it.
