Leaving The Rat Race by:David Chapman
With nearly 50 years IT experience between them
, you'd think the Holden's would be naturals at this, but there is so much more to running an Activ Web Design franchise than just building websites.
John and Cecilia Holden In her previous life, Cecilia worked in the city and was Global Head of Compliance Technology for a large US Investment bank. She really didn't enjoy it. She disliked the culture - everything was always about money; people didn't matter - and most of all she disliked the travelling and work life balance. Most of her staff were US based, so when she wasn't doing the 3 hour plus daily commute to London, she was back and forth to New York. Home was just somewhere to spend the weekends, hopefully see a bit of husband John, and also play golf. Her 13 million annual budget was just monopoly money on an excel spreadsheet, as she never actually saw it being spent. Seeing where 499 sits in the budget of her new clients, and being able to make that money make a real difference to a client is a huge buzz for Cecilia and she is far more respectful spending her clients' money than ever she was managing a huge corporate budget.
John moved to the UK from his native Ireland in the 1980s when the software firm he worked for expanded and re-located. He worked his way up through the ranks from programmer to Bespoke Projects Manager, and had clients all over the country. When the firm was bought out in 2001, John was made redundant, and opted for a complete career change. Also a very keen golfer, John decided to combine his hobby with his desire to work from home and started his own company printing personalised golf balls. He enrolled on several courses at the local university to learn the skills needed to manage your own business, taught himself Dreamweaver and built a website, converted the garage into a workshop and off he went. The first few years were quite successful, with his products featuring on ITV's This Morning. His clients included Bruce Forsythe and he even printed balls with James Nesbitt's face on for him to use in the celebrity Ryder Cup.
Expensive technological advancements made it harder and harder for John to compete with the big companies, so there came a point when both he and Cecilia were looking for a new challenge at about the same time.
They thought a franchise was the safest bet and after meeting the team at head office it ticked all the right boxes Activ Web Design was that new challenge.
"We're known by our golfing friends as Team Holden because we work so well together. John does the thinking, and I do the hitting. It was difficult at first establishing a whole new type of relationship. It was like moving in together all over again! We've spent more time together in the 9 months we've been with Activ than we have for the whole of the rest of our 16 year marriage. We've learned a lot together, and while we are still both learning about the marketing side of our business, we love the rest of it. Head Office support is great, and so far we have 17 satisfied customers, with 8 more under construction, and several more "thinking about it". Networking in our local area has helped and we are now starting to get referrals from our happy customers."
"We love what we do. We love the work-life balance. I'm vice captain at our golf club, and secretary of the county golf partnership, so I feel no guilt whatsoever over my favourite type of day: I get up at 5am & build half a website, then go to a network meeting, 6 hours on the golf course, home for a spot of dinner, then build the other half, and finally do the admin with a glass of wine in my hand. We work harder than ever, but we do at times that suit us, and we back each other up. John fields my calls if I'm playing golf, and I look after his customers while he's on the golf course."
"So where do we see ourselves going? Absolutely nowhere! We love what we do and we aim one day in the not too distant future to be building 10 websites a month each (yes, 20 between us). So we need to get more streamlined, get better at admin, sales and marketing and stop rebuilding pages we've already built coz we had a better idea."
To read more visit
http://www.totalfranchise.co.uk/Profile/ActivWebDesign About the author
David Chapman is an Internet Marketing Manager for
http://www.totalfranchise.co.uk
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