Gahhh. Feel slightly fraudulent writing about Colchester Women in Business, I still feel so new here, what with all the lockdowns and tier this and that I haven't really achieved much of what I had planned, but I guess, Colchester is now the home of VY and I am a woman so I definitely meet the criteria.
After 12 years in business, various name changes along the way, crazy business plans and some serious wake up calls back to reality, it is a shame that we are now so focussed on the last 18 months and the dreaded 'C' word.
At the end of 2019, (very pre-pandemic) I made the decision to completely restructure VY, I didn't feel like a business woman but I did know that the business was now running me and I was becoming increasingly more unhappy.
You just assume, that a measure of success is your business getting bigger, employing more people and increasing your turnover, but the truth was, it was a strain and I felt like I was failing. The demands were increasing and we were becoming more and more robotic, we were looking at big bits of kit to eliminate the human elements of our hand made production line and we found ourselves measuring sprinkles to ensure every cake was identical. Ahhh. This was a 'wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat' horror movie moment.
I didn't start VY to create a soulless production line, with machines creating carbon copy cakes. So I put a stop to it all. Just like that (actually not just like that, there were lots of tears and tantrums and grown up business meetings first).
I wanted to take VY back to where it all began, where one cake was loved and nurtured and where it didn't matter how many sprinkles went on, as long as it looked perfect!
We crossed the T's and dotted the i's and managed 4 weeks of our new 'restructure' and boom, hello pandemic, 8 months later we arrived in Colchester. 2020 was such a strange year, I worked alone and kept the wheels in motion, albeit in a brand new capacity, EVERYTHING got posted!
Only now, after 10 months of being in Colchester, and 8 months of VY in Red Lion Yard am I feeling a little more in control and finally stretching our cakey, bakey, business girl wings.
I would describe myself as Queen of holding it altogether, total control freak, feel safer if I have a grip on it all, from cleaning toilets to managing teams with a bit of baking in between.
I skipped the chapter about what makes a good business women, I lead with my heart and fly by the seat of my apron.
You can cast a vote to influence nominations here
K x
