Nickie Gott

Name:

Nickie Gott

Business:

She's Gott It Ltd.

Web site:

www.shesgottit.com

Years in business:

6

Number of businesses:

1

Entrepreneurs' Forum member

At school I’d always been told I wasn’t an achiever, and wouldn’t actually achieve anything much. I began to believe that more and more and just sort of got by with an outer confidence. Inside though I was really down and doubted that anyone was going to believe that I could do something; that I was intelligent.

I did pretty badly at school and failed every GCSE I sat. When I left I didn’t have much else apart from the gift of the gab. I just went through a series of jobs that paid but I didn’t feel that I was enjoying anything. I just did what I had to do to get by.

By the age of 30 I really felt as though I’d hit rock bottom in my career. I had been made redundant during my first pregnancy and my second child was very ill and we’d practically spent the first four years of his life in and out of hospital. I was also heavily overweight so my self confidence was zero. I was getting up in the morning thinking, what’s the point?

I was sinking deeper and deeper when one day I was sat on the bottom step at home, very tearful and very down. I’m not sure where it came from but I just thought, I’ve got to get myself out of this and I gave myself a huge kick up the backside.

I thought if I don’t pick myself up now I’m just going to go further and further downhill. I needed to decide what I was going to do and who I wanted to be. At that stage I was 30 years old, didn’t have a career path or any qualifications. I felt completely like I had nothing to offer to an employer as I had no qualifications, I’d even been told that I was a non achiever at school. I needed a plan.

I put myself on a development course called Business Development Coaching. It actually trained people to coach so that their students could perform better in business but I thought it’s really me who needed to do that so I ended up coaching myself.

I wrote down five goals that I wanted to achieve within ten years. Some of them were quite materialistic but they were things that I really wanted to do and made me tick such as having two holidays a year and a nice car. I wanted to lose seven stone in weight as well. But I also really wanted to set up a business on my own and ultimately feel proud of myself because that was something that I’d never been able to do.

One day I was walking with my daughter through a local playground. It was pretty run down and she said to me, ‘Mum, this place is awful, why has nobody put any swings in here?’ I felt as though I could do something to help so I started fundraising and organising to get the money to install some swings.

I’d made loads of connections in the local authorities, business community and communities and I’d really enjoyed the organising process so I started doing volunteering and casual work in events until I got a permanent post.

The job came to me naturally, I didn’t have to be trained or shown what to do. I felt as though I was good at what I did but I still needed somebody else to recognise that despite the fact that I had nothing on paper, no qualifications, I was worthwhile.

I took the big step of leaving an employer and setting up on my own. I knew that the contacts I’d made whilst doing my fundraising would stay with me because I’d built up such a strong working relationship with them and they shared my passion for the delivery of events. They also knew that once I got my teeth into something, I wouldn’t let go of it and they trusted me to do a good job.

Despite that, it was incredibly nerve-wracking to start up an event management business by myself. I had half of our garage carpeted and just worked from there for the first fourteen months on a family computer. My mum sat at the kitchen table doing the accounts and then my sister sat on the other side helping me out before we eventually moved into an office when things started to pick up.

I went to Business Link for support and they helped me to put in place business plans and organise grants to buy computer equipment and stationary. Even though I was impulsive and passionate about what I was doing, I still needed somebody to help me get the structure in place.

The business had really started to grow; I hadn’t expected it to be quite as successful as quickly as it was and I was playing catch up all the time. In the beginning I was frustrated at not having certain things in place such as websites, brochures and purchase order systems. When an invoice came in, we logged it but I needed more formal processes in place to be able to grow.

In order for the company to maintain growth we needed to have strong foundations and that was probably the hardest thing I had to face. I always go with gut instinct but really needed a strong foundation to build on. I needed to make sure I had an operations manager to ensure that everything ran smoothly.

With a lot of hard work and determination, all of a sudden I had a business which is just fantastic. What’s great is that I absolutely love doing it and now nothing will get in my way, I want to do this for a living. I had those five goals driving me and even though I said I wanted to achieve them all in ten years, I actually did it in five. I no longer feel the need for other people to recognise that I’m doing a good job, I feel proud enough of myself to be able to tell that myself. That has only happened to me recently as previously not having the qualifications made me doubt myself, but our recent successes have given me the inner confidence I needed.

The biggest mistakes I’ve made have probably been in recruitment. It was a completely new thing for me being a Managing Director of a company. Sometimes I’d hire somebody who I was really enthusiastic about but it just didn’t work out and I’ve been let down on a couple of occasions expecting loyalty but not getting it. But I learn every single day in this job and I’ve tried to bring people in who I feel share a passion for the business, which is not always easy to spot.

I never hire somebody after one interview, I try to find out what makes them tick and where their passions lie. I’ve now got a really great team who are a fantastic bunch of people. When they ring you up in the evening to tell you they’ve spotted something in the paper that they think you should see, you know you’ve got the right team.

I like treat people the way that I would like to be treated which creates a good office environment. I support my employees and recognise what they’ve done and reward them accordingly. But in the early days I think I was a little too soft on saying something wasn’t right and I wasn’t happy. I used to think I couldn’t say that but now I do. You need to speak up if someone’s done a poor job because they’re probably waiting for you to say something anyway and if you don’t they may be thinking, well, what sort of control has she got?

Sometimes self-doubt does start to creep back in. Recently we went for a huge national contract even though up until then we’d focused regionally . I was very nervous and came out of the presentation feeling that I’d not done all that well. I kept saying to my colleagues there’ll be a ‘Dear John’ in the post soon enough, even though they had a good feeling about it and kept telling me I was wrong.

Then I got a phone call saying that we’d got the contract. He started to go through what would happen, the legalities and so on but by that point I was in on the floor in floods of tears. He stopped and said, ‘Do you want me to ring you back tomorrow?’ followed by ‘Go and ring your mum.’ He said he’d really enjoyed the conversation and knew he’d made the right decision in picking us because it was lovely to hear someone who wants something so much. He said he knew he’d got the right person.

It might be easy to get experience; it’s not easy to get passion about something. But I knew we could do the event so well and wanted it so badly that that ended up winning it for us, even though it was the first time we’d dipped our toes out of the region. I know that we’ll win some, lose some, but it’s given me the encouragement to push the boundaries out more often.

Recently my colleagues put me forward for North East Woman Entrepreneur of the Year. They told me I stood a good chance of winning it and was told to prepare a speech in advance but didn’t because I thought, I don’t win these things. When my name was announced I was stuck to my chair, absolutely gobsmacked. That award was probably the biggest pat on the back, going back to being bullied at school and hitting rock bottom, to feeling hugely proud of myself and what I had achieved.

I began to get involved in enterprise education delivery in schools. I think I did badly at school because I didn’t understand the relevance of what I was doing to the big wide world. But now I try to motivate people because if I can do it, absolutely anybody can. You talk to a lot of people about that and some sort of dismiss you and think, ‘Yeah yeah, whatever’. But it’s up to the individual to make it happen. You can go for all the advice and support in the world but unless you believe it and are willing to take the ups and downs which comes with being an entrepreneur, it won’t.

You’ve got to think, as I did, right, I’m going to do this and just go for it, and make sure the people around you share that belief because they’re the ones who will pick you up if things get hard and remind you of why you’re doing it in the first place. If you’re passionate and determined to do something well, trust me, you’ll feel so proud of yourself once you’ve done it.

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