Who are we? – A group of like-minded people who decided that we needed to ‘get a life’ rather than just ‘making a living’…
Nicola Hall BSYA (Ad. Herb)
Our Herbal and Craft correspondent.
Gardner, herbalist and enthusiastic exponent of natural living! Nicola spends her time in her beloved garden and greenhouse, growing wheatgrass and herbs for the health of the family. She has a Diploma in Advanced Herbalism, and is also a qualified Phytotherapist with the A.Vogel Institute.
Nicola is also an artist, a graphic designer, and a qualified life coach – and her goal in life is to find enough hours in the day to fit in the many projects she has in hand! (To find out more, see: ‘The View from Snug Cottage’
Carolyn van Outersterp
Our Home and Lifestyle correspondent.
Having originally trained as a fashion designer, Carolyn has used her talents in areas as diverse as fireplace design, and the creation of an award-winning restaurant in the West End of London.A mother of four, she spends most of her time juggling the demands of a busy home life, with Jollydays the new lifestyle adventure on which she has embarked with husband, Christian.
Stephen Hall BSc (Hons.)
Our Freedom Correspondent.
Stephen is an entrepreneur with twenty five years experience of being involved in the start-up and management of businesses with multi-million pound turnovers.
His passion is personal development and, after graduating from Durham University with a degree in psychology, he also studied Gestalt psychology at the Esalen Institute in California. He has undertaken numerous trainings with teachers including Andrew Harvey, Dr. David Hawkins and Dr. Alberto Villoldo. A highlight was working with shamanic practitioners in both the Andes and the Amazon basin of South America.
…How did it happen?
Well, not easily – or voluntarily. It all began when the business we had started together in 1999 (and which had won numerous awards, including a coveted Prince of Wales medal from HRH) came crashing down in 2007.
In mid-May of that year we all decided that, for the sake of our sanity, as well as our health (Stephen had by that time had a heart attack brought on by the stress), we had to give up the one-sided battle to keep our business afloat. It was a devastating blow. – And not only to our egos, as we suddenly went from being highly-paid company directors to having no money at all. Our incomes had literally stopped overnight. Worse than that, we had all gone heavily into debt to support the business in the hope that we could turn it around.
This was when the ‘miracles’ started to happen. (Well, we prefer to think of them as miracles – other people might call them coincidences or just plain good luck). Stephen & Nicola managed to sell their apartment at the top of the market, and three weeks before the credit crunch began. Carolyn and her husband, Christian, managed to scrape together enough seed capital to start their new venture, Jollydays www.jollydaysluxurycamping.co.uk
It also opened our eyes to opportunities that we hadn’t seen before. Suddenly we found that we had talents and skills that we could use to make a living. Nicola had been a senior art director working in advertising in London before she met Stephen, and now started to pick up some graphic design work. She had also trained as a life-coach, and suddenly clients began to appear, without her even looking for them. Stephen meanwhile put his business skills – and the information he had gathered in their long struggle to become free of debt – to use to help others to also become debt-free.
We all learned to live on less – a lot less. And we also learned that if we were going to survive we had to be nifty, as well as thrifty.
During one of our darker days, a close friend said that opportunities were like trains – there was always one pulling into the station. We didn’t believe him at the time, but he was right! – So if any of you out there are now going through the pain of forced downshifting or downsizing – we feel for you. We’ve been there ourselves, and we know what it’s like. For us there was light at the end of the tunnel – and we are in no way special or unique – so there can be for you too. Keep the faith!