Learning to let go

I left my job at a well-known Insurance company to fulfil a dream I’d always had of starting my own company. I think I fancied myself as a future serial entrepreneur, viewing this as the first step to building an empire. My friend Anne-Marie had been working for the largest stationery mail order supplier in the country and had been itching to leave and set up her own operation. So, we launched Office Heaven in the summer of 2000, offering small batches of office products at low prices.

We exceeded our revenue targets in the first year, enabling us to take on staff and move to dedicated office premises in the heart of Nottingham. Then, in September 2002, I met Lionel at a social event. He was a successful property lawyer and, as the cliché goes, I knew he was the one for me! We were married within a year and as circumstances changed so did my priorities. The dream I’d once had of being a high-flying businesswoman with several companies to my name just wasn’t what I wanted anymore.

Anne-Marie agreed to buy my 50 per cent stake, but it was hard for me to let go, even though I had made the decision to exit. I kept popping back into the office, which in hindsight stopped me moving on, not to mention being destructive to the team left running the business. I guess it was my first baby, so it was hard seeing it go off and have a life without me! But once you’ve decided to sell, you must let go and stop caring. And now I have a full time job that keeps me occupied – raising our twins Josh and Evan!

‘Nurture talent ready to take over’
Name: Simon Goldberg, 39
Profile: Founder of IT support company Red Route Communications, which he sold to his management team in 2004 for £4 million.

I started Red Route with two friends, Tim Lennox and Geoff Williamson, who I’d known since studying electronics and electrical engineering at university. We’d had various jobs in the IT services sector since then and decided we would form our own company.

We knew we could offer small businesses better customer service and more cost-effective IT support than the big boys we’d been working for. Instead of an annonymous helpline, our customers could call us on our mobiles if they needed help. We ended up with more clients on our books than the three of us could realistically service, which is when we brought on more staff, including two former colleagues, Phil Jordan and Steve McNeil.

They were an outstanding addition to the team, working as hard as the three of us who’d founded the company! Soon, they were taking on more responsibility and we trained them up to handle some of the most complex jobs and important clients. We began to see these two as natural heirs to the business. Tim, Geoff and I had envisaged selling the company to a larger player in the market, but in the end Phil and Steve bought us out. Helping them develop their skills had inadvertently been a case of training our successors.