Business and Life by Design
Welcome to the first episode of Many Hats of Business – The Podcast. We are delighted to host Nikki Stock, who has an amazing story about how she came to discover Business and Life by Design. I’ve known Nikki for a while now, and I just think she’s one of the most heart led business owners out there. And I thought it was really important that you met her to hear just how she does things, because I think there’s a lot that we can learn from her.
Watch the full video here > https://youtu.be/5-0Fa07lAds
Listen to the full episode here > https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/many-hats-of-business
More about Nikki Stock
Nikki, lives in Cambridge and in Spain, she has a little bolthole in the hills. she’s I’m a big believer in having a balanced life and it wasn’t always the case. After many years, maybe 10 years in corporate, working for American Express, Bupa, big blue chip companies. She met her partner at the time, and felt she needed to do something a bit different.
She felt she couldn’t go back to working in corporate after the birth of her first child for reasons she tells us in the episode.
It was perhaps the start of her Business and Life by Design journey. Did she love the job enough to make the level of sacrifice needed to make it work with a young baby?
She wanted to have control over her life. She wanted to have more balance.
It didn’t exactly pan out that way and she ended up running a huge company with her partner. She got Banana Boat Sun Care into Tesco, where it still is today. And into Boots – a very impressive year for the business. Which led to her being a multi seven figure business owner. Which was great. Until Banana Boat was sold to another big company, from underneath them. Meaning they didn’t need Nikki and her husband anymore.
She was working on consulting projects but with her husband ended up taking on a mammoth challenge. She thought he must be having an affair when he was first considering the idea because everything was very secretive. Its amazing how we can start to doubt everything when our backs are up against the wall.
In 2010 they sat down, did their numbers, wrote a plan. And decided that within five years they would have the business model sorted. They would have four or five similar businesses all around East Anglia.
Devastatingly, nine months into the the whole thing, Colin wasn’t feeling very well, and he was diagnosed with an incurable cancer. This was quickly followed by Nikki’s mum’s cancer diagnosis. Causing her Dad to break down as a result. Nikki ended up running this company they’d bought out of administration whilst caring for 3 of the dearest people in her life. Shockingly she maintained this for 18 months. The resilience she showed was something else.
Until her body needed her to stop too
She didn’t feel right, her friends realised there was something wrong but naturally everyone thought it may be stress. Luckily a doctor sent her to A&E, amusingly she didn’t realise the ambulance was for her. Such is Nikki’s way of not wanting to inconvenience the busy doctor and was going to get out of his way.
She was rushed into intensive care and sedated. And then taken to Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, which is the leading heart lung hospital and put on ECMO. Which is a complete lung bypass and it’s what they put all the really poorly COVID patients and you saw those people lying prone face down. She was basically dying and in a coma for two weeks. In fact, she did die twice but when they lifted the sedation, everyone was astounded that she wasn’t brain damaged.
When she was in the coma Colin broke down and phoned his sister and he said, it’s all going horribly wrong and we can’t cope. So auntie Pauline had to move into my house and become me for as long as it was going to be necessary. She just came in and became me. This led Nikki to create an amazing product to help every household in the event of a disaster in their family. Whether temporary like Nikki’s situation or permanent.
Sadly 10 weeks after Nikki left hospital Colin died, with Nikki still weak and only weighing 5 stone. She promises another episode to discuss the merits of being married after finding herself financially exposed because they weren’t married.
The show must go on for now
The day after her partner died she had to go to work to tell all the staff the awful news and to declare that she would be the boss they needed her to be. In a business she didn’t love (understatement). Whilst grieving for her husband, recovering herself and being the mother her children needed. All whilst not knowing as much as she’d have liked about the day to day running of the business.
We just got on with it. And I think. When you’re in that situation you can’t think about the horror of it because if you thought about what actually happened, you wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning.
Again Nikki’s resilience showed in spades. She worked 6 days a week for a year to turn it around. Needing to get the turnover to a level where someone would buy the business. She wanted enough to take a year off, a well deserved year off I think we can all agree.
What next for Nikki?
She felt in necessary to keep the family home so bought a marketing franchise, which she did for a couple of years. Having thought a franchise might be a good idea. She realized it wasn’t that great for her because she still felt quite constricted.
She then bought the Women in Business franchise which she loved for the time she did it. The 7 years she did it gave her so many contacts. Also engagement with other women who were of a similar age or a similar mindset, either setting up their business or quite well established. She built up huge groups of women across multiple counties and gave herself a purpose.
This is where her mentoring stemmed from.
She became the Straight Talking Strategist.
Nikki loves getting to the heart of the problem. She cuts through the FOMO we all get in the online world. And makes sure her client’s goal align with what they are planning to do. So often it doesn’t before her sounding board sessions. This is where business and life by design comes in.
She helps those who feel they are stuck in the middle. They aren’t just starting out but they don’t want to be a ‘six/seven figure’ business owner either. Nikki has seen a gap in the market for affordable business retreats for these ladies too so has, of course, filled the gap.
What does Business and Life by Design look like for Nikki?
Nikki limits her hours. She always has Fridays off. Also, she spends her time between here and Spain. She’s very fluid with what she does. Having really gone deep into business and life by design. She now teaches life by design, which is living your life with purpose and intention. And intentionally designing your life rather than living your life by default because you’ve got into that.
People live on autopilot and you’re just doing the same thing. Life by design talks about 4 areas. Work, play, health and love. They’re the four parts of life by design. And then we look at it like a petrol gauge and we gauge where we are with it. And anyone can do it. Even if you think you can’t, you think you’re, I’m so busy with all these X’s, but you sit down and you do your life by design and then you, you make it, you make tweaks and you make adjustments.
So it works with you and you do it with your business as well. You know, there’s, there’s nothing to stop anybody having a really profitable business they love. But without overwhelming stress, so long as they design it correctly.
Rich Beyond Money
Rich Beyond Money is for women who appreciate the value of a balanced life. It is Nikki’s Facebook group where she will organise retreats, strategy days and mastermind days. And some lovely events and networking, but that are going to be accessible and affordable.
You have to know what your enough is
No one else can know this for you, Nikki can’t see how much money you need. There are so many spaces online to meet people who want to play at the same level as you. You don’t need to join the high level groups if you don’t want that level of income. Find your tribe, at the level you want to play at.
Nikki says –
I have had huge success and failure. I have had, I had a couple of things that didn’t quite work out and we have to go through that to learn. I’ve learned that everything has to be done with real thought. It’s very easy to get sucked into shiny object syndrome. It’s very easy to go me, me, me, me, me, you know, and, and, and just get caught up on a wave of things.
There is a book – Will It Make the Boat Go Faster?
And it’s whatever you do, when you’re thinking of buying a course, joining a membership, doing something, a bit of CPD, always ask your question, is it going to make my boat go faster?
Is it going to bring something more to my life? Or my business, or am I just doing it because my friend’s doing it because I can’t tell you how many things I used to do. My friend would say, Oh, should we go and do this course? And I’ll do that. And you know, I did a poll recently of people and it’s like, how many courses have you bought that you’ve never even finished?
Well, it’s a very high percentage, but what was the very sobering thought is. How much money have you spent on those courses? And what would you have done with that money if you hadn’t spent it? Would you have spent it in your business or would you have maybe spent it on yourself and taking yourself off for a lovely spa day or something else?
So it’s just about being a bit more mindful and a bit more intentional. And, then that comes back to the life by design, living your life with, with purpose and planning things. It sounds like it can sound really boring, but it’s not, you end up with more hours in the day, you end up spending less money, you end up creating more money and you end up spending less time doing it.
What is the thing that you wish you’d known earlier or been told earlier?
The value of networking. But I would then caveat that by saying I’ve been to loads of networks and I’ve sat there and I thought, why the hell am I here? I’ve got nothing in common with you. This is two hours of my life. I’m never going to get back again. So I think it’s really important.
We’ve all kind of had that thought in our minds, it’s fine. But some people just keep going because they think it’s going to get better. It’s not, if that is not your vibe, that is not going to get better.
Networking Smarter
You have to seek out those networks or groups or whatever that are going to work best for you. So with my, with my smarter networking, the reason I’ve called it smarter networking is because you’re actually thinking about it before you do it.
It’s specifically for solo entrepreneurs. And it’s specifically for solar entrepreneurs in a certain area. It’s not just networking because nobody wants to stand up and do a 60 second elevator pitch anymore. It’s a hybrid of mastermind and networking. So you’re then sharing your experiences.
They’re the kind of networks that really work. I’m, I’m not saying that when you go and rock up and do your 60 second elevator pitch and you pass business cards around and referrals, they’re great. And they work really well for trades and business to business. But I think for solo entrepreneurs who maybe need a little bit more, You want a network where you can sit down and you can literally say to the 10 or 12, keep it small, 12 people around the table, I’ve had a really, really rough month.
Book recommendation:
Four Hour Work Week – Timothy Ferriss – preview it on Kindle here, no need for the app
It is a bit Marmite, people will either love it or hate it, but it is something Nikki is working towards.
Connect with Nikki Stock – Business and Life by Design
Rich Beyond Money Facebook Group
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