Officially 1 month post-employment.

This weekend it is almost a month since I finished with Pfizer and to be honest it feels pretty good at the moment.  I'm not missing it all!  Far from it!  If someone rang up and offered me my old job back on a higher salary I would probably say "thanks but no thanks".   The last few bits of money from shares and bonus have been trickling in and the on-line saver is looking very healthy.

We have been keeping ourselves pretty busy since the last post, mostly getting Capsaicinoia up and running.  We have actually reached the point where we have opened the shop to family and friends so that they can check it out, try it out and even buy something!  The plan is to keep it open for a couple of weeks before we go up to Scotland, get feedback on what works and what doesn't and make the necessary tweaks and improvements before we launch officially to the Chilli Loving British public in April.

After our last post we went back to the Spring Fair at the NEC http://www.springfair.com/ and bought our first load of stock.  The orders have been coming in thick and fast and we have been furiously trying to get the web-site up and running and so far so good.  We still have lots to do.  My "to do" list fills a sheet of A4.  If you are reading this please check it out and let us know what you think?

http://capsaicinoia.com/

We seem to have found a great accountant http://angelaccounting.co.uk/ who is on our wave length and  is very down to earth and jargon free as well as offering what appears to be a good value service with no hidden fees and expenses.



Not much has changed with regard to the Bed and Breakfast side of things.  The Scotland trip is still on track and we have several businesses lined up to look at.  We'll keep you posted as and when we see them.  We are now heading up to visit with a friend of Mike's from Pfizer for a couple of days.  We head up to the West Coast where we will spend a few days viewing businesses and getting a feel for the area.  We are planing to spend a weekend visiting my friend Jane who manages Inveraray Castle on Loch Fyne. http://www.inveraray-castle.com/ and then head over to get Mum and Dad.  From there back up to the West Coast for more B&B viewings including one belonging to my Mum's cousin.  Couple of days in Lochiniver, couple in Bonar Bridge, one night in Forres and a couple in Aberdeen before heading back down to Edinburgh.  We then have another few days visiting various friends and family before taking Mum and Dad down to my sisters in Harrogate where we are having a bit of a family get-together to celebrate their 55th Wedding Anniversary.

The even bigger deal for me will be that we will be meeting up with Fi in Harrogate.  Our daughter who has been "down under" in Oz for a year and is coming back for a 3 week holiday!  Can't wait to see her.  She arrives back when we are still in Scotland but is going to make her way up to Harrogate to meet up with us there.

So what else is new?

I suppose we should mention that immigration to Barbados is still on the cards and has moved up the ratings recently due to the property prices in the main.  Our attorney out there Dennis Chandler is still beavering away trying to get Citizenship by Descent for Mike and to be honest if that comes through before May we are pretty sure that we would top all our other plans and just go there!  We have seen some properties there that we could buy for cash and still have money left over that include apartments we could rent out for holiday accommodation!  It's rapidly becoming a bit of a "no brainer"but would not work without the Citizenship for us and that is not a straightforward as you might think - another story for another time...

Oh!  We had a great night out for Valentines.  We went to a burlesque night at the Hare and Hounds in Kingsheath.  http://hareandhoundskingsheath.co.uk/A great little venue with some fantastic burlesque performances!

Danny de Milo http://www.dannydemilo.com/
Felicia Noir http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000102109047
and
Twinkel Pink http://www.facebook.com/pages/Twinkel-Pink/149924488372785?ref=ts&sk=wall

All brilliant but my personal favourite was Felicia Noir, gorgeous, sexy, funny and a natural red-head like my own lovely daughter.

I have had to stop my own burlesque classes for the moment.  The big focus was on the next show and I probably won't be around for it.  Besides, there seems to be so much going on at the moment that there is not enough room in my head for burlesque and especially not getting ready for a show which I found took up a lot of time and energy before.  We have put our ballroom on hold for the same reasons.    We can pick it all up again when things begin to settle down and take shape.

My shoulder has also taken a turn for the worse making everything single thing I do very difficult and painful.  It looks like I'm just going to have to get the surgery over with if I am going to be able to live my life to the full in the future and be able to do all the physical tasks involved in running a B&B.  I have an appointment with the GP next week to get the ball rolling with that one.

Bed and Breakfast Update

We are really starting to make progress now with the quest for a Bed and Breakfast.  Since our last post we have actually viewed a couple of businesses for sale in the Midlands almost as a sort of practice run for the real thing when we get up to Scotland.  Stepping inside a going concern was a big step towards making it feel like it is really going to happen and it also convinced us that we could definitely do it!

The first place we looked at was called Black Firs in Marston Green.  http://www.b-firs.co.uk/
It was a fantastic business with a lovely host and we almost fell in love with the first place we saw.  Thankfully, we were soon able to view it rationally in the context of our business plan and remind ourselves that it did not really fit with our criteria on a number of points namely location, budget and customer types.  This was essentially a Bed and Breakfast for business customers using the NEC or doing business in the Birmingham area.  However, it was very encouraging and actually quite exciting to imagine ourselves running a place like it on a day to day basis.  What was even more encouraging was the feedback from the owner who said she could see us running her business or one like it,

We went on to see another business further in to Birmingham and, while it was not the right place for us on a number of levels, again the owners were friendly and helpful and we could see that we had the right attitude and skill mix as a couple to easily run a similar business.   I hope we are not deceiving ourselves as we get so many negative comments from people when we tell them what we are planning to do in terms of what hard work it is with early mornings, physical hard work and being available 24/7.  We think that we have thought though all of these points but we are not afraid of hard work and we don't mind early mornings.  We are sociable and we enjoy entertaining.  We want and possibly need to work for ourselves for the next 10 years as we are certain that we don't want to continue to work as hard as we have been doing for someone else only to be cast aside without a second thought when we are no longer required!

The diary of viewings for the Scotland trip is pretty much full now so the only additional preparation to do for this is to familiarise ourselves with the details of the different business and their own web-sites and Trip Adviser ratings and comments.  We have also developed a template for the financial side of each business that we will view as a way of comparing the expected P&L for each one and looking at that in the context of our own expectations for income and expenditure.

Our house is well and truly for sale now with all the formalities attended to and our first viewing booked for tomorrow!

I think that's about it as far as the B&B is concerned.  The Business Plan is almost written - just a matter of pulling it all together now.

We had another meeting with our DBM consultant and as a result of that conversation, our detailed look at the expected revenues and the current economic environment we have reconsidered our decisions to avoid taking on any loans or finance and may consider as a option for the right business.

Reality Bites

It's been a week or so since our last post and almost 2 weeks since the visa disaster.  The more we think about it the surer we are that we might have had a lucky escape and that something, or even someone, might even be guiding us in the right direction!  I never thought I'd hear myself say something like that and I lurch with discomfort when others describe how they are guided by "The Universe" but it does feel bit like that at the moment.  Mike has always believed, some he lost his mother in his 20's that she has been looking out for him like a sort of guardian angel.  Who knows......
The end of last week for me was pretty dark as reality set in.  Last year we had Christmas and the trip to New York to distract us and then the USA trip to plan.  Suddenly, the enormity and uncertainty of the change we are about to go through, and are currently going through really hit home.  I felt overwhelmed but the number of small things I needed to do to disengage from Pfizer and ended up spending two days in my dressing gown in the the office sorting out my personal stuff from my work stuff and transferring my life from my work computer to my personal one and my work email address to my home one.  I had a long list of accounts from FaceBook and Love Film to my Bank Account and Credit Cards where I needed to change my email address - essentially I was feeling a bit out of control and needed to take it back.
So what have we been doing?  Plan B has been slowly but surely crystallising into a pretty solid plan.  We have decided to go down Route 2 and go straight for the Bed and Breakfast idea in term of buying a going concern.  We decided the Chalet idea was just another avoidance or delaying tactic and that you don't really need to do courses to learn how to mange a budget and profit and loss account or to cook breakfasts and clean rooms.  Work experience still might be useful though.  Mike is still pursuing his Barbadian Citizenship although we are increasingly thinking that the time is not right for a move to Barbados just yet and that leaving Pfizer and starting our own business might be enough to deal with at one time, and a move to the other side of the Atlantic might just be a step too far even for us!
So the new plan is to get the house on the market and start researching and looking for a suitable going concern to purchase.  Scotland is emerging as the front-runner in terms of location at the moment.  We can't do anything until May/June when Mike gets his money so we have a few months to get the various wheels in motion.
In the background I've been selling stuff on EBay as a start on clearing the house ready to sell and I've been writing a little bit of my novel everyday using the Snow Flake Method by Randy Ingermanson which is really working for me at the moment and the story and characters feel as though they are coming together.  http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php
I have bought the domain name for my on-line retail business and started to try and set-up a web page but am beginning to think I'm going to need some help with this one.  I am a great believer ever in the concept that anyone can do anything if they take the time and put their mind to it but I am struggling with this one.
Mike has been given four two hour sessions with his group of teenage boys and has been working on what he is going to do with them.  Today he has gone of for his CRB check in relation to that.

On Monday we drove down to Pfizer Head Office at Walton Oaks in Surrey to meet with an independent financial adviser from Origen http://www.origenfs.co.uk/index.html as part of our redundancy package.    We had the option of doing it over the phone but because both of us are affected and it felt like a tough conversation to have on the phone, opted for the face to face meeting.  When we were driving down to Surrey and around the M25 we did ask ourselves whether it was going to be worth but we can honestly say it was.  Nice young bloke with some really good ideas that we would never have thought of!  For example,  he suggested that if our goal is to raise enough cash to buy the best Bed and Breakfast we can then it might not be the best idea for Mike to pay his redundancy into his pension and that even if he is taxed on 40% we will still get more tax now if he doesn't do it.  He also persuaded Mike that it is cost-effective to pay and accountant to do your tax returns as they will almost always save you more than you pay them.  It was weird and uncomfortable being in Walton Oaks.  Things are carrying on as if nothing has happened and for everyone else I suppose it hasn't.  People were going about their business apparently oblivious to the turmoil we are going through.  There was also an irrational sense that we were disgraced in some way and the few people we did meet seemed awkward and embarrassed when they realised why we were there.  That said, it was good in some ways to have a final visit there and to say our own goodbyes in our own way........

Another useful meeting we had this week was with a DBM Consultant, again as part of the redundancy package.  DBM are an outplacement support organisation who have been doing well recently.  It must be odd to measure your success through the misfortune of others.  http://www.dbm.com/   Again, a very useful meeting which was worth the drive into Birmingham City Centre on a cold and frosty day.  We took some time to explore the market, a thing we have never really done before despite having toured markets all over the world from France to Vietnam.  We resolved as part of our new cost-saving strategy to buy as much of our fruit, veg meat and fish as we can form there over the coming weeks.
The main things to come out of the DBM meeting for me were the realisation that we are going through a massive change curve and that it is normal to have extremes of emotion on an almost daily basis, and the need to generate a robust business plan for the Bed and Breakfast sooner rather than later.  That will be our number one priority for next week.

We have also been to visit a small quest house and lovely little event venue 5 minutes from home called The Limes http://www.limescountrylodge.co.uk/  We are going to explore the possibility of doing some work experience there although it is not quite the same as our own concept.  The staff are friendly and helpful and the owner has built it up from scratch into something quite special.  The first step will be to spend a day shadowing the House Keeper in terms of the process and procedures associated with cleaning the bedrooms - how difficult and complicated can that? be I hear you say......well we'll let you know.......

We have also been planning our trip to Scotland in March.  We are going to stay for a couple of days at a Bed and Breakfast that we know about through the family and that us currently on the market and do some wider research on the West Coast of Scotland as a potential location, including identifying and viewing a few other businesses.  It is also an opportunity to visit some of the places I lived in as a child with Mike, but also to take Mum and Dad back to them too, on a sort of nostalgic Scottish road trip.  We also have a few friends in Scotland that we are going to try and catch up with while we have the time.

Life has been getting back to normal in other ways.  I have resumed my Burlesque classes this year at the MAC in Edgbaston  http://www.macarts.co.uk/, and have graduated to the intermediate group where we have begun already to rehearse for a show in April. OMG! What was I thinking!  Seriously it is great fun.  Lovely women and Dixy Derriere is a great teacher.  http://www.bijouxburlesque.co.uk/home

Mike and I have also resumed our ballroom classes at the Mosley Dance Centre.  Again, great fun and great teachers. ....http://www.moseleydancecentre.com/.... we are currently working on the waltz and the quick step for the second time having failed miserably on our first attempt to complete the Friday might beginners class.

And finally, in the context of saving money I have decided to move from our local expensive designer opticians to SpecSavers for my glasses and contact lenses so spent several hours yesterday having eye-tests and choosing some new glasses and making an appointment for new contact lenses - I reckon I am going to save us a fortune!!!!!!
http://www.specsavers.co.uk/?gclid=CLLwh4T-260CFUIMfAodvxSLnw&sissr=1

Plan B

It's been almost a week since the end of Plan A and now that we have got our heads together again and "licked our wounds" we are ready to move on to what has now become Plan B in the Redundancy Road Trip.  We are going to continue the blog and still call it Redundancy Road Trippers as, in a way, it is our Road Trip through and beyond a double-redundancy situtation.
After a weekend spent relaxing with the kids, we have spent much of the week working up Plan B.  We started by working throuhg some articles in a recent edition of the Oprah magazine.  Those of you who know Mike will know that she is his guru and that he is more likley to do something if Oprah endorses it!  There are things like treating Athlete's Foot with cider vinegar that I have been telling him for years but he took no notice until he read it in Oprah and thus waited several years before he successfully got rid of a troublesome case of the fungal infection.  http://www.oprah.com/omagazine.html  
The November 2011 issue Volume 12, Number 11 contained a series of articles under the banner "Find Your True Calling - A guide to discovering who you're mean't to be.  Step 1 was how to find your Passions, Step 2 Taking Stock of Your Strengths, Step 3 Tapping into your Motivation and Step 4 GO!
The whole process took us back again to an idea we had a few years ago when we considered getting out of the corporate world, that encapsulates all of our joint passions and interests - running a Bed and Breakfast or small Guest House. 
So this is where we are headed for the moment anyway!
This could go in one of two directions at the moment;
Route 1 involves trying to get a job running a chalet in a ski resort next season from November to March, as a means of dipping a toe in the water before making a full commitment.  We would spent the time between May and November getting some relevant work experience either paid or voluntary and possibly undertaking some courses such as catering, book-keeping and property maintainence. 
Route 2, which is more risky and scary, would be jumping in with both feet and buying a going concern as soom as we get our money and can sell our house.  There are a few interesting opportunities that have presented themselves to us in this repsect but we'll keep you updated on that one when we know more........
In the background we have a few ideas to supplement our income and keep ourselves stimulated and busy;
Mike has only today been given the opportunity to work, on a voluntary basis, with some underperforming teenagers at his old school as a mentor come motivater.
I am planning to do a bit of buying and selling on EBay and possibly create an on-line business but again more of that in the future...........nudge nudge wink wink....
I have even considered trying to write a novel - they say everyone has one in them and there seems like no better time to have a dabble in that direction.....
SO, USA we are over you and mooooving on!  Your loss US Economy and Tourist Industry......