Liz’s Cupcake Emporium

In the third of my interviews with inspiring women I am talking with Liz who has just opened her own Cupcake Cafe in Derry, where she sells her amazing cupcakes and also does garment alterations. Liz and I met recently at a Women Into Business seminar when we were paired together to find out a bit about each other and something that you wouldn’t know to look at us!

I discovered not only that Liz had a 32 year old daughter but that she had also lived in Mayo and also Paris and a few other little snippets of info I gleaned that day lead me to think she had an amazing story of her own journey into self employment. Here are a few more of those little snippets…

So Liz, if I asked where your journey began that brought you here to your very own cupcake cafe where would you begin?

Well I had a car accident 10 years ago when I was living in Mayo

Can I ask how come you were living in Mayo?

Yes I had an affliction of the heart! My partner who I had met while living in London and I had come back to where his family were originally from. Anyhow I had this car accident…actually I need to go back further than that.

I had been a single parent since 1980 when my daughter was born – I was only nineteen, eighteen when I was pregnant and to be honest I didn’t pass many exams. I was besotted with this guy at the time and that seemed to be what I was putting all my attention on.

It was a difficult time for me and my family who weren’t particularly supportive to me and my young child. Our family had it’s own difficulties – we probably were quite rich in that we lived in the ‘big house on the hill’ and had a car but I don’t think any of us ever felt rich. Looking back now I realise in many ways we were. What I do remember is that we were all immersed in and had a passion for wood – my dad was a timber merchant and had a saw mill which is still on his land even today and we were always talking about types of wood etc.

Anyhow later when my daughter went to school, I went back to school too. I knew I wanted to do something and I felt I wanted to do something that felt close to home – my mother was a cook and although my father was a timber merchant he was a really bad manager! and so I decided to do a degree in Hotel and Tourism management which I did do and got.

After that I went to visit a friend in London and I stayed there and got several good jobs working for example in the British Museum and also the Lido Restaurant. I have very mixed feelings about that time though as my daughter, a teenager by then, decided to come back home and lived with my mother. I do feel I missed out on her teenage years in many ways.

So you met this guy and then you both moved from London to Mayo…

Yes and at the time I had the car accident I was teaching in the Traveller Community and I hadn’t been happy in my relationship for a while. Someone said it was like I was ‘travelling too fast in the wrong direction’!!! Whatever, it did make me stop. I sustained a back injury which I know is never going to be completely right and it took 10 years to sort the legalities of it out but I finally got my compensation.

Up until then I began struggling with my finances and I got the feeling that I was missing out on what my sisters were able to do, like going out at night and just generally being around and involved with the family. Then a couple of years ago my mum got quite ill and I made the decision to move back home. It seemed like a good solution for both her and me and I knew this opportunity was entirely up to me.

Okay so you are back home with your mum and you have some money coming to you from the accident, how did you manage to actually put into place your business idea? I guess what I mean is a lot of us talk about doing things like that but you have actually done it – do you know where you got that strength?

Well I’ve always had an interest in alternative thinking and therapies. I even went to a gestalt therapy session when I was just sixteen – that is especially odd for someone in Northern Ireland!and! I’m still to this day interested in the work of for example Eckhart Tolle and I’ve learned about the integration of body and mind. It is believed that a problem with our back is a signal that our creativity is not able to get out or be expressed and I know that it is very important for me to focus on doing something I really enjoy doing. I really love decorating my cupcakes and designing my own cafe. And I also believe that for instance if you get into difficulty with debt and you can do just one thing – it will move you forward.

But I also know that it is really important to get support. When I first began the cafe, when it was just ready to open I can remember looking around and just crying and thinking I had done the wrong thing. It is very important also for me to be around positive people. I think honestly I had this illusion that when I was back among my own family it would be great and it would be a family business but it hasn’t actually worked out that way.

The most positive support I have got has actually come from my brother in law. I paid him to fit the shop and cafe out and we would get to talking most days he was working and I found him very supportive. He was one of the few people who said I should be really proud of what I had achieved and it was really important to hear that from someone. I do find decision making difficult though.

Well, just looking around the cafe it is hard to imagine that you find it difficult to make decisions!

Well, I know but I still think I do. Success is important to me and chasing positivity is a big aim – with positivity anything is possible. If I can raise my energy levels…I could have that sports car soon!

On a wet and dreary day Liz’s cupcakes with their amazing colours brightened up a little corner, bringing a touch of french style and flair to an otherwise grey street in the city of Derry. Her little cafe even has a view of Lough Foyle and the Peace Bridge in the distance but it was inside that captivated me the most. She has transformed the building she occupies into a brightly coloured business where she can practice that creativity and positivity.

I especially like that she drew back on the strengths that she had and really works with what she has, not carping about what she does or didn’t have. That is positivity and I admire her strength.

And what did she find out about me that you wouldn’t know to look at me? That I like pop music!!! Go figure!

The Points On My Compass

View from inside the mountain centre

I am just back from a weekend of Hills and Mountain Skills training in our local Mourne Mountains.  Two days of walking, ascending, descending, navigating and generally getting our bearings. It was a wind blown awe inspiring trip and I thoroughly enjoyed myself and even seem to have walked out the painful achilles tendonitis that I had developed in both of my heels recently. Probably something to do with stretching out the bigger muscles in my legs – seven hours of walking and ascending to 630 odd metres drew those muscles out and the cobweb lurking around my brain was last seen heading due west at about fifty miles per hour on the first day. Any remaining bits still clinging to my head were despatched more vigorously on day two although at a much lower height as we were putting into practice the navigational skills we had learned the day before.

Evening on the patio of the mountain centre

I will never look at a map in the same way again. That famous NLP term that ‘the map is not the territory’ holds just as true on any real map as those of the maps we make in our minds. I seemed to be constantly getting the scale a bit wrong, thinking that we were always ‘here?’ on the map only to discover that we were much closer to our original point of departure than I thought. I needed to focus on the detail, chunk down a bit in my thinking and move in from the bigger picture.

Translating this….

…into this

A bit like me moving into business start up really. I have the big picture sure, my mission and my overall aim but when I come to explain or voice to people what it is I am going to be doing I come a little unstuck ( just check out my last post to see what I mean) and some of the detail is missing. It’s just so nice to stay in that place with the long view, the big picture – it’s mesmorising…

The view is often worth the climb…

But in order to get up there and to navigate correctly to get where you want to go, you /I need to do some of the small chunk stuff. The instruction on the Hills and Mountain Skills course was so applicable. How it is good to have a strategy, an idea of what to expect to see on the way and probably most importantly what you expect to see when you get there. Also have a point to know if you have gone past your target and how it is often good to stick to your original strategy even if sometimes we automatically assume we have got there because something looks a little like what we imagine it should. Always good to check with some other point of reference.

So, with the help of a fantastic coach I’m getting down to the detail. I’m marking out my own contour lines, drawing the picture if you like of what I expect to see when I am ‘in business’. I’m thinking big, bold and beautiful and I know I’m heading in the right direction because it feels right. Our instructor that weekend said the best navigational skills are using our eyes and ears and for our own journeys in life the best navigational tools are our hearts and all of our senses. And, in the immortal words of that awful song, it’s the climb, that is, it’s the journey that counts and I am thoroughly enjoying mine, taking in as much of the detail as I can. I hope you are enjoying yours.

Pitch Perfect

Okay so I thought I’d give you a laugh. I’m trying to practice making my pitch about my business idea…

 

 

 

 

You can see I have some way to go….