The Straw That Broke The Camel’s Back
Earlier this week we we speaking on a webinar and sharing our story and at the same time teaching the importance of storytelling (we’ll give you some tips later on in this post).
We talked about ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back‘ for us and no doubt as you read this blog you will be able to identify with it and know that you are fast approaching the straw that broke the camel’s back or maybe you have even reached it now!
If you don’t know the story here it is ….
The Straw That Broke The Camel’s Back
An Arabian anecdote told of a camel whose owner loaded the beast of burden with as much straw as possible. Not satisfied with the staggering load he had put on the camel, the owner added just one last piece of straw. Even that one wisp was too much, and the animal collapsed with a broken back, leaving the owner with no way to take his goods to the market.
We’re sure you will agree that there are moments in your life when you’ve said “enough is enough” but didn’t do anything about it. Those “the straw that broke the camel’s back” moments
If you don’t know our story we’ll tell you the straw that broke the camel’s back for us …
We are accountants and management consultants by profession and had been working with small business clients for the best part of 25 plus years
We did actually enjoy our job but there was one big problem
The problem was that we were tied to the UK and always at the beck and call of our clients and trying to get time away to enjoy our love of travel and in particular our love of skiing was becoming more and more difficult
We put up with it because we got a very good income from our business and we actually felt we were between a rock and a hard place having to finance our property portfolio pension pot that had become something of a millstone following the crash of 2008 ….
Anyway, long story short the straw that broke the camel’s back for us was when one of our clients announced they wanted a computer system project that had been on the back burner bought forward to January
Don’t get us wrong it was a great project but the problem was the timing.
We had booked a two week skiing holiday in France (we have a home in the mountains that we built because we wanted to spent our down time there) Christmas and New Year.
We were so looking forward to it …
But being that we were business professionals we would not let down our client so we cancelled our holiday.
But it was a moment of decision – the straw that broke the camel’s back for us.
Of course there had been other events leading up to it but that day we got the news we were sat in a traffic jam going home … it was pouring with rain ….
And we said to each other “this has to stop – we can’t go on like this!”
It was a moment of decision in that moment that we had to find another way to generate our income …. one that we would be in control of and be able to fulfill our passion for travel and allow us to deal with our pension problem and the matter of our retirement no so many years away now (we’re 59 and 61 as we write this)
Long story short we had been investigating online marketing education for our clients as far back as 2009 and now realised that we could transfer our business skills online and have the best of both worlds.
We could provide online business education to businesses and individuals as well as show people how to start a business (our professional speciality) The only difference is it would be online rather than tied to clients the UK – so a local global business as we like to say
If you’re reading this we’re sure that you’ve been there too
Which is why you’re researching and looking for a way out
And found yourself here
We can tell you five years on it was the best decision we ever made…
And it could be the best decision you ever made
PS
We promised to give you the storytelling training that we spoke about on our webinar
If you have ever heard the expression “stories sell, facts tell” then you will know its something that successful entrepreneurs have built their business on.
Our story of the straw that broke the camel’s back was told as a story just to show you how it works
We told you what it was like, what happened and what it’s like now
We’ve put together a cheat sheet that you can follow
