Our Story

How It All Began

I have spent most of my working career in sales, starting out as a teenager on a fruit & veg stall, shouting our wares and generally making a lot of noise to get people’s attention. I took business studies at school and had this vision of me travelling from meeting to meeting with my black leatherette briefcase (it was the 80’s). Over the years, I tried everything from door to door canvassing, telesales, to call centre management, but I always had a yearning for being my own boss. The nearest I got to this was being a self-employed sales representative and IT consultant, that was until I met my husband Martin.

Martin wants to ‘Change the World!’. He cares passionately about the environment and animal welfare and he was getting increasingly frustrated that he wasn’t making enough of a difference. He opened my eyes to the issues we were facing in the world and I couldn’t believe I had been living so ignorantly before. I became hungry for more knowledge. and that’s when we decided we had to do something. Shortly after our wedding, we set up our online eco store, selling UK manufactured eco-friendly products to UK customers.

Martin dealt with the day to day running of the business, arranging stock and sending out orders and we attended the occasional eco show to promote our products. In the meantime, I juggled looking after the website with working full time as an IT consultant. It was tough going and the business struggled to break even. Orders were few and far between and Martin hadn’t taken a single penny in wages.

Although we both had many years of experience in sales between us, we quickly realised it was old school. Neither of us had experience in digital marketing and it was clear that having a website alone was not enough.

How It All Began

The Next Step....

Even though there were no ‘funds in the pot’ we decided to invest in training and started to research the best platforms to concentrate on. Google Ads was an obvious choice as people searching on Google were already in the buying phase. However, when it came to social media, we realised there were so many platforms to choose from and being able to keep up to date with them all would be impossible, meaning our efforts would not be so effective. We finally decided to concentrate on Facebook as it reached the largest audience, we were comfortable using it and it was where our audience was hanging out.

Next came the search for a great trainer. Again, there was an abundance of training available, although many of them were offering ‘latest hacks’ and ‘get rich quick’ schemes which didn’t sit comfortably with our personal ethics. We wanted solutions that were ethical and would still be relevant years later.

Once we found the right trainer, then came months of learning, something we are still doing every day, as things change so fast in the digital world. We put our training into practise and started to gain more customers and a good following on social media. Then one day Martin was catching up with an old school friend who was struggling with this Google Ad campaigns and he suggested we take a look to see if we could give him any pointers.

Fresh out of training, my head was buzzing with knowledge and before I knew it, I had created a 4-page report outlining why the campaigns were not very effective and recommendations for improvement.

What is really saddening is this Ad agency were charging a high monthly fee and supposedly looking after these campaigns and yet they were doing a half-hearted job?

My heart sank when I thought of all the ethical businesses and organisation out there that put their trust in these agencies, the so-called ‘experts’ and they were not getting the best service available.

It was at that point, that I decided to use my analytical experience, natural flare for creativity and new-found digital marketing knowledge to support other ethical businesses and organisations to get the best possible return on their investment.

Since then we have helped a variety of clients such as, The Born Free Foundation, Sustainability Architects, children’s charities and even Business Coaches (ethical ones of course) and will plan to continue to do so way into the future.

Living The Dream

We have a real passion for animal welfare and the environment and although we knew we could make a real difference in the world by supporting our clients, we also dreamed of having a more ‘hands-on’ approach in our personal life. Martin had visited the beautiful Greek island of Kefalonia before we met to spend two seasons working with the local loggerhead turtle project, tagging the females when they came up to nest and monitoring the hatchlings.

When I visited the island on our honeymoon in 2012, I fell in love with it instantly. If we moved here we could seriously reduce our impact on the environment with a much simpler life and help with the local animal charities in our spare time.

Our dream came true in 2016. We are now so lucky to live above the very beach that Martin used to patrol when working with the turtle conservation team. It is the main nesting beach on the island and has approximately 100 nests every year!

Now we spend our spare time making furniture out of palettes, growing our own fruit and vegetables and taking care of 34 rescued cats.

Yes, you heard it right! We definitely have a ‘hands on’ approach now. As we started to help to feed the stray cats in the winter, we would receive calls about abandoned kittens and injured cats. We would care for them, hand-rearing when necessary and once they were fit and well, they stayed with us.

I feel we really are ‘Living The Dream’ with a business that we love and getting to make a positive impact on the world both at work and in our personal life.

Living The Dream

Now we spend our spare time making furniture out of palettes, growing our own fruit and vegetables and taking care of 34 rescued cats.

I feel we really are ‘Living The Dream’ with a business that we love and getting to make a positive impact on the world both at work and in our personal life.