Time for a change
After 8 years of running a small chalet business, today marks a big change.
8 years ago my wife Heather and I took a big plunge. We were looking for a new challenge after a few years of working for big corporate accountancy firms and the opportunity to do something really different presented itself. We bought a small chalet business, Alpine Ethos and moved from Leeds to Les Allues in the French Alps.
The past 8 years have cemented our love for living in the mountains. The landscape is always inspiring, we get 4 proper seasons, refreshing springs, hot summers, colourful, contemplative autumns and cold winters. The people here are friendly, active and fun. It is the place we’d like to bring up our little boy, Jake. The opportunity for him to grow up bilingual, loving nature and his surroundings in an active, outdoor playground is too good to give up.
It’s this opportunity for Jake and our family that presented the problem. The great little business that brought us to the mountains and allowed us to settle here isn’t especially conducive to spending quality family time together. To protect and enhance the reputation that we have worked so hard for we need to spend lots of time making sure that our guests are happy, well looked after and able to make the most of their hard earned holidays in the snow (or sun!). To do this our evenings, weekends and school holidays are always busy and keeping a family friendly, work/life balance is hard.
This morning feels like the perfect illustration of the problem. Wednesdays in France mean no school, so I am at home looking after Jake. I’m so lucky to get to spend time with him as he grows up but as I finalise the last details of the business sale I am stuck on the laptop ticking off my final tasks on Todoist. What I really want to be doing is helping Jake build a garage for his Duplo mower (which looks more like a piste basher to me but what do I know?), playing in the woods and chasing him round the park but work gets in the way.
So, as I say, it’s time for a change. Today we finalise the sale of our business to a new owner, someone who is as passionate about the mountains as we are, maybe even more so. Jill will take the business forward, with the all the highs, lows, satisfaction and excitement you get from running your own business. Both Heather and I are a little jealous. Giving up the business has been a huge, emotional decision but after a lot of soul searching we think it’s the right thing to do for our family.
After the ink is dry and glasses raised to new chapters I have to work out what I do next. Heather has scored a job with an ambitious, growing ski school and is already flourishing. Being able to concentrate on one aspect of business, marketing in her case, rather than being a generalist running your own company, means she can work on and develop skills she already have, making them stronger and more effective. I can already see she is making herself a huge asset in her new job and I couldn’t be more proud.
For me, I’m just not sure what comes next. That’s part of the reason for writing this post. I have the opportunity to carve out a new niche now. I have a few ideas of how I might be able to work for myself and create a new business which is flexible enough to suit family life and help support us as we go on new adventures. Adventures which our life in the chalet business was less amenable to.
For now we just want to say good luck to Jill. Alpine Ethos has taught us a huge amount about ourselves, entrepreneurialism, the mountains and much more. We’re sad to pass the baton on but excited to see where you take it.