Jan is an entrepreneur from the UK who has a few decades of running micro and small businesses behind her, building one from kitchen table as a single mother with two young children, that into a multi-million turnover business.

She has always been passionate to encourage and support other entrepreneurs and has been involved in many campaigns. She was chosen as one of the first 50 women to represent the UK in the European Union on one of these.

She is the author of two books, Scale for Success, Bloomsbury 2021 and Start for Success, January 2023, aimed at helping aspiring and growing entrepreneurs everywhere.

Key Moments

[00:03:11] Previous businesses lacked motivation; became single mom, struggled financially, sought government support.

[00:07:25] Fascinating start, luck led to publication success.

[00:10:26] Worries as a successful entrepreneur post-exit.

Find Jan Online

https://jancavelle.co.uk

https://twitter.com/@jancavelle

https://linkedin.com/in/jancavelle/

https://www.facebook.com/JanCavelleWriter

https://www.instagram.com/jan.cavelle

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Start-Success-Entrepreneurs-Guide-Start-ups/dp/1739191005

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Transcript (Provided by CastMagic.io)

Seth [00:00:00]:

Entrepreneurs Enigma is a podcast for the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, the wins and the fails that we all face being entrepreneurs. How we learn from adversity. Every week, I talk to a different entrepreneur with a story to tell. I’m Seth Goldstein. Come with me on the journey. This is Entrepreneurs Enigma. Let’s get started. Hey, everybody.

Seth [00:00:33]:

Welcome to another edition of the Entrepreneurs and Think About podcast. I am, as always, your host with the mostist most whatever. Close enough, Seth. Today I have Jen Cavell all the way from across the pond in the UK. She has been an entrepreneur in the UK for more than a few decades. Micro and small businesses have been what her specialty is building one from, even from her kitchen table as a single mother of two young children. And it turned into a multimillion dollar turnover business, which is kind of incredible, because when you think about being a mom is a business in its own right. And being a single mom is even more it’s like running a multinational.

Seth [00:01:13]:

So, anyhow, she is an author. She was chosen as one of the first 50 women to represent the UK in the European Union. Let’s bring Jen in today. Hey, Jen. How’s it going?

Jan [00:01:27]:

I’m okay, Seth. Thank you very much for inviting me on the show.

Seth [00:01:30]:

Oh, this is so much fun. I’m glad. So where in the UK are you based?

Jan [00:01:34]:

I’m literally on the coast looking out to France. On a clear day, I can see it. Oh, wow.

Seth [00:01:40]:

I’m sure that’s a good thing or bad thing.

Jan [00:01:41]:

It’s France for me, it’s a good thing. I’m a big Francophile.

Seth [00:01:45]:

Don’t tell the Brits that. Yeah. So how far you hop on the tram and get over there or you still have to go to London to get on it?

Jan [00:01:54]:

You do. It’s ridiculous. It stopped because of COVID you used to be able to go locally. And I was thinking last night, I wonder when they’re restarting it, because it’s a crazy thing to have to go.

Seth [00:02:05]:

Up to go know, up to go down to left. Right. Well, I know how that is. It’s. How? I have to get to New York. I’m just north of Philadelphia. We’re already in the weeds already as we’re talking here, but I have to drive south to get onto the train to go north to New York. To get on the train to go to New York.

Seth [00:02:21]:

It’s so bizarre. I can go straight across. I just haven’t ever done that. I just know the Hamilton train station, so it makes sense to me to go so inside baseball. But anyhow Jan, I always ask, how’s the weather in the UK today? Is it good?

Jan [00:02:35]:

The weather is immensely patchy in the UK today, as it has been. UK, it’s patchy.

Seth [00:02:44]:

Yeah. You’re kind of known for your rain and kind of normally, particularly down here.

Jan [00:02:50]:

We get a wonderful summer and it’s been weird this summer. Lots of wind, lots of rain. Yeah. Most displeased with the whole thing.

Seth [00:02:59]:

So you started your business. Was it your first business you started from your kitchen table. How did this all get started? Let’s start with that. Who was Jan and how did this all get started?

Jan [00:03:11]:

Well, it wasn’t my first business, Seth. I worked for myself and had a couple of small businesses with friends, but not very sort of motivated to grow anything or to do it very seriously type of businesses. And then, as you rightly said, I found myself a single mom. And not a good force, we say. So there I was, two small, very small children at that stage, remarkably stuck for money, struggling to keep a roof over our heads. And I thought, what on earth do I do? So I went to our sort of version of Social Security and I said, look, you can either support me and kids for the next 20 OD years, or you can support me while I try and start a business and get that off guard.

Seth [00:03:59]:

Very entrepreneurial. Yeah.

Jan [00:04:01]:

Surprisingly, they said, yes, I think we’re a bit more flexible. In those days.

Seth [00:04:05]:

They were like, we much rather have you get on your feet faster, so we don’t support you for they looked.

Jan [00:04:10]:

At me as if I was very OD, but I not used to such inquiries.

Seth [00:04:16]:

A lot of people look at entrepreneurs as odd. Exactly. Not that OD that they thought you of you as OD. So there you go.

Jan [00:04:25]:

Not the usual they got on a Thursday morning appointment, but, yeah, they let me do it. And so we got a sort of tiny bit of money while I thought, what do I do? And in those circumstances, you’re very strapped. You can’t go out and see clients. You don’t want people coming to the house. So it had to be something home based initially, which meant selling on the phone, which I had some experience in. So I sort of sort of drop shipping type model. Not that anybody knew what drop shipping was in those days, but that principle of buying something and selling it on. And so that’s what I started.

Jan [00:05:05]:

Very rickety, very small, just me initially, and the demand grew. I hit a gold seam on what we were doing, which was supplying mostly bespoke furniture to interior designers.

Seth [00:05:19]:

You find it like what you find and you sell it on.

Jan [00:05:24]:

That’s all I was doing for a long, long time, for many years. But gradually it got tricky to get the supply right, so I sort of fell into manufacturing and that was complicated because, of course, I didn’t know what I was doing. If anybody’s grown a business as ignorantly as I was, I don’t think I’ve met them yet.

Seth [00:05:44]:

I was pretty ignorant when I started my own business. I’ve been doing web design on the side, but never as a business, and decided, Let me do this to get a job. Never had sales or business experience in my life. I was a journalist. I was pretty ignorant, pretty green at the very beginning. But it’s kind of the fun of it, too. The fun of it. Now that you think back on it, it’s fun when you’re in it.

Seth [00:06:07]:

You’re like, what the hell am I doing?

Jan [00:06:09]:

I much preferred being ignorant. I think it was after I learned more that I got much more scared. There’s a wonderful consolation in ignorance.

Seth [00:06:20]:

Yeah.

Jan [00:06:21]:

You don’t realize quite how crazy you’re being.

Seth [00:06:24]:

And so you wrote two books I have done, yeah. And start for success.

Jan [00:06:33]:

That’s right.

Seth [00:06:34]:

So that’s the newest one, Start For Success, which is in 2023. It literally just came out, like, wow, hard off the presses kind of thing. Another one was in 2021. Kind of ending of the pandemic, starting of the endemic and after. Kind of like when things are loosening up, that’s kind of cool. You’re a recent author. We’re going to take a quick break here from our sponsors and get right back to the show.

Jan [00:06:57]:

I am. It was something I’d always wanted to do, had I not got sidetracked with marriage and children and one thing and another, all I really wanted to do was write, and I never got around to it. And so when finally I decided I’d had enough of businesses and I just needed to sleep for about ten years, when I woke up, I thought, Hold on a second, I could try that.

Seth [00:07:19]:

So it was the writing process, like, was it fun? Was it daring? Was it exhausting on the book?

Jan [00:07:25]:

It was fascinating because, again, I hadn’t clue what I was doing and thought, I’ll give it a go. And then I got involved and I was doing a lot of research and speaking to a lot of people, and I thought, Hold on a second, I’ve taken up a lot of valuable people’s time. I’m going to have to do something about this and see if I can actually get it published. And I tell you, I had all the luck in the world. It was Christmas time. I tried to send off two or three submissions. If anybody’s ever tried to write, we know how hard it is to get a book published. One of them bounced back on the email.

Jan [00:08:01]:

So I wrote a rather bad tempered tweet to the publisher concerned and said, Your email is bouncing. And a really nice guy came back to me and said, well, send it to my private email address. And he was one of the business editors, which you just don’t get through.

Seth [00:08:18]:

That slash pile like that for those in audio. My mouth just dropped. Those watching my mouth just dropped.

Jan [00:08:25]:

There I was. And he said, well, send it to me. And just after Christmas, I got a phone call from Bloomsbury saying, Come in and chat.

Seth [00:08:33]:

That’s awesome. So you’re not even self published. You’re like, real published.

Jan [00:08:36]:

I’ve done both now because I wanted to have a go at self publishing, you know, because so many people swear by it with the second one. And also, my lovely editor was so nice to me on the email. She has moved from Bloomsbury, so I thought maybe now is the time to try. Yeah, I’ve had both experiences.

Seth [00:08:53]:

Oh, that’s exciting, that’s exciting. Which one do you like better?

Jan [00:08:57]:

Pros and cons? I think lots going for both.

Seth [00:09:01]:

That’s wild. We go the traditional route. Not the real route, but the traditional route. I hear that a lot of times, if you’re not a big name person, you’re still marketing yourself as it is. So it’s sort of like, why not self publish and not lose half the rights kind of thing.

Jan [00:09:19]:

There was an element of that as to why I did it. It seemed to me that if they were taking a huge sum of money and you were still doing all the hard graft, but actually you underestimate quite how much money and hard graft you’re going to have to do if you haven’t done it before. Much better second time around, I’m sure, but first time, it’s quite a shock for system.

Seth [00:09:40]:

It’s kind of nice to know the first time. Kind of have to be handheld a little bit, I guess, too.

Jan [00:09:45]:

Yeah. I thought I could do it on my own. I was as stubborn as I’ve always been and was attempting to do something I didn’t know I was doing.

Seth [00:09:55]:

That’s great. So what’s the best thing about being an entrepreneur? Because you’ve done all kinds of different things.

Jan [00:10:01]:

I have, yeah. I think each experience has been so amazing up to me, it’s always been the freedom, and I think that’s the same for a lot of people. It’s one of the major reasons people go into entrepreneurship, as you know. It’s just being able to make the decisions yourself, to have the choices, have to live with the consequences, good and bad.

Seth [00:10:26]:

Yeah. So on the flip side, now that you’ve been a successful entrepreneur, you’ve had a big exit and all that stuff. What keeps you up at night now versus in the beginning? I’m sure in the beginning, kids picked you up and making sure money was coming in and all that, but now that the kids are grown up and all that stuff, do you stop worrying.

Jan [00:10:49]:

About them when they’re grown up?

Seth [00:10:54]:

You’ve less control.

Jan [00:10:55]:

It’s weird, that’s for sure, what keeps me up now. Yeah. I mean, certainly worry about my kids, but apart from that, very little. It was a very hard decision to come to the end of having businesses. And I still sometimes think, oh, that’s my no, you’ve stopped that. That’s enough. Put it down.

Seth [00:11:17]:

Yeah, calm down, calm down. Don’t do any more businesses. Not yet. You’re now an author. You now can speak and do all that stuff, and that’s a business in its own right.

Jan [00:11:27]:

It is. But equally, I’m at a stage in life where I’m not under pressure to build anything, which is a huge release after all those years of fighting.

Seth [00:11:39]:

Absolutely. So what is the most important thing to carry with you all the time?

Jan [00:11:43]:

That urge to learn, I think. I think the day you lose that, you lose virtually anything. You have that hunger for learning.

Seth [00:11:55]:

You have to keep learning. And then that’s kind of important, is that you learn. You improve, you grow, you slap your wrist when you try and start a new business. But that’s something you learned. You learned that you need to take a break from building businesses, that you need to pivot to less product businesses, more writing businesses, kind of thing, that’s kind of.

Jan [00:12:21]:

But, you know, you need to be agile, I think, as an entrepreneur, particularly in this day, and know, you just don’t know what’s happening.

Seth [00:12:28]:

It’s crazy. So, Jan, where can people find you online? Where’s your big watering hall?

Jan [00:12:32]:

Well, my big watering hall, I guess, is either my website it’s Jancavel Co UK or Amazon for my books. It’s nice and Easy or Barnes and Noble, but Amazon’s usually where people default to these.

Seth [00:12:45]:

Yeah, yeah. I’m sure they can get it. And I also you’re also on LinkedIn facebook. You’re everywhere, I’m sure. Yeah.

Jan [00:12:54]:

And Cavell’s not that usual, so I’m pretty easy to find. Jan cavell on all the usual channels.

Seth [00:13:00]:

That’s wild. So, Jan, thank you so much for coming on. This has been such a oh, it’s just my pleasure.

Jan [00:13:05]:

Thank you.

Seth [00:13:06]:

This is so much fun. And we’ll see everyone next time. That was a great show. If you’re enjoying entrepreneurs Enigma, please view us in the podcast directory of your choice. Every review helps other podcast listeners find our show. If you’re looking for other podcasts in the marketing space, look no further than the Marketing Podcast Network at Marketingpodcasts Network. Goldstein Media hopes you have enjoyed this episode. This podcast is one of the many great shows on the MPN Marketing Podcast Network.