Living and working in the countryside is different, and not just because there are fields and cows rather than streets and buses. It’s different because it’s personal, more intimate, individual characters matter and you can make more of an impact more quickly.

Yes, you can live the countryside dream where the pace of life slows, where there’s time to think, to sit back and enjoy the seasons, and to simply get to know your family and friends again. But rural life can also be stimulating and productive, and a hugely rewarding environment to do business in, especially if you’re new to it.

While life may not be lived as frenetically as in a large town or city, many people find that just as much gets done. If you’ve ever lived in a city, you’ll know only too well the wasted hours spent commuting or just getting around – traffic jams, a fruitless search for a parking space, or the delayed tubes, trains and buses. And in business, those wasted hours cost you money.

The countryside isn’t for everyone. There’ll be some who’ll miss the noise, the excitement, the adrenalin rush of being at the centre of things. For the rest of us though, it’ll do just fine.

YOUR DRIVING FACTOR

Starting up your new business, and perhaps moving to the country if you’re not here already, is a big step. You’ll be tested in the coming weeks and months, both financially and emotionally. There’ll be bleak times when you’ll wonder if you made the right decision and whether you’ve dragged your family unintentionally into something which looks like turning out to be a terrible mistake.

One way to keep your sanity is to identify right at the beginning your motives for going self-employed. And in times of crisis, keep repeating your motivation over and over, like a mantra.

There are plenty of possible driving factors:

• You don’t want to work for anyone else.
• You don’t want to be answerable to anyone else.
• You want to escape from commuting.
• You want to escape from an office existence.
• You want to escape from routine drudgery.
• You want to escape from office politics.
• You are bored.
• You want to do something you enjoy.
• You want to do something you believe in.
• You don’t want your children to grow up in a city.
• You want a better life for you and your family.
• You need a new challenge.
• You want to take responsibility for your life.

RISK TAKING: PRUDENCE TO RECKLESSNESS

You’ve probably been asked about your attitude to risk before. It’s a standard question on many investment products and it’s just as relevant here. The fact that you’re reading this book and are presumably at least considering throwing it all in and starting again already makes you more of a risk-taker than someone who sits in someone else’s office until they’re 65.

At an early stage you have to think about how far you’re prepared to push it. A lot will depend on your family commitments and whether you’re the main breadwinner. If it’s just you and the cat then it’s easier than if you have a partner and children to support. So:

• Are you the type to risk everything on a dream?
• Are you willing to give it a try for a year or two, knowing you could probably go back if you had to?
• Or are you going to go for something like a rock-solid franchise which won’t leave much to chance?

Your attitude to risk will affect almost every business decision you take from this point. It’s all about living comfortably with your exposure to it. Some will rise to the challenge and will relish risk, thriving on the challenge. Others will dread it and the uncertainty it brings. You have to decide where you sit on this scale.

ADJUSTING TO DOWNSIZING

This book is not about downsizing: there are plenty of those around already. But we’ll mention it in passing because it could be an important factor in your calculations.

A ‘downsizer’ is shorthand for describing someone who’s given up their stressed high-maintenance city lifestyle, and used the money from the sale of their home to finance a move to the country and a more relaxed way of life. People already living in the countryside can downsize too in order to start up a rural business. They could be:

• giving up the big house and high-powered job in a county town to move to a woodcutter’s cottage in deep countryside
• or staying in the same house but resigning from their salaried job to start up their own dream business.

Downsizing comes in many forms but the same decisions will still have to be taken and the same adjustments made if your new business stands any chance of being successful.

Points to consider, regardless of which camp you fall into:

• Are you prepared, practically and emotionally, for a big drop in salary?
• Are you prepared for the loss of professional status?
• Are you and your family prepared for a period of uncertainty?
• Are you and your family prepared for a lifestyle change?

If you are currently urbanites:

• Will you miss the larger shops and the greater choices?
• Will you miss the nightlife, the clubs and restaurants?
• Will you miss the museums, galleries and exhibitions?
• Will you miss that feeling of being at the centre of events?

And a few practical points to think about:

• Will your family need a second or even third car?
• Are you prepared to taxi your children around the countryside until they can drive themselves?
• What about new schools?
• What about childcare provision?

SKILLS YOU’RE GOING TO NEED

There’s a big danger when setting up your own business of too much self-analysis and too much list making. One school of thought says you’re better off doing some basic research and then trusting to instinct. The other school says you can never do too much. For those of you in the second camp, here’s a way of combining self-analysis and list making.

It’s called a SWOT analysis, which is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. As with most of these things, it won’t tell you anything you don’t know about yourself already, but it should help focus the mind and show the weak spots which may need a bit of work.

The idea is to draw up a list, identifying your strengths and weaknesses and so on, and then sit back and contemplate the findings. It will help if you discuss the list with someone whose opinion is generally sound.

There are some skills you’re going to need to have, and if your analysis shows you’re lacking in these areas then you need to think about how to address that.

Flexibility – or thinking sideways

You’ll be taking all the decisions in your new business, everything from deciding on the stationery design to the position of the new loos or how long a property lease to sign. You’re breaking new ground and there’ll be no corporate manual to follow or experienced manager to consult. So you’ll need a flexible approach to help you:

• Overcome those early hurdles that will inevitably crop up. Thinking around a problem is something that you’re going to have to get used to.
• Take the wide view and come up with the best business opportunity for you and your circumstances. It may not always be the most obvious one.
• Respond to the needs and expectations of your first customers. Your service or product may need tweaking, and in the early days of your business you should be listening and learning. You can’t afford to stick rigidly to Plan A if it’s not working.
• Sit down after a few months and decide if your business is going in the right direction, and if not then why not. That could be the time for brave decisions.
• Change direction completely if necessary. You may decide after a year or two that you made the wrong career choice and that becoming self-employed was not for you after all.

But at the same time you can’t be too flexible, changing your aims as often as your socks. The trick is to realise when something really isn’t working and then act.

Motivation

Another key skill. There’s little point going into business if you find it difficult to get out of bed in the mornings.

That doesn’t mean that all successful businesses have to run on a strict Monday-to-Friday, nine-to-five timetable. You have to be able to put in the hours because you want to. Plenty of creative people have periods of intense activity and can then sit back and rest and recharge batteries for weeks or months until the next time.

It’s all a question of recognising when your busiest times are likely to be and then being prepared to really go for it. Gardeners can take it easy in the winter ahead of a busy and intense spring. Soft furnishers or potters may have to gear their entire working year to the busy pre-Christmas period when most gifts are bought. Writers or illustrators will be at the mercy of their contract deadlines, while carpenters or cabinet makers could be hard at it all year around.

Determination

You’ve got a terrible cold, the children hate the countryside, you haven’t made a sale for a week and the mortgage goes out tomorrow. What are you going to do? Bury your head in your hands and sob or get off your backside and make a sale? It’s as simple as that really because you’re going to need determination and spades of it.

Fortitude

Even if you live like a saint and do business like Richard Branson, there will still be times when your patience is tested. Goods will not be delivered, the casual workers you’d been depending on to help out in your market garden won’t turn up, or it’ll rain for three weeks when you desperately need it to be dry in order to finish a big gardening contract.

In these cases you will need fortitude and a lot of it. Previous high-earners who’ve downsized to the country will be tempted to throw money at the problem. For all the above scenarios that won’t work. Others may get stressed or angry to the point where they can’t function. Again, not very productive. You’ll just have to learn to grit your teeth and accept whatever comes with good grace.

Resourcefulness

Whatever your business, you’ll need a degree of practical resourcefulness. In large towns and cities there’s an expert on hand, virtually around the clock, to cover most eventualities. In the countryside, especially in the remoter areas, that doesn’t happen. So what do you do on a cold winter’s night when the power goes and your glasshouses full of tender seedlings are left unprotected? Or your delivery van has developed what you suspect is a minor fault (needs more oil) and the local garage wants to take it in for full surgery? The practical side of small business life needs just as much thought as the artistic or creative side.

Patience

If you live in a city you’re probably rolling your eyes, but if you already live in the countryside then you’ll know the value of patience. Demanding instant service just doesn’t work in the country and will probably have a counter-effect. When a deliveryman turns up, spare a moment or two to chat. Take time to talk to the customers in your shop or studio or the clients of your garden design service. Human contact and the human touch generally means good PR.

Getting to know people

Who you know is important in rural areas. This is not because of any desperate social-climbing or networking reasons but because it’s how business is done here. It’s how you hear about potential new customers, reliable part-time staff or the best source of quality feed for your livery stables.

Don’t assume that you can source everything you need from the internet, Yellow Pages or local paper ads because a vast amount of business is conducted via word of mouth, and if you live and work in isolation then you’ll be out of the loop.

Your own reputation

Reputations stick. If you become known as the man or woman who’s slow to pay their bills it’ll take you years to live it down. It’s far better to get it right from the beginning, and be seen to be honest, hard-working and someone who’s providing a good quality service or product and value for money.

On the whole, if you decide you are going to adopt sharper business practices, it’s probably best to start them off on other incomers rather than on someone whose family have been living in the community for generations and who’s a cousin to half the village.

Trust

This is what you should be aiming for. Customers should trust you and they should trust your product or skill. If there is no trust, you won’t have a business.

Asking nicely

Odd, isn’t it, how we forget the basics? Ask nicely for something in the inner cities and you’ll get a suspicious look and the assumption that you want something for nothing. Even saying good morning in a shop marks you down as a weirdo. Ask nicely in the country and the chances are that you’ll get a friendly, prompt and professional service.

YOUR HEALTH

For most people going into business it’s going to have to be perfect, unless perhaps you’ve got a pre-existing condition and know you can deal with it. A new business requires energy, determination, concentration, vigour and plenty of physical stamina. Being self-employed means that you have to turn up day after day, even if you’re feeling terrible, because no work generally means no pay.

THE DOWNSIDE OF COUNTRY LIFE

Living in the country and working for yourself isn’t always heaven on earth.

• The business risk is all yours.
• It can get lonely.
• There’ll be long hours and hard work.
• The business may fail.
• You may not make enough money to meet your needs.
• You may find it more difficult than you thought to motivate yourself.
• You may discover that you don’t like working on your own.

Isolation and loneliness are two of the more common complaints of working life in the countryside, especially if your new trade means you’re not likely to meet many people. If you’re a smallholder who doesn’t sell directly to the public, or perhaps a crafts worker tucked away in a studio, you could go for days or weeks without seeing anyone.

It’s important to realise that you’re not alone. There are literally millions of others sharing your existence, your experiences and probably a lot of the same doubts and fears. If you think isolation could be a problem for you, then you need to address this right at the beginning. Develop your own support networks. Find other people in similar jobs and introduce yourself. Keep in touch with them. Meet the neighbours. Make time for a social life. All this is even more important if you live alone.

The weather

A strangely high proportion of rural businesses are affected by the weather, and it’s not just the obvious ones like farming and gardening.

Isolated areas of the country are more vulnerable to extremes of weather. Roads are blocked by snow, high winds bring down power and telephone lines and flooding can take out acres of land. It’s rare for a weather-related problem to last more than a few days, but if your business is likely to operate on tight margins, and you’re completely dependent on being able to send out goods 365 days a year or being able to move around freely yourself, then it is something else to consider.

Hostility to outsiders

Some remoter regions of the country can be famously unwelcoming to incomers. ‘You’re not one of us until you have both sets of grandparents buried in the local churchyard’ is a familiar chant. It’s probably not personal. If you’re unlucky enough to be in this position there probably isn’t much you can do apart from staying polite and pleasant and hoping that most people will come around eventually. Don’t keep apologising for being born in Dorking because it isn’t going to change anything.

If it looks like being a permanent problem which could seriously hinder your business you have to ask yourself if you made the right decision to move there in the first place. Is it time to cut your losses and try elsewhere?

The nosiness factor

Unlike in most cities, you’ll almost certainly know your countryside neighbours and have a lot to do with them. Living in a community is, after all, one of the reasons why people move to the country in the first place.

It’s a myth that rural dwellers spend their days leaning on farm gates, chewing straw and chatting over village business. In practice everyone is working just as hard as you hope to be and getting on with their own lives.

When you move into an area there will inevitably be interest, especially if you plan on doing something unusual, you’ve come from somewhere very different (the Bronx) or your lifestyle isn’t typical for the area. You’re going to have to decide what you’re comfortable with and at the same time remember that polite inquiry isn’t the same as spying. If you find it too intrusive, it’s still possible to move to really remote countryside and buy a property that is so cut-off that you never see your neighbours at all.

YOUR FAMILY

So far this chapter has been all about you. But the step you are taking is likely to have just as seismic effect on your family as it is on you:

• Financial. The first and most obvious effect it could have on them. Are you the main breadwinner? Are they going to starve or be forced to go shoeless if you fail?
• Emotional. Even the most placid will be under a lot of strain at the start of a new business. If you’re more highly strung and prone to mood swings it will be far worse. Is your family prepared for this?
• Practical. You will be busy, at least for the first few months. Is your family prepared and able to pick up your share of the household chores?
• Family time. Is your family prepared to sacrifice family life and time together, at least until the business is established?

In short, are they behind you 100 per cent?

An obvious way around many of the problems is to try to involve your family in your business as much as possible. Clearly some businesses are more family-friendly than others. Tree surgery, knife sharpening or mountaineering instruction aren’t really geared to getting the two-year-old involved, but there are plenty of other lines of work that are. Smiley, polite children, for example, work wonders when trying to attract customers to your craft fair or farmers’ market stall. So try to think of positive areas where they can help.

YOUR FRIENDS

In this thinking-of-others section, you may also want to consider the impact your new business could have on your friends.

Good friends are invaluable for general moral support and comfort, helping spread the word and bouncing around ideas. But if you want to keep their friendship:

• Don’t drone on and on about your business. Stop before their eyes glaze over and they start avoiding you.
• Don’t borrow money from them unless it’s a formal business agreement and both parties are comfortable with the deal.
• Don’t try to use them as free labour (shop assistant, delivery driver, phone answerer).
• Don’t try to force them into being your sales rep.
• Do try to make time for them and your friendship. Keep doing whatever it is you used to do with them.