From one small business owner to another

This morning I am feeling sad, my heart is heavy and tears are very near the surface for me. I am tired and feel depleted, this is quite unlike me.

There are many challenges that we are going through at the moment and those running small businesses, like ours have another challenge. People who run small businesses are rarely motivated by profit. Starting up your own business usually takes a huge amount of time and commitment, many many hours of unpaid work, investment of time, energy and resources driven by the passion to create something useful and hopefully viable. We take a leap of faith and put our heart and soul into it and we also often create jobs for other people who depend on our success for their livelihood.

From new beginnings

I remember when Mark and I first set up The Link Centre. We had no money behind us, we started with a small homemade advert posted on notice boards around Lewes in Sussex. We hired a room from a local business and had 7 people on our first two-day course and slowly slowly grew from there.

As with most other small businesses we were passionate about what we did. The Link Centre is so much more than a business to us. We created it and have nurtured it, loved it, developed it, we have travelled with it, made decisions about it, struggled with it and in the odd moment have hated it. It is central to our lives and we care deeply about our business, our work, our colleagues and our students. We have an emotional attachment to it and it is part of us.

It has not always been easy, we have completed mountains of paperwork, fought battles for the good of our students, made mistakes along the way, been lied to by people we trusted, made difficult decisions and had to confront others unethical behaviour.

We have also had many many triumphs – growing numbers every year, becoming a UKATA Registered Training Centre, working collaboratively with other training centres, launching new courses, gaining accreditation for our Diploma in Counselling, seeing the moments of connections and realisation on students faces, hearing feedback from placements and supervisors about the quality of our students and, possibly the best of all, being with the students as they qualify and move on to set up thriving businesses for themselves.

And how we have grown

Over the last 17 years we have impacted thousands of peoples lives in a positive way. That was my goal. In my teens and twenties I felt like there was so much destruction in the world and I really wanted to do something that made a positive contribution. Mark and I have achieved that.

As a Counsellor and Psychotherapist, I have worked with a wide range of individual clients, couples, and groups to enhance the quality of their lives. As an Internationally Qualified Trainer and Supervisor I have trained and supervised hundreds of counsellors and psychotherapists, supporting many through training, qualification, accreditation and going on to set up successful practices and to support others in their lives.

Over the last 17 years we have built up a very successful small business with various courses, accreditations with a good reputation both locally and within the counselling and psychotherapy field. We offer short workshops for personal and professional development, part time courses to Qualify as an Accredited Counsellor, Courses to Qualify as a UKCP Psychotherapist with national and international recognition, a Diploma in Supervision course, Cert. in Working with Couples, Cert, in Working with Therapy groups and many other workshops. I am proud of The Link Centre.

To the present day challenges

There are many threats to small businesses but coronavirus was not one we saw coming. We are lucky to be in a situation where we can move some of our courses online. We are an established business with a good reputation and still we, like others, are impacted. We pay a range of staff and this is not just our livelihood but theirs too. We don’t know how long this situation will go on for, we don’t know what the full impact of this will be on our business. It is painful to see something we have worked so hard for and nourished too, be impacted in a negative way. We will survive this and we will bounce back but others won’t. For some people life will not be the same after this. Many people are much worse off than us, many businesses will fail, many people will lose their income completely.

Support

From one business owner to others out there I want you to know that we know something of what you are going through, the heartbreak of seeing years and years of hard work being destroyed by this current situation. I am sad for us all and I want you to know that I am with you. Mark and I will do what we can to support small businesses as best we can now, and in the future.

Take care and know you are not alone. 

Words: Leilani Mitchell MNCS (Acc).