Letter to My Younger Self: Behind the Counter at 16

Letter to My Younger Self: From the Front Room to a Dream Realised

Dear 16-year-old me,

It’s 1992, and you’re standing in the front rooms of our family home, behind the brand new counter. We’ve just opened a gallery, shop, and cafe. You don’t even realise yet that you’ve just stepped into your life’s work.

Back in 1976, Mum and Dad bought this big, beautiful (and very draughty) house. It was basically derelict, and they painstakingly brought it back to life, with a one-year-old and a two-year-old in tow, all while juggling full-time teaching careers. Over the years, it became not just a home but a hub: rooms rented to lodgers, Dad’s antiques business, Mum’s cakes and catering, restaurant evenings, and countless other ventures - all to help the building support itself. In 1992, it’s becoming a shop.

You’re right there at the beginning: building the displays with Dad, setting up the shelves, choosing the cards and gifts, unpacking that very first delivery. You don’t know it yet, but the excitement you feel as you lift the products out of their packaging - that magic - t’s going to stay with you for the rest of your life.

Right now, you think you’re on your way to a very different life. You’re studying for your A-levels. You’ve applied to study Archaeology and Prehistory at the University of Sheffield. Maybe the museum service, you think to yourself. You have no idea that the love of shopkeeping is already in your bones.

At university, you’ll finally discover the joy of self-directed learning. You’ll thrive. You’ll fall head over heels in love with a brilliant boy called Simon. And every holiday, you’ll rush back home, straight into the shop, desperate to rearrange, to display, to improve, to create. You’ll work late into the night, following instincts you don’t even know you have yet.

Simon will join you, stacking shelves, moving displays, carrying boxes, and sharing in the chaos and the fun. Neither of you has any retail training. But you both have the two most important things: energy and enthusiasm.

When you graduate, you’ll think, "I'll give Mum and Dad a year." Just to help them get the shop properly profitable. Just a year.

That year will stretch and grow into a lifetime. Because that’s how it works when you find your calling by accident.

Looking back, it was crazy. Two young, naive graduates taking on a business at 21. But you’ll have the energy, the drive, and (thank goodness) the youthful ignorance not to see how hard it would be. You’ll throw yourselves into it.

And slowly, steadily, year by year, you’ll build something that matters.

You’ll create a business that saved the house, that supported your family, that employed dozens of people over the years, and gave thousands of customers a place to find joy and gifts for the people they love.

You’ll raise two amazing children, balancing nap times, school runs, and shop floors. You’ll work late nights and early mornings. You’ll learn from every conversation, every mistake, every small triumph.

You’ll read, a lot. You’ve always loved books, but now you’ll expand to business books, psychology books, marketing books, management books. You’ll devour everything, always hungry to understand more, to serve better, to grow.

And somewhere along the way, you’ll realise: you’ve got a teacher in you too. It’s in your blood after all. Your sister will follow Mum and Dad, she was destined to thrive in a school. But your future isn’t in a classroom, it’s on the shop floor.

34 years later, I’m writing to tell you: everything you’re doing is leading somewhere.

Shopkeeping asks a lot of us - more than most people realise.

That’s why I created the Smart Shopkeepers Club - and why I put together the free Discovery Quiz and Starter Pack. It’s not about being better. It’s about feeling lighter, clearer, and more supported.

👉 Take the quiz and get the Starter Pack here

Smart Shopkeepers Club is the natural next step. It’s the sum of all the late nights, the early mornings, the years of learning and doing. It’s a place to share the lessons, the wisdom, the shortcuts, so other shopkeepers don’t have to figure it all out the hard way.

You won’t lose the magic you felt unpacking that first delivery. If anything, it just gets stronger. And amazingly, you’ll pass it all on to your daughter too. She’ll join the business during a worldwide pandemic (yes, that’s a real thing, but don’t panic, you get through it just fine) at the age of 16 too. History beautifully and unexpectedly repeating itself.

And best of all? You’ll still be excited, after all these years, to get up every day and create something beautiful, meaningful, and real.

Love,

You (34 years later)