Good Housekeeping, November 2004

VIEWS OVER THE ORCHARDS, HORSES IN THE PADDOCK AND MY OWN BAKING BUSINESS...

It was a childhood dream for Emma - to set up a business selling cakes just like her mother used to make. But short of money, cooking space and business-planning skills, Emma has survived emotional and financial set-backs to have the life she's always wanted.

Our weekly ingredients arrived this morning: 2000 eggs, two tonnes of nuts and bucketloads of sugar. Even today, when I see it all laid out I still get a buzz. If someone had told me 10 years ago that I'd make a living, let alone a successful one, out of baking, I'd never have believed it. Now I'm doing it for real.

I wasn't the ideal candidate for running my own business. At college I was a dreamer. My head was always in books or over a stove inspecting a new recipe. You wouldn't have put your money on me being the girl most likely to run her own company.

It wasn't that I lacked ambition. I just didn't have the confidence or knowledge to do anything about it. I had an English degree and had once had a part time job glazing croissants in a patisserie - hardly preparation for starting a baking business. But as anyone who's ever had a pipe dream will tell you, there comes a point where the dream becomes a distraction. By the time I'd hit 25, I was spending hours a day wondering what it would be like to run a cake business. When that happens you have two choices. Either forget about it and spend your energy doing something else or do something about it. Sink or swim, I thought, at least I'll never say, 'What if...'.

The catalyst for my decision was seeing friends with good jobs and nice homes. At the time, I still lived with five others in a shared house with a few temping and teaching jobs behind me. I felt inadequate. I knew I was a talented cook and had to tap into my skills if I wanted to feel better about myself.

The inspiration for the business came from my childhood. Baking was a big part of my family's life. I'll never forget the days when Gran would come and make little sponge madeleines for my brothers and me. And every time I'd load Mum's cake mixtures into the oven I felt I'd achieved something, even if I'd only broken an egg and scraped out the mix.

When I started out I didn't have any business plan - I just wrote all my strengths and weaknesses on a scrap of paper. Next to strengths I scrawled: talent, drive and great products. Next to weaknesses was: NO MONEY. Right from the beginning I was always honest about what I could and couldn't do - you have to be if you're going it alone.

It's scary but it's a fact: a small business takes over your life for at least the first three years. For the initial 18 months, I barely saw my family and partner - I was just locked into business mode. I began doing a lunchtime bike round selling cakes and sandwiches in Oxford, and there was nothing romantic about it. But I had fantastic family recipes, and a great name (I'd called it Honeybuns after an American friend who used the word as a term of endearment), plus enough charm and drive to persuade office workers to buy their lunch from me rather than the local sandwich shop. Self-belief is everything.

Of course, there were set-backs. Crippling 20-mile cycle rides into town and back with a basket full of cakes and sandwiches were hard. Some days I'd be screamed at by customers for making the wrong order, other days I'd get no orders at all. Every day had its highs and lows. But even if it was something as small as someone saying how much they enjoyed my cakes, it kept me going.

You also need to be adaptable. My boyfriend, Matthew, and I moved to Guildford when he got a new job there, and I planned to set up the business afresh. But it was a much faster and slicker place and I knew I'd have to re-market to survive. So I approached local delis, asking them if they'd trial my cakes. I make honey flapjacks, lemon drizzle and chocolate orange cakes, all from my mum's and gran's recipes. Soon I was getting orders two or three times a week from stockists, saying the cakes were selling out.

Next, I went to the national catering companies. Looking back, I'm still embarrassed about my naive tactics. I remember finding the name of the MD of a large national coffee chain and sending her a brownie in the post. It wasn't a professional way to do business, but she thought that the cake was so delicious that she offered to sell my range in her stores.

Within two years the business had grown so much I had to get a friend on board. Some weeks, working from my friend's small kitchen at home, we'd cook over 600 cakes in seven days. It was absolute chaos. There'd be cakes cooling on the bookcase, mantelpiece and any other spare scrap of space. I also had the financial side of the business to deal with. I kept receipts in shoe boxes and had no idea about profit margins and billing time. It's only now, with five years of solid experience behind me, that I understand that side of the business.

I eventually decided to rent a small industrial unit. Space and facilities-wise it made more sense, but it was expensive (£2500 per month rent) and it took a huge chunk out of the business. We looked like a successful company, but now I had another person to pay, plus the cost of the unit, I was hardly making any money and certainly couldn't draw a salary.

I was totally engrosed in every detail of the business. I loved the thrill of making something people wanted and I suppose I was hooked. It wasn't that I didn't have room for other people in my life, it was just very difficult to switch off. But then came news that rocked me. My mum was diagnosed with cancer; she was very ill with it and one day I had a call from my dad saying she'd been taken to the hospice. I remember getting on the first train to get to her, and she was upsettingly frail when I got there. I knew this would be one of the last times I'd ever see her and it really ripped me apart.

Then something happened that haunts me still. We were sitting in the garden together holding hands when my mobile rang. It was one of our contract caterers who knew that I was out of work for compassionate reasons, but foolishly I still took the call. I was on for over an hour. The guilt of letting business slide into my private life, especially at that time, is huge. I can never put that right.

After Mum died I started to do a lot of thinking, particularly about the direction my life and the business were taking. Mum had always been a big believer in qualilty of life, and she knew how important it was for me to not only have a successful business but also to have the same kind of happy country existence that I'd known as a child. I didn't want her to think I had never fulfilled that dream. So I sat down and reprioritised.

The timing couldn't have been better. Matthew had just got a new job that allowed him to work from home three days a week, and he was desperate for a change of pace as well. So we scoured the internet for a home in the country. We found a beautiful medieval farmhouse in Dorset that had everything I'd ever wanted. There were five acres of land, apple and plum orchards, which we're now cultivating for our cakes, and an amazing old stone barn that we could convert into a bakery.

We moved to Dorset two years ago. The business is doing well and I now have 12 full-time members of staff. The luxury of having others to rely on is amazing. It frees up my time and allows me to step back and see the business as a whole, but more importantly it gives me the freedom to do things like taking up running again and riding my horses. The animals were a little treat to myself when we moved down here. There's a whole family of them now: a horse, two rescue ponies and a nut-brown dog called Honey.

Combining a business that I love with a wonderful, rewarding life in the country seemed like an impossibility all those years ago. But now I realise that if I can do it, then anyone can.