An entrepreneur whom I find personally inspiring is Harriet Charles. She is the founder of South Gate Design, wildly elegant florals for the romantic heart. So I contacted her for some inspiration and she agreed to share more about her entrepreneurial journey with The Lead Journal. 

Early inspiration and starting South Gate Design   

For my entire life I have been in love and inspired by nature. Growing up on a farm with few children of my own age around, I played outside building forts out of china berry trees and picked weeds and wildflowers to decorate my forts! Building bridges across ditches was my forte.

My mother loves flowers and greenery and always has! At 93 years young, she still snips and cuts greenery and flowers in the yard to bring indoors to brighten up the house and everyone’s day! I definitely inherited that gene from her as I do the same thing!

I love nature and really find beauty in all of it. And I adore spending time in my yard gardening. In or around 2000 I had a reception for a couple who had recently married out of town. The guest list was large and the party took place inside and outside of our home. Several people admired our yard and asked if I would help them spruce up their yards and flower beds. That is how South Gate Design started and it consisted of jobs here and there to help someone prepare their yard for a home wedding or to dress up a front entrance or to add container gardens. Over the years South Gate Design grew to keep me busy.

Expanding South Gate Design

Flowers really are my first love and always have been. However, having a florist shop has never appealed to me. I did not want to be tethered to a shop, so I didn’t pursue that avenue.  Over the past few years I started seeing more and more independent floral designers online and I thought, how appealing to be able to pursue my number one passion without being tied to a shop!

I started following Erin Benzakein of Floret Farm on her blog and social media some time ago. In 2015 Floret Farm announced a workshop on floral design and business. On the day the application for a scholarship to the workshop was due, I woke up with the thought that I couldn’t shake. Why couldn’t that scholarship be for me! I worked on the application until the moment it was due and submitted it. I was not awarded the full scholarship but was given a discount which made me decide that it was meant to be. So in August 2015, I booked the flight to Seattle, Washington and paid my workshop fee. All of those things coming together got me  thinking, “I am going to do this”, all the while not knowing exactly what “this” would be.

Investing in additional skills

The workshop set me on fire and gave me the confidence to move forward. I ordered flowers and spent a lot of time practicing floral designs and photographing each one to get just the right shot! Before going to Seattle, Floret Farm offered a discount for an online photography class and I took that class which helped me hone in on my photography skills.The photographs are key in getting my work before people so the photography class and my love of nature photography helped to push things forward.

Offering inspiring workshops

While in Seattle at the workshop, most participants talked about weddings and events while I declared to a few that I wanted to lead floral design workshops!  I enjoyed the company of the other creatives and everyone seemed to have such fun that I thought I could duplicate a workshop on a small scale and teach what I had learned and studied. My idea is not to just teach floral design but to encourage women to learn new skills, to enjoy experiences over stuff, to connect with other women in their community and to have down time in a relaxed fun atmosphere. Certainly bring on the weddings and events but inspiring workshops will be a big part of the business in my community and in other places. So, yes to putting workshops on the road!

Life as an entrepreneur

I continue with landscape design and container gardening so my already busy routine is busier now with the added floral design component. I definitely need to find more balance and need to learn to say “no” more often. On many a morning I have put my yoga classes and bootcamp classes on the back burner to take care of more pressing business concerns. I am definitely working to improve in the area of balancing work, health, play and relationships.

My intention is probably unique in that I actually want to schedule business so that I can stop and start when I want to in order to take time off to travel and to visit with my family. Many entrepreneurs may actually see working out of their home as a negative but I prefer working out of my home. I’d rather be at home working at all hours of the day (my husband would add here, “and night!”) than in a warehouse or office space. Flexibility and being home are very important to me.

Inspiring future entrepreneurs

To future entrepreneurs I would suggest finding mentors, taking classes, studying and researching online. Once you are ready to take off establish a relationship with a bank, use mobile online billing and accounting to keep organized and to keep things looking professional. I use Freshbooks (www.freshbooks.com) for this. If you aren’t savvy in an area, as soon as you can, hire someone who is.

Find others who are in related businesses who are just starting out and support one another! There are enough people in the world that will want the services offered without being cut throat to one another. Being loving and supportive to others in the same line of work will go a long way in building your own business!

JUST BE YOU and JUMP IN! You will never know unless you try!

Folks who are full of passion about what they do get others excited and the energy is contagious! Customers love enthusiasm, great customer service and beautiful products. WIN-WIN!

So GO FOR IT!

Guest author: Harriet Charles is the founder of South Gate Design.  She describes herself as Florist, Wife, Mother, Lover of Beautiful Things, Traveller, Light-Seeker.

Explore her website: harrietcharles.com and check out her Facebook and Instagram pages! 

It takes courage and a lot of diligent work to succeed as an entrepreneur. Disha Dugar, chose that path of courage when she quit her corporate law job and became a freelancer in 2012. About a year later, a phone from a former colleague, Ruchika Singhi changed a few things about that plan. In August 2013, Disha and Ruchika started what is now called Corporate Advisors Law Professionals (CALP) and established it in Kolkata, India.

Disha was born and raised in Kolkata and developed her love for puchkas and mishti doi early in life. She is an alumni of the reputed Ashok Hall Girls Higher Secondary School. In her senior year, her eagerness to pursue Pure Mathematics led her to a convent school called Our Lady Queen of the Mission. I met Disha in St. Xavier’s College when she was pursuing her graduation AND her Post Graduation in Company Secretaryship at the same time! She completed her CS from the Institute of Company Secretaries in India a year after completing her graduation and started training at a real estate and tobacco manufacturing company. She climbed the ladder quickly and was soon the Vice President – Legal cum Compliance Officer and Company Secretary at NTC Industries Ltd.

When Disha decided to start their own company, it required a significant amount of research. The team needed to figure out business registration processes, costs and competitive strategies but looking ahead they knew they would make it. The basics didn’t take much time –  they set up an email account, registered their business and began building their client base.

CALP began with a few clients who were known to them and the duo successfully executed the projects that they worked on. Things started moving pretty quickly after that. They were able to rent an office in central Kolkata and renovated it. They started working out of their new office space with minimal furniture – two tiny ceiling fans, a desktop, a laptop, a printer and scanner. By January 2014, work was so busy, it was time to recruit a trainee and begin growing the team.

CALP provides Company Law, Finance and Taxation solutions to corporate, individuals, non-profits and banks. They focus on client requirements and provide customised solutions. What sets them apart from their competitors is that they don’t base their work on their fees. They ensure that their clients receive excellent services and two years later, they are busier than ever. CALP also supports a non-profit called Shades Foundation and has done projects with less privileged and special children in the city.

For Disha, one significant change in lifestyle has been the choice of picking her own work hours. There are days when her work day starts early in the morning, while there are other days when she can start at noon. She enjoys being responsible for her work schedules.

Disha has had to face some challenges from people who are disrespectful towards successful women entrepreneurs. But support from her families and friends has helped her and the company continue progressing. CALP started with a big idea and the team is confident that the company will grow bigger. They are excited to see where this dream will take them.

Disha encourages future entrepreneurs to be brave in pursuing their dreams. A strong will overcomes hurdles. The entrepreneurs at CALP have had to choose work over several social events in order to grow their business. Starting their own company required their involvement in everything – right from management to marketing. They love it because a day well spent and work well done makes everything seem worth it.

Make sure you check out corporateadvisorslawprofessionals.in for more details about the company. 

A select few turn dreams into reality. I had the joy of interviewing an entrepreneur who fueled his dreams into reality and I had a great time finding out answers.

“I felt entirely confident when I walked into the Managing Director’s office to hand over my resignation.” Thus began a fantastic journey for Vishal Tupper, Founder and Head of Crossindia Adventures, a company that offers and organizes adventure tours and river cruises around West Bengal in India.

The idea about starting Crossindia Adventures became clearer when Vishal was working at a large tea company as the Head of Human Resources and Administration. He had been working there for four and a half years and his career path seemed very promising. He had been hired for the assistant manager position and was promoted to Head of HR in a very short span of time. However, Vishal could not resist the idea of plunging into the tourism industry as an entrepreneur. Vishal believes it was God leading him and that gave him the confidence to submit his resignation and dive into this ocean of opportunities.

What is interesting is that even though Vishal loves to travel, tourism was never his first choice of business. Being a food blogger, enthusiast and critic, it had seemed more natural for him to get involved in the culinary world. He had even developed significant knowledge about world cuisines and had a wide network with people in that industry. He was also featured on national food television shows and in major newspapers as a food enthusiast. But surprisingly the thought of starting something related to the food industry did nothing to inspire him. So tourism it was!

After all the intial ideas about possibilities in tourism, the big question became “what do we do in tourism?” Tourism is a huge industry and exploring the right direction was the key to success. At first he considered promoting adventure tours like trekking and camping and adding a few destination tours to expand the business. But Vishal is glad to have been miraculously introduced to the operations at Sundarbans Reserve Forest or Sundarbans National Park, which is the largest mangrove forest in the world and has been declared a Heritage Site by UNESCO. It is also the largest reserve for the Bengal tiger. An instant connection was formed and CROSSINDIA ADVENTURES was established.

The first season of successful touring around the Sundarbans led to new ideas. In what seemed to be perfect timing, an organization in Kolkata approached Vishal to arrange a cruise down the Hooghly River in Kolkata. The Hooghly River Cruise Division was launched and amazingly, this Hooghly tour has become most popular among customers.

Vishal had to combine strategy and dedication at networking to increase his customer base in order to sell his ideas and products. Vishal says, “being an entrepreneur has been very challenging but equally rewarding”. But Vishal does not work alone. His team consists of star chefs and operations staff. They have played a big role in advancing the company’s vision and making Crossindia grow.

Vishal is confident that God has led and blessed their entire operations.  And the company wants to give back to the community in terms of funding organizations and people involved in social causes and outreaches around India.

“We have learned more about life and realized that relationships hold more value than monetary profits. The experiences in Crossindia has humbled us, helped us grow and has increased our dependence on God”. -Vishal Tupper.

If you want to enjoy some exotic food, comfort and or adventure on a cruise, check out their website: www.crossindia.in.