The Day I Realised I Didn’t Want To Work For Someone Else

Looking back, while I enjoy the last year of my fifties, it feels like another lifetime when I worked for someone else. Back then, I felt I’d never escape the ball and chain of being a downtrodden employee as a PA and secretary.

I left school at 16 with one O-Level – Art, Grade C. I wasn’t too bothered because I was about to spend a month on a kibbutz, which at 16 felt like the adventure of a lifetime.

When I returned, I started work in a jewellery shop in The Mayfair Hotel. A boyfriend had helped me get the position. It suited me perfectly at the time because the shifts meant I could go straight from work to the nightclubs. After a few months, my mother suggested – or rather insisted – that I go back to college and gain a secretarial qualification.

I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic, but off to secretarial college I went. We were still using typewriters then, and the college computer was so enormous it seemed to occupy an entire room.

After qualifying, I landed my first office role at a children’s modelling agency in Little Venice. Occasionally I was even sent along to auditions myself. From there, I moved through various office and PA roles, mostly in small companies.

I can’t honestly say I ever loved it.

Some bosses were lovely. Others were demanding, bad-tempered and exhausting. I stayed because that was what people did. You worked, paid the bills and got on with life.

At the same time, my personal life wasn’t particularly happy either. I stayed in a relationship for far too long and increasingly felt trapped both at work and at home. Then came the panic attacks.

Today, mental health is discussed openly. Back then, hardly anyone spoke about it. I wasn’t diagnosed for years. The panic attacks affected everything, including my ability to commute comfortably into central London, and they shaped the next chapter of my life more than I realised at the time.

Building A Different Future

By this stage I had also started writing. After coming out of a long relationship, I began documenting my dating experiences and became fascinated by the very early days of online dating. This was long before smartphones and social media. Most people didn’t even have a computer at home. If I wanted to go online, I either used a computer café or grabbed a few precious minutes at work.

To get through jobs that increasingly felt uninspiring, I wrote. I worked on my book, researched publishers and bought The Artists’ and Writers’ Yearbook. Every week I would post submissions off to agents and publishers around the world, hoping one of them might change my life.

I still have a box full of rejection letters.

At the time, those letters felt like failure. Looking back, they were evidence that I hadn’t given up on myself. Even while I was sitting behind someone else’s desk, I was already trying to build a different future.

The Window Box Moment

The real turning point came completely by accident.

I was in my thirties, living in Marylebone in a period property with a large window ledge crying out for a window box. I couldn’t find anyone who supplied what I wanted, so with the help of my mother, I made one myself.

When it was finished and sitting proudly outside my window, I stood looking at it and suddenly thought, “Everyone should have one of these. The whole street would look prettier.”

So I created a very simple leaflet and pushed copies through letterboxes on my street and nearby roads.

The next day a woman called.

To my surprise, she wanted to buy one.

I wasn’t entirely sure what I was doing. I visited her house, discussed plants, colours and window boxes and tried my best to sound knowledgeable and professional. Somehow it worked.

That first customer changed everything.

I had around £10,000 in savings, hated my job and decided I was going to make this work. I had professional leaflets printed and spent my days walking London’s streets delivering them through letterboxes.

I left my job, sharpened my PR skills, secured press coverage and built Balcombe Street Window Box Company into a successful business.

Looking back, the turning point wasn’t leaving my job.

The turning point was allowing myself to believe I could create something of my own.

One Problem Led To Another

What I’ve realised in my late fifties is that I never really set out to become an entrepreneur.

I was simply a problem solver who kept stumbling across problems that nobody else seemed to be fixing.

A window ledge led to my first business.

Being divorced later led me to create Page Introductions, a bespoke matchmaking agency.

And having a dog eventually led me to create Meet My Paws.

When I first brought Rusty home, I had no idea he would become part of my next chapter. Yet through him I saw how naturally dogs help people connect. They start conversations, create friendships and bring people together in ways that few things can.

After Covid, loneliness seemed to be everywhere. People were working from home, living far from family, spending more time online and less time with one another.

That led me to create Meet My Paws, a free, inclusive global community where dog owners and dog lovers can connect for friendship, walks, advice, travel and support.

For me, it has become much more than a business. It is about kindness, community and helping people feel they belong.

You never really know where life is going to lead you.

A window box changed my life.

A dog changed it again.

What small thing in your life might be quietly leading you towards your next chapter?

By Martine Davis

About the Author

Martine Davis is the founder of Meet My Paws, www.meetmypaws.com Insta @meetmypaws  a free global community connecting dog lovers through friendship, walks, travel and support. She is also the founder of Balcombe Street Window Box Company and Page Introductions.