Let me set the scene. New house, lovely. Same job, also perfectly fine. The bit in the middle? A two-hour drive I was now expected to do twice a day, every day, presumably until the end of time.

I did the maths. Four hours a day in a car, to go and sit in an office I didn't especially want to sit in. Something had to give, and it wasn't going to be the house.

So I did the calm, sensible thing. I quit and started my own business.

(There was slightly more thought to it than that. Slightly.)

Before all this, there was Spain

I lived in Spain for 29 years, which is long enough to do most of your adult life somewhere with considerably better weather.

My CV from those years is, let's say, varied:

• Ten years in banking
• A stint in IT support
• A good run of admin and reception roles
• Senior account manager in the yachting industry in Mallorca (yes, the boats were lovely, no, I did not get to keep one)
• International business associate at a craft company

It looks like a scattered CV because it is one. But there was a thread running through all of it, and the thread was this: I didn't much enjoy working for other people.

Not the people themselves. The setup. Having my days planned for me. Reporting to someone, and then reporting on the reporting. Office environments full of, well, other people. The quiet, constant lack of freedom.

So when the commute maths stopped adding up, it wasn't really a hard decision. It was just the final nudge.

I didn't set out to be a designer

Here's the bit I didn't plan.

When I started out on my own, it was admin support. The unglamorous, genuinely useful stuff that keeps a small business upright. Then a few clients asked if I'd mind looking after their social media too. I said yes.

And then something quietly clicked. The tasks I kept gravitating towards were the creative ones. Building marketing materials. Making things look properly good. Turning a vague "can you make this a bit nicer?" into something a client was actually proud to share.

Turns out I was good at it. Turns out I loved it. So that became the plan.

What DB Creative Solutions is actually for

Here's what I've worked out after all of this.

Loads of brilliant people have the ideas. The vision, the message, the thing they really want to say. What they don't always have is the time, the tools, or the confidence to make it look the way it deserves to.

That gap is where I come in.

I work with coaches and consultants, self-published authors, creative small businesses, and women running brilliant businesses who find the tech side a bit much. (No judgement. The tech side IS a bit much.)

You bring the ideas. I make them real.

When you're stuck, or unsure where to turn next, or you've been staring at the same design for forty minutes wondering why it looks slightly wonky, that's my cue.

Down to earth, and quietly good at this

If you take one thing from my first ever blog post, let it be this.

I'm not a agency. I'm a real, fairly down-to-earth person who knows what she's doing and does it properly. No mystery, no jargon, no making you feel daft for asking a question.

I'd love for you to finish reading this and feel like something's clicked. Like the support you've been meaning to sort out has suddenly got a lot less daunting. Like maybe, just maybe, I'm the missing piece of your creative puzzle.

If any of that landed, I'd genuinely love to hear from you.

No hard sell. No corporate waffle. And definitely no four-hour commute required.

Get in touch and let's have a proper chat.