Resilience in Action: How Three Utility Warehouse Partners Transformed Their Lives

Neil: Before UW, I ran a pub. The troubles we had with running the pub was obviously COVID had happened, then we had a really bad snowstorm, and it actually made the flat roof of our pub collapse. Then in the October of that year, we had a huge flood. All of the cellar was flooded, and it ruined all the beer equipment, the air con, the CCTV, all the safes, and we had to put that business into liquidation. UWs obviously changed myself, my partner, and my kids’ lives massively because it’s more than replaced the income of what we were earning from that pub within 13 months of joining, which is insane. I think how UW’s really helped with my resilience is just the team that’s involved. I didn’t feel like I was on my own. I said to my mentor who brought me into the business, I said, the first thing I need to do is find Neil because I had lost him. He was gone. The amount of support is incredible, and these people want to help you get to where you are. You know, we have weekly team Zoom calls, we have training, we have get togethers. So, you’re not on your own and yes, it is your own business but it’s so much more than that. It’s something that has helped me grow and find myself again. I’m way happier now. I’m less stressed because I’m in control of my own diary, my own time, but it also has the much bigger picture that you can build it as a business. You can build it into something that can grow to wherever you want it to get to and that’s something that my traditional bricks and mortar business could never have had.

Julie: Before UW, I was massively struggling, so I’d gone through a marriage breakdown, and it put massive strains on my incomings because I’d gone from two wages to one and I just could not cover everything that was going out to what I had coming in. Didn’t get a minute to myself to enjoy being a mum that I’d longed to be forever. It was just me stressed all the time, working all hours. Just literally two days before I was shown UW, I received a bailiff letter, and it was just a scary, scary time. I just thought, I have no way out here. I just couldn’t see a way of getting through it and that was when I thought something has got to change. UW has impacted my life in such a way that I never, ever could have imagined was possible. It’s gave my children a happy mum back when I was always a really stressed mummy. I just have time to do everything with them now. I can go to their sports days, we can go to the beach, and I’m not at their events and feeling stressed thinking, I’m going to get a phone call, I’m going to get a work call. It’s just lovely that I can be that mum that I long to be.

Heather: Both my parents were told they had terminal cancer. In the end, we decided that I would move in with them, and they would stay at home for all their care, and I would do it myself. It was very tough. So, for me, my UW was my escape. I would have a little office set up in a spare bedroom and as soon as mum and dad were fine, I would go off and I would do an appointment, but I would do them remotely with people all around the country that didn’t know me, they didn’t know my situation, they didn’t know my mum, or my dad were poorly. So, they weren’t asking me questions where I had to tell them all the sad things that were going on and I would lose myself in the appointment. It was my lifeline. It was my conversations that I was having with other people that kept me going.