Sherie Griffiths

‘Loretta and me, in the Gateway studio’

That’s the philosophy of my guest on last Thursday’s radio show, Loretta Fletcher – or rather, her boyfriend …

Loretta first came on the programme on 4th August, to talk about the impact on her business of the TV show ‘The Only Way Is Essex’.

This time, she was back to talk about something a whole lot more personal. In August, we talked a lot about what she does; but this time, it was all about why she does it – what prompted her, at the age of twenty, to leave her job in London, for a company focused on health and fitness, and set up in business on her own, as a beautician, specialising in healthier alternatives to traditional treatments.

Ironically, what sparked that decision was illness. In fact, if you read Loretta’s story, you’ll see it was even more than that. It was the sudden and completely unexpected onset of rheumatoid arthritis – closely followed by the equally sudden and unexpected experience of discrimination.

I’m not going to try paraphrasing the whole series of events. Loretta tells it much better in her own words than I ever could. All I will say is that she survived the initial symptoms, a wrong diagnosis, finally the right diagnosis – followed by medication – which brought some horrible side effects. She also survived a college experience which should have resulted in the institution in question taking a long, hard look at itself and its treatment of students with chronic conditions of all kinds – and now, she’s making it as a young entrepreneuse, having discovered a real gift for business, as well as beauty therapy.

Last week’s show was on air a day after the latest unemployment figures were released. There are currently 2.57m people out of work in the UK, of whom almost a million are ‘young people’ – under twenty-four – the highest number since separate recording of youth unemployment began, in 1994. No stats were published re people with disabilities, but experience tells me if there were, the numbers would be pretty high. Loretta could so easily have been one of those statistics; but instead, she’s building a thriving enterprise, with a growing list of celebrity clients.

While the closing record was playing on Thursday (Chris Brown’s ‘Beautiful People’), we were chatting a bit more about some of the points from the interview and she said with a grin, ‘My boyfriend always says “It’s mind over matter – and if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter’.

I’ve heard the saying before, of course – but it really meant something, after the catalogue of hassles and hurdles I’d been hearing about for the last twenty minutes. I don’t know about you, but I found a strong business message in there: we all come up against barriers of some kind or another in the course of our businesses, don’t we? They might be physical, financial, or even psychological – but whatever form they take, we either have to get over them, or quit. It’s as simple as that. The trouble is that many of us (and I know I’ve been guilty of this in the past) expend so much time and energy worrying about how we’re going to get through – or just raling against the injustice of finding ourselves faced with these obstacles at all! – that we lose momentum. It’s those who take the ‘mind over matter’ approach who find themselves able to step over the high-jump pole or walk through brick walls.

This Thursday’s programme is very different. I’m talking to Ivan Newman of Living Inside The Brand, about excellent customer service… Although, maybe it’s not that different. Some customer service encounters can feel like banging your head against a brick wall – whichever side you’re on – can’t they …?

You can catch the programme at 3PM this Thursday afternoon, on 97.8 FM in Basildon & East Thurrock, or online, at gateway978.com, anywhere.