��ѿ��ý

I am health and well being practitioner and I write a free women’s newsletter each week and do workshops, I also run a five star guest house which is now successful and very much has its own philosophy. After five years of unsuccessfully seeking the right relationship I began another business called Live and Let's Date with the idea of�� bringing single professional people together in a fun social occasion with mixed company which us singles often miss out on. I have boundless energy and enthusiasm, this unlimited energy and great ability to manage under stress makes me a good leader and teacher. It was not always this way.

My father and mother both had their own businesses into which my mother assumed I would naturally migrate. Having left school, I followed her advice and took a secretarial course then went to work in her shop.�� However, I soon realised that my teenage years, living isolated on a farm had passed me by and I felt I was too young to be old. I decided to follow in my father's footsteps instead and literally took my first step to independence via agricultural college and away from home.

Then I went on to work for Asda as a produce buyer and gradually worked my way through the ranks from trainee to senior buyer on grocery. It was at this point I became truly disappointed and disillusioned with my career development at Asda and decided to move on to pastures new after nine and a half years. I then went to work for Makro for four years and won an award for “outstanding performance” two years in a row.�� I was really pleased at the time but have since realised this was just another personal ‘stress’ trap.

Niki's dad (centre) in happier times

In the meantime the catalyst that was to change my whole life was beginning to manifest. My father had been diagnosed with bowel cancer, everything changed but in reality not enough changed or perhaps it just changed too late. My father’s death forced me to take a serious look at my life.

When my father became ill we both tried many different therapies and I was so impressed I actually began to study some of them. It was so enlightening and had such effect on the way I viewed myself and my life that I began to study more and more subjects, including reflexology, aromatherapy, natural nutrition, homeopathy, flower essences, kinesiology and integrative therapy.��

There is an ever increasing number of single people and an ever increasing number of opportunities to meet other single people. However is dating actually getting any easier? I personally would suggest not. Having being single mostly for the last five�� years, I can honestly say I have tried it all.

I have gone from the ‘elite’ of dating services to the internet, phone dating, speed dating and of course the ever hopeful pub and club scene with great success, if you class understanding as what you definitely don't want.

I have some real horror stories but they have not all been bad experiences, I have met some terrific guys and had some fun. However the end result has been somewhat disappointing. So I decided to take a good look at why it was not working for me and I was amazed at the obvious answers I came up with.

��The opportunities for just dating were not adequate. I wanted to mix with single men, practice what I have studied for years on dating and relationships and just get to know someone in the good old fashioned way before it proceeded to the next level, which it tends to do all too quickly.

I remember going on a ‘Closing the deal’ course last year and the one thing that stuck in my mind was the phrase ‘Fail to prepare and prepare to fail’.�� When I finally wrote up all my ideas, preparations and plans I realised that the current dating opportunities were just not meeting my needs.

��Meeting someone with similar interests is difficult and whilst the profiles tell you something about the person very few of the men that used these sites actually match up. Honesty becomes a key factor - email, texting and telephone communication can be so misleading. Time is also a factor - meeting up with someone can take up a whole evening when you know in the first 10 minutes whether the chemistry is there. My solution was to create a new business providing a dating service that meets someone's personal needs instead of an impersonal service that is more about making money than making relationships.
��
��