This week we’re celebrating the fifth anniversary of our HR and recruitment consultancy, Norton Loxley, and we couldn’t be more thrilled. We started the business with just an initial investment of £50 each, and since then, we’ve had a five years of growth and success.
To mark International Women’s Day, we wanted to share our story in the hope that it will inspire other women to take the leap and become entrepreneurs too. Running our own business while raising young families has been challenging, but we haven’t looked back since launching Norton Loxley, and we encourage others to take the leap too.
Before starting the company, we had both worked in and around HR and recruitment for many years, and we came up with the idea of starting our own consultancy during a weekend away together with our families in 2017. Siobhan was at a natural crossroads in her career, and Siân was due to return to work following maternity leave. It felt like the perfect time to create a business that we could both develop and grow in the way that we wanted, and which would suit our family lives.
We brainstormed and pulled together our business concepts, and very quickly, the idea of Norton Loxley (or Sweet as it was back then) was born. We each paid £50 to purchase a domain name and set up a basic website, and, following the launch, the business began to evolve from a HR consultancy to a full-service HR and recruitment agency.
We established a client base of eight businesses in the first month, most of which are still clients today and we soon realised that our clients were also looking for support with recruitment – we saw this as a great opportunity to grow our business and the services we offered.
In 2022, we introduced a new service of specialist HR recruitment, meaning we can support more organisations in developing the best people functions, creating better workplaces and more profitable organisations and we haven’t looked back since.
As we mark our fifth anniversary, we’re celebrating our best year yet. In 2022, we undertook an extensive rebrand of the business in line with our growth plans and also hired our first employee, Sophie, who is now a key part of our team delivering work for our clients. We’re really excited about what the future holds and we’re set to grow again in 2023.
If anyone out there is thinking of starting their own business, we would encourage you to do it. Make sure your business plan and figures stack up, and get all the advice you can, but go for it. It could change your life.
We hope our story has inspired you to take the leap and start your own business.