High Flying Design

EDITOR’S LETTER

I grew up in Clacton-on-Sea, a town most people leave if they can. My dad was a postman, and my mum? Well, she did whatever brought money in, steady jobs that just got us by. There were men who worked for themselves around us, tradesmen, builders, but I didn't know a single woman who did. Building something of your own, as a woman, wasn't part of the world I knew.

That was true until I met Dina. She lived across the road, and every morning she drove off in her Mini Cooper to her own hair salon. She was the first woman I’d ever seen who was her own boss. I'd been told that wasn't realistic for someone like me. Dina was the only proof I had that actually, it could be.

That's the thing about role models. You can't picture a life you've never seen someone live. Dina wasn't chasing some grand passion. She was just visibly doing it her own way, and that was enough to show a girl across the road that a different path existed.

It turns out that doesn't stop when you grow up. Eight out of ten young people in the UK can't name a single female entrepreneur, a quiet ceiling on what girls, and grown women, believe is possible.

So that's what High Flying Design is. The proof. Honest interviews with women building businesses right now, the real version, not the polished one. And the roadmap to go with it: practical advice on business, mindset and life, from women a few steps ahead. Not to make you into someone else, but to help you build your thing, your own way, and see that what you're building is already good.

I bumped into Dina recently and asked to interview her. She said she probably wasn't interesting enough, that nobody would want to read her story. She was wrong. When we sat down, she told me she'd had no idea what she'd meant to me. She changed the course of my life and never knew she'd done it.

You might be doing that for someone right now, without realising it. So whatever you're building, I hope you keep going. A business that doesn't work out is something you recover from. The harder thing is never knowing what you could have built and who you might have become along the way.

— Shannon Kate Murray, Founder & Editor

EDITOR’S LETTER

High Flying Design is an online magazine for women in business. Written by female founders a few steps ahead. However you define success, we're here to help you reach your own version of it.