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Hi Rosie here from Life is Short Magazine and today I'm talking to Sharon Kilby
who
upped and moved from the UK and did a big move with her family
to Tuscany and she's going to tell you how you can do it to.
Hi Sharon how are you? I'm fine, how are you?
Oh good, how is Tuscany? Very, very hot,
slightly sticky and better off staying in doors at the moment.
Okay, so Sharon you did
two big changes in your life, first of all you were living the corporate
lifestyle with your husband and two kids
and you send your son of to nursery and
then you decided to actually start your own business in the UK so we are going
talk about that first,
and then you upped and moved everybody
to Tuscany, what was the decision to actually
step out of the corporate lifestyle where you could buy everything you wanted,
what was the decision there?
Well, life was very, very busy
we both have very high incomes, but we were out
all day doing our jobs and we didn't have any time
to do stuff outside the job so it was
fairly miserable really, and there was one point where I dropped
Archie our son when he was a baby to nursery
and then I followed a car full of children
obviously, going somewhere on a nice day out and I felt fairly
annoyed and thought this has got to change
I'm going to do something about it because at the end of the day
we were working very, very hard earning quiet reasonable wages
but that was being spent on travel, on childcare
and it was crazy, we were earning money that we were never seeing, so,
we decided we would change that. So, you were just sort of earning money to
actually pay for things to facilitate you to
go to work really. Exactly, and it seemed
to be indoctrinated into people of my age
at that time, you would have your children and then you would go back to work
full-time and you would pay for the childcare
so that you could do that, it was just a circle of
tiredness actually, and it wasn't much fun for anybody, so we
decided that there has got to be a better way
to earn a crust and to carry on with your life. So,
how did you make the decision, did you sit down Gary, or was it just you saying
I'm not having anymore of this, what was the decision process?
Well, at the end of the day, we've always
been best friends as well as husband and wife,
so, we do everything together, I know that sounds a bit cheesy but, you know
ideas or plans it would be the two of us doing it,
and he was miserable in his job and I was miserable in my job
and we actually had gathered skills
in those jobs, which we realised we were quite good at,
I realised accidentally that I was ok at writing
and therefore why was I writing for somebody else
that didn't really appreciate that much, and also,
you know, why I could I not use those skills to earn money that
was not filtered and came straight to us
rather than through a large corporation or through an employer
so, Gary and I between us decided that why don't we start
trying to earn money outside of our jobs
and see how it went. Okay, so you set up
a writing and PR company as such, is that right?
Yeah, I was working as a PR Account Director for a reasonable size
marketing company, and I discovered accidentally that
I was really quite enthusiastic about certain things
and certain clients floated my boat a lot more than others.
So, I realised I quite enjoyed writing about interior design,
I quite enjoyed writing about furniture design,
and gardens and I built up a really good rapport with some
journalists and thought actually I don't mind doing this
for a job, this is quite fun and I seem to be doing ok at it,
and so I reduced my hours in
my employment and that I think
four days a week and then had a day free where I
started to develop a freelance career. Okay, so you
stepped into it gradually so it wasn't like a big learning thing? Absolutely, yeah.
Then you went and took the big leap and set up
and Gary stepped out of his business as well didn't he? He came into business
with you?
He did, it was a bit later on and
at that time Gary was working as a, oh gosh,
where you do Corporate entertainment, corporate
fun days and things like that. He was taking large groups
of executives out onto Dartmoor and putting them through
their paces, so they could do bonding and team building and all that stuff,
and there was actually quite a lot of PR related to that role,
so I started freelancing and found a few nice little clients
and very, very quickly ditched my day job. Okay, great.
Sorry, probably within three months. Fantastic, okay so,
you did that and then you
could spend more time at home although you are now an entrepreneur so
you
were probably working 70 hours a week to stop working for somebody for forty
hours a week that's what I find with
entrepreneurs, but, at least you were at home
with your kids, did you have two children at this stage? No, we had Archie at the time
and he
was two and he is nearly thirteen now. Okay,
so you worked away at that and
then, probably a lot of your work was online was it?
as technology developed? Actually, you know
back then so you are talking over ten years ago
things were very different, there wasn't so much online communication,
I would have to have monthly meetings with clients even cantilevers were
sent out in the post with pictures
just stuck onto them, there was no emailing of these
pictures, we had to send out cd's and things
to contact, it was quite different ten years ago, things were very, very different.
I did establish a good
rapport, create a hectic
home office but Archie still went to nursery but
only in the morning for three hours okay, I crammed in as
much work as I could do in that time and then he was home for the afternoon
and then as he got a little older,
our business took off and Gary ditched
the job he was doing and came on board because
I trusted him and we always worked quite well together.
Okay, so then how
did you make the decision then to take the leap and move to Tuscany or why did
you make that decision?
What was the process there? Well, having children did change things
in other words, how we looked at what we wanted to do, we became
less shallow probably and we wanted less stuff,
we just enjoyed being with the children and doing,
just chilling out. Moving to Tuscany
many years ago, probably sixteen years ago, Gary worked in Italy
I visited him pre-children, we loved it, we loved
the way that Italian children had a childhood, they
were welcomed in all restaurants, we lived as a family together
and real simple pleasures are very important and that really resonated
with us and so in the back of our minds, we always had this idea that if it were
financially possible
or we could live/work in Tuscany we would give it a go.
Okay and that happened so it was about seven years ago you made the leap?
So, we made a decision to come to Italy about
well, it was always there but probably about eight years ago,
yeah, our daughter Tabby is now about eight and a half,
so when she was about six months old
we came to Italy a on a holiday, I brought the laptop
with me and Gary my husband and the two children went off for a long
rampant walk in the olive groves where we were staying
I was on my laptop working as I had some deadlines to meet
and I watched them disappear off into the olive groves through the little window
so romantic,
and then I worked for nearly two hours and I was also studying for an exam
then, I was studying horticulture as well,
and I had to study for the exams and I had hit some deadlines
and I worked really in a focused way for a couple of hours,
did it,
sent off the stuff I needed to, turned the computer off
I either made a coffee or poured a glass of wine and I watched them walk back up the olive grove and I
you know I thought we could do this, we could work from anywhere
as long as we are moderately organized.
Okay, so that was your realization that
been able to do stuff online you could actually work from anywhere, so
you could have an office free
sort of business to support your lifestyle.
I've got my office in a bag behind me,
It's my hot desk office bag and
I will show you if you want me to in a minute, I will lift it up and show you,
but I can work from my little study or
I can work, well I'm in my bedroom right now as it is a little bit cooler,
I can work from outside on the table with the beautiful views,
if I'm not being eaten by mosquitoes or
if I really need to go clear my head, I take my little hot desk office
bag which has all the details of the projects I'm working on at the moment
and I can I can just disappear, wherever, to the
swimming pool or to the library or to
you know or to a coffee bar. Okay, fantastic,
so did you have to sell a house, did you have loads of savings, did you win
the lotto or were you running from a
criminal gang or something that actually made the change?
We were multimillionaires and we decided to leave all our money to the dogs home!
No, that is not true, we just had an income,
we didn't have any savings, in reality we did
have family who were living in Italy who could give us some
guide lines and some help because they had been inspired by our dreams to move to Italy
and they decided to it earlier, so we weren't just moving
on our own, we had good friends and family member in Italy
who could help us find schools, things like that
other than that we had no savings, no financial help from
anybody, we had built our own business up
to a level where the
lifestyle and amenities weren't going to be more expensive if anything
they would be cheaper. We didn't sell our house because we had sold our house many years ago
and we had been renting since so we weren't cash rich
we had no savings what we did have was
a flipping great bag of enthusiasm and that was that.
Okay, so you
gave up your rented place in the UK,
and then you moved over to Tuscany?
So, tell us a bit about that process.
Well, what we did, after a trip to Tuscany
where I watched the guys disappear off on their walk and I done some work,
well I started looking for properties,
that we could rent in Italy and I spent hours on the internet and
hours on the telephone contacting random people
and narrowed it down to four houses and came out with Archie
who was five or six at the time and it was important that he chose the house,
So, he chose where we were going to live. So you
involved the children in it? Of course, because
Tabitha was too little, she was a baby but Archie was going to pick where we were going to live and we looked
at various farm houses, ridiculous
apartments, some Italian families welcomed us with open arms
others saw, money, money, opportunity,
but we did find somewhere, a beautiful house
it was very rustic, great fun with the electricity
and water over the years but it was a brilliant starting
point, it was in a good location, with some village schools and
anything you could possibly need, we took that rental on
and the rental in England overlapped with the one in Italy which gave us
a breathing space of about three months to physically move over, it was a bit of a costly
exercise but it was worth having that three month change over period.
Okay, so you went gradually, you didn't have to pack up the car with everybody
in it
and then move or is that what you did? Well, we did,
we took the rental in Italy in September handed in our notice in England
and in November, Gary and a friend of ours drove
a truck with all our belonging to Italy. Wow.
Archie, Tabitha and I stayed
in the house in England with no furniture for six weeks.
We had six
weeks great fun washing jeans and stuff
by hand in the freezing cold in Devon
for six weeks and we slept
on camp beds and then Gary drove back with the empty truck
we literally slept on camp beds and we cooked on a Rayburn, there was a Rayburn
in the house and
we camped for the remaining five or six weeks,
until we drove our car out with the animals.
With the animals! Oh, you had pets, you brought.
We had really old animals
at the risk of sounding very, very nasty we sort of
held back our dreams thinking that they would tootle off and you know,
you know pass away peacefully,
though in the end we decided that we would just take them all with us
and it would be wonderful, so, when we left on the
fifteenth of December, we drove over with two elderly lurchers
and a one eyed cat. And two young kids!
No, Archie came in the car with us, we sent Tabby on an airplane with her grandad
because she doesn't like to be enclosed or
told what to do, so even at that young age we sent her in a different
way. That sounds fantastic, well an adventure anyway,
so you got to Italy, what are the
pros and cons of living in Italy now,
like in Tuscany,
would you go back to the UK?
I wouldn't go back to the UK, I do go back to the UK to see family
I couldn't live there and
you do hear stories of people who move over seas and it doesn't work out so they move back to England
but then,
there is no brighter future in England than
anywhere in my opinion, if you run out of money
find work, it doesn't matter
if I was back in the UK and I needed
find work, then I would get off my backside and do it, if I'm in
Italy and need to find some work, I have to get off my rear end and do it,
There just seems to be like
in my opinion that people in the UK feel that they are
stuck, they are stuck without a job or they are stuck in a
job they hate but you are never actually stuck
anywhere unless there are serious circumstances
in the world, actually it is down
you have to make ends meet, you have
build a future for yourself and with enough
hard work and enthusiasm it is pretty possible.
Okay, so you had some clients in your PR business that you could still
service as such while you were over there and then you actually started a
business in Italy didn't you, you started a horticulture/landscaping business
I see you have now, is it? Yeah,
we still have the PR business in the UK, the PR is still going, we
still have British clients and Italian clients
and our job is to get them recognition in the
magazine and when we first moved to Italy we were
very upfront with our clients, you will still have your monthly meetings and
also we used some freelance writers and PR people
who had a good relationship with the clients,
they weren't far away if we needed them to go and see them
I did up the ante on the communication front,
so before in England I would maybe speak to the client every ten days
when I came to Italy I was speaking to them every three or four days as I didn't want them to feel
that they were neglected because they certainly weren't.
Okay, it wasn't like you had a big corporate company, you
didn't have like
billions of clients, you had a few key clients? We had about
8 clients I think at that time and you know
in all fairness probably two or three of them
over time felt uncomfortable, they weren't happy,
they wanted someone local and so they did adjust, but,
those clients were replaced with other clients who actually
were probably at the right thinking
that it didn't matter where I'm based and
the service that I provide and that was always good enough
hopefully and in their opinion they don't mind that at all, they did
threaten to come and visit all the time but that is ok. Once you get the job done for them
they're happy so you keep them happy. I do get back to the UK every six
to eight weeks, I'll take a really short break which is you know
maybe two/three days, I go back see the clients
because there is nothing like a face-to-face meeting,
but they don't need me to, it is just something that makes me feel more comfortable.
Well,so as I say you are now like a multi-passionate entrepreneur or as I like to call
people
because you have your PR business which is ticking a long,
paying the rent, you know, and keeping the
wolf from the door and then you have your landscaping business which you run
in Italy. Yes.
Tell us about that! I've always loved plants and
gardening, that is why I love Italy so much.
There is the sunshine and the heat,
the climate is so different
that the plants are actually different.
I did go back to college to study horticulture when
Tabitha was a baby because I felt that I should get
a real background and gritty information, even though I've always been a keen gardener and I liked to be
be creative, and I study with the Royal Horticultural Society in
in the UK before we left basically,
and for the last three years I have been designing gardens and
landscaping in Tuscany
for all sorts of different clients, mostly foreign
clients as they want an English speaking garden designer
and there aren't that many of us and that is what I am doing here and that
is a bag of fun, quite stressful but fun.
So, you've actually tapped into the expat community to
develop your business on location because they want somebody who's English,
English-speaking, alright?
Yes, there are in Tuscany, quite a few properties
owned by stranieri,
strangers as we are called in Italian which means their
foreign but they don't live here all the time and
in fairness they don't understand the climate, and it is very different in different parts of Tuscany,
some is Alpine and some is Mediterranean and
you can't just have a Tuscan garden and expect it to survive,
many people don't realise that water does run out even if you are on the main water
it can run out, so
these considerations need to be taken into account, last
summer we had not one drop of rain for at least four months.
Wow. This year is complete different
but there are many things that somebody who doesn't live here permanently would
never think of and that is where we can bridge that gap, we can
talk to them in their native language and explain the issues
and slightly educate them of what's possible and
what's not possible and then over the time you've got some great contacts with local
Artisans,
brilliant gardeners, fantastic craftsmen
and we've got this wonderful rapport on database with
people that can do all the bits for us that needs to be done in the garden.
Okay, what is the name of your business or what is your website?
It's Bella Terra Garden Design which means beautiful earth.
So, I will put that link on, actually just
did you speak Italian before you went off to Italy the two of you?
Yes, Gary spoke a bit of Italian because he lived here years ago temporarily whilst he was working here
but we hired as it was very important for
us to have some knowledge, we had a tutor that came to our house once a week
over ten months
and she would spend half and hour with Archie who was about six then
and she'd be playing football with him doing counting games and
stuff that was fun for him, he was starting to
recognize some words and then she did an hour and a half in evenings with us
in fairness
we were absolutely shattered, we'd been working all day,
we were packing up to move house, we were organizing everything, we'd
sit there with these huge eyes and we would have to lie that we had done our homework because we hadn't done our
homework and
I would be thinking of excuses why we hadn't done our homework, it was like being back at school
but it did help, she was wonderful, Sylvia was a fantastic
tutor and she certainly gave Archie
the confidence he needed to
utter his first Italian words. So are you know fluent in
Italian or are the kids? No, I speak Italian
badly, I can speak in the present tense I can't speak in the
future tense or the past tense, my Italian is
functional and slightly random. Gary can speak Italian in a
functional way without the randomness,
and both children are completely fluent. Wow, so the kids have picked it up and
they are
thirteen and eight, are they? Yeah,
Archie will be thirteen next month, so he is in his last year of
middle school and Tabitha is going
going into her fourth year of elementary school. What is the school system like over there,
do you find it good or is it similar to the UK? It's different,
I think everything in this area,
I can't talk about Italy as a whole because there is different areas in Italy
they are so changeable, in Tuscany there are
pros and cons to most things,
compared to England or compared to the region I lived in, in Devon
but overall, the views are better and so is the food and so is the wine.
The schooling
system is completely different, if a child falls over and
smashes it's knee, the teacher will pick it up and kiss it, hug it until it is
okay and that is not possible in the UK anymore.
There is a lot more,
it seems more caring over here
the link between the family and the teachers are much stronger
so you would go and have coffee with the teacher and talk about the problems
and things in a relaxed manner. There are things that are lacking
and bizarre over here
but we had this bad experience with Archie and a school in the UK
we felt that the kids had become numbers, we had many
incidences where people didn't really show any interest in the individual personalities
of the children, particularly in schools that Archie was in
and here is is very different, most are good but there are some areas
lacking, the kids learn English at school
and they don't learn
exceptionally good English because they are learning from an Italian, so,
it was the same when I was at school, I learned French from a Welsh woman.
Okay, your kids don't need to learn English so they are okay.
For the Italian children it's very important
that they learn to speak English, but, overall the schooling
is utterly different,
they go in the morning from 8.15am to 1.15pm,
you have a flexible schooling system where you can choose if your kids go full time or part time,
which I
think is fantastic,
the grandparents are involved a lot more because that is a whole cultural thing, so when we pick our children
up from school at lunchtime,
seventy percent picking up children are grandparents because the family acts
as one extended unit at all times.
Wow, yeah, I found that in Italy as well whenever I'm over there it's
Sunday is a big family day where they all get together for a big meal so it is
you know it's lovely, it's a lovely part of the culture, it is
so family orientated. Yeah.
So, okay, so the
school system you can actually finish at 1.30pm
and do they go back in the afternoon or is that it?
No, if you started your children full time they would
have lunch at school and then they are meant to their homework in the afternoon
under some supervision,
generally speaking they don't get it all done because they are having a bit of a laugh.
Right, okay. That is my personal experience,
or they finish at lunch time and then they come home
and they do their homework at home and they go out to do some more activities
and one thing they have taken a lot of getting use to is
schools here do not include sport or
anything additional that might happen in schools
in the UK or in England.
So Archie does some activities outside of school so does Tabby,
music such as guitar lessons, that is all
happens outside of the school. Okay,
so how is your lifestyle over there now,
give us a typical day,
a typical Sharon day? A typical Sharon day starts
with one of us shouting at the dog, because
we have two crazy dogs, it depends
on the season, it is really seasonal,
at the moment the children are on holiday they have been on holiday since the middle of June
and we are now starting August so
an average day for us, we get up super early, well not super early
but quite early because one of use would be going to work in the garden
and it is nearly forty degrees here at the moment and we want to get as much done as possible
in the morning so we will be up at 5.30am
the dogs will be out, one of us
will go of to see to the garden maintenance the other will be at their desk
we tend to do split shifts, Gary and I between us, one of us
will be at our desk, I try to put in five hours of work every morning
so I try and do five hours at my computer,
or five hours out at a garden.
One of us is always here for the children unless we need to nip out very quickly
as Archie is quite big,
and a typical day the children would get up about 9,00am,
in the summertime and they will slowly
eat, very slowly, like tortoises eat
and then we try to get them to do an hours homework
and then after that, depending on how hot it is, we
are very lucky that out the back of the garden, out the back of the countryside
on their bikes, on the trampoline, playing badminton,
harassing neighbors,
going swimming at friends pools, it's all about being outside when it's not
too hot,
and when it is too hot, they will come in read books, watch films
but in
afternoons we do less work, I suppose our rhythm is that
Gary and will do a couple hours of work in the evening as well, so we will probably do five hours in the morning
and two to three hours in the evening, but the afternoons are pretty much
very hot we just chill out. Relax.
If it's a school day then everybody is up and out,
children go to school, we go to work
for the morning and then mostly we would have lunch together,
and then they do their homework and we do our computer work in the afternoon.
We are eating together, going to the beach together,
enjoying stuff that are not expensive
because the things we enjoy doing, do not cost a lot of money anyway
so life is you know, we have a huge vegetable garden
and the children get paid to water the veg, bring down the tomatoes and all that
stuff.
and mostly they come back, Mum can you and water
the veg because most of the time they have had a water fight,
it's those simple things that are nice and
and good fun. So, you are living the good life as such.
It's not the Tuscan dream, it's bloody
hard work but the view is fantastic,
and the, you know,
the things that matter don't break the bank and
our children are growing up with a life that
is fairly idyllic, even if they don't realise it now, when they are grown ups
they will look back and realise this was for all of us. What about
social life, do you have a social life? No,
we stay on the hill on our own, no, that's not true,
Gary is very sporty and he always has been,
and so we have to keep our personalities, we are still Brits you know,
so he joined the local rugby club
because he actually qualified as a rugby
coach here in Italy to teach children, to teach
the youngsters, so for two to three years
he's been coaching the younger players, at the local rugby club
so we make great friends through sport,
great friends through school because obviously
when you've got children they make friends themselves and then you meet up with parents,
we have developed a really nice group of friends but they are
ninety nine percent Italian because we didn't really move to Italy
to be friends by other people that have
left England. Okay,
and so, just one final thing then,
how do the costs compare in Italy, how much is
it to rent a house in Italy, how much is it to
buy vegetables compared to the UK?
Okay, it is actually very changeable depending on the region,
where we live, it is not that cheap because
it is a sought after region, we ended up here by chance,
but, what we pay for our rental here is cheaper than what we paid
in the UK, I would say
we pay eight hundred euros a month
for a three bedroom pretty nice house in
Tuscany. It's a big house with a big, big garden as well!
Yeah, well it's a huge garden, we have a separate vegetable garden,
it's really lovely, we have a huge outside dining area
and the rental prices, you know,
to the North of England are probably very high
my mother-in-law lives in the North of England, she says it is a lot of money, compared to what we were paying in Devon
it is not a lot of money at all, we would have paid a lot more, the utilities
bills are variable, they are quite costly,
something like the gas bill, it is a bit of a monopoly because we don't have the choice that you have in the UK.
In the UK, you can switch around
here there are very few, in some respects Tuscany
is where the UK was maybe twenty/twenty five years ago,
but other things,
food, drink,
other things are ridiculously cheap, wine for example you know
it's very, very well priced, we will go and buy local wine
from the vineyard, two minutes in the car
and we will buy five liters of red wine,
for seven euro. Five liters of red wine for seven euros, oh my god!
You don't want to drink that all the time, because you will end up with no teeth.
And a very sore head!!
Exactly, silly things are
we can go and buy fantastic cheese,
wonderful meat, I'm vegetarian but the men aren't,
they make up for that. Some great salami,
fantastic Pecorino, a bottle of local wine and
you've got your lunch for four people, of course the kids
don't have the wine, four people for under five euro. Wow!
So, things that would be unobtainable in UK
are very attainable here, and we try and build in a little bit of that
holiday feeling in every single day, you know,
we have a glass of wine in the garden of an evening,
we will walk the dogs in the vineyards, because,
you don't know if you are going to get mowed down by a truck tomorrow, I don't see the point
in the long term of living for your next holiday, that
seems to me to be crazy, I think you should try to build from what you loved on your holidays into
your every day life. Wow, that's a lovely idea and you're
living it, you are
the dream and you didn't have to wait to win the lotto to do it
you are actually doing it. So, okay,
just if somebody was thinking of doing what you did
like upping shop and moving to
Italy, what would you advise or what would you do differently now
or did you do it all right?
I would always say have a
contingency pot of money, you don't know
if your car is going to go off the side of a cliff,
you don't know if your elderly dog
are going to continue living for another four years expensively, okay,
the bigger contingency pot of money you've
got for emergency the better,
being informed, the informed you are will take away a big amount of stress,
so for example, we had been in Italy not very long
but Tabby decided to throw herself off the back
of the sofa and head butt the floor hard and these are all stone
floors in here, we had endless trips to A&E
but being informed about how systems work
being informed about what you need when
you turn up at A&E, you will need to have a medical card,
knowledge is crucial, the more knowledge you have the better,
and having a little of pot money aside will
release the stress whether you have an emergency, well actually
no matter where you live there will be everyday emergencies,
there will be car crashes, there will be ill animals,
there will be children throwing themselves off bicycles when doing one potato, two potato,
these things
can happen you wherever you are and so
money you know doesn't buy you happiness but having enough
for the emergencies will certainly reduce the stress.
Okay, well thank you Sharon and just give me the name of your website again?
The garden website is:
Bella Terra Garden Design and we have a blog
that you can look at, we don't have a website we have a blog
which tells you bits and pieces of what we do and where we do them and
and RMCR is our PR company based in
the UK and I'm sure I can give you the details later.
Bella Terra Gardens and RMCR
and really I think you can live anywhere do anything if
you are stubborn enough.
That is your key, is it, be stubborn? Stubborn and
and enthusiastic and
make everybody around you believe that you can do it
and will. Perfect, perfect.
Thanks very much Sharon and if you want to read
Sharon's interview that we have just dumb and get details of her sight,
and also tips to moving to Tuscany,
do go to Life is Short Magazine.com
and you can sign up there, it's free magazine and you can read
all about it there, you can also listen to the audio of this as well
as you go along in your car, so do download the podcast as well
so I'm Rosie and thank you very much Sharon and
we'll talk again soon. Okay Rosie, thank you very much
and good luck if ever you wanted to do something as crazy as moving to Tuscany
it's worth it. Great.