How To Find your Shop’s Essential Numbers Even When You’re Allergic to Spreadsheets.

I was never good at maths. In fact, I'd go further than that. I hated it. I seemed to have an almost allergic reaction to maths lessons at school. The moment numbers appeared, my brain switched off. Nothing about them interested me whatsoever.

I wanted to make things. As a child, I'd spend hours making "potions" in my mum's kitchen, building dens, imagining fairies in the garden, reading, drawing and making clothes for my dolls with my grandma. As I grew older, the urge to make things only got stronger.

I sewed. I patchworked. I quilted. I embroidered. I did cross stitch. I made jointed teddy bears. I made clothes. I drew. I even did most of the work for my older sister's GCSE Textiles project. (Please don't report us to the exam board!) Then I did my own. At the same time, I started doing the odd craft fair, selling baby bibs, dribble cloths and storage bags decorated with matching appliqué motifs. I couldn't stop making things.

Then, when I was sixteen, we opened the shop and my creative urge found a new outlet. Alongside the art and antiques, we sold cards and gifts. Cards had already become a bit of an obsession. I'd kept cards from a very young age. In fact, I still have the card my sister sent me for my eighth birthday. My sister’s bedroom walls were covered in pop star posters. I had a huge collage of my favourite greetings cards.

I loved choosing cards at our local newsagent back when most newsagents had brilliant card departments. I loved helping choose the cards for our shop too. I went to trade fairs with my mum. I sat with agents. I helped choose products. When our first delivery arrived, I unpacked it with huge excitement. It felt magical.

Sadly, around the same time, my grandad became very ill. We'd prepared the front rooms for the shop opening, only to clear everything away again to hold his wake after the funeral. The opening was delayed. But eventually we got back on track and opened at the start of the summer holidays.

I spent every spare minute in the shop. I loved it. The products. The displays. The atmosphere. The possibilities.

But maths never really entered the picture. We priced products according to the advice we'd been given. We marked things up in the way suppliers suggested. The agents were incredibly helpful and generous with their advice and we were grateful for it. But if I'm honest, I don't think we'd ever really done the sums. Not properly. Probably not at all. And that's where things gradually started to unravel. Because loving products and making a shop look lovely is not the same thing as understanding a business.

A few years later I graduated and came back home. And suddenly the question became unavoidable. Could this business support itself? Could it support the Hall? Could it support my parents? Could it enable my mum to leave teaching? For the first time, maths wasn't an academic subject. It wasn't an exam. It wasn't a spreadsheet. It wasn't something being done to me. It was the answer to an important question. What would it take to make this business work?

That's when my dad and I sat down and started gathering the numbers. Not because we loved numbers. Because we needed answers. And that's where many shopkeepers get stuck. They think they need to become accountants. They think they need to master spreadsheets. They think they need to be good at maths.

You don't. You simply need to gather the information. Your job is to provide the facts. Rent. Rates. Utilities. Insurance. Software. Card machine fees. Staff wages. Your own wages. Maintenance. Repairs. Taxes. Everything.

In fact, this process is easier today than it has ever been. Back in 1996, we had to do it with a pen, paper and old school calculator. These days, technology can do the calculations.

You don't need to build a complicated spreadsheet. You don't need to know the formulas. You don't even need to know which calculations to perform. Just gather the information and ask AI to help. Ask it what costs you've missed. Ask it what businesses like yours typically forget to include. Ask it to calculate your annual costs. Calculate your margin. Your VAT liability. Your tax liability. Your daily costs. Your required turnover. Different scenarios.

The difficult part is no longer the calculation. The difficult part is deciding to look. Because once you have the number, everything changes. You finally know where you're trying to get to - the most important thing. But then you start to ask the next question - how do you actually chart a course towards it?

At first glance, that can feel overwhelming. How do you know whether you're drifting off course or sailing in exactly the right direction? The good news is that my version of this doesn't involve endless spreadsheets or anything remotely boring.

In fact, it's one of the most creative parts of running a business. It's about learning to read the signs your customers are already giving you. It's about maps, compasses, clues and treasure chests. And once you start seeing them, you'll wonder how you ever missed them.

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