Imagine the scene, Caroline Wagstaff’s on holiday and has an afternoon lying in the sun relaxing when she realises she’s forgotten to ask her partner to rub suntan lotion into her back, and asks a stranger to help out. This may have become just a funny anecdote to tell her friends when she got back home. Instead, it became the inspiration for her BackBliss lotion applicator for getting creams and lotions to those hard-to-reach places.

For the next few years, the thought of developing her invention niggled away in the back of her mind. At the time she was working as a marketing and events manager for IT companies and the though of starting her own business was daunting. One day, Caroline says, “I realised I would kick myself if I saw someone else developing a similar product. This was the motivation I needed to cross the chasm.” Caroline didn’t want to loose the security of her full-time job and juggled work with running her fledgling company from home.

Caroline’s advice to others contemplating starting their own business is to do one small thing every day. “Once you’ve done one action the others will follow more easily. Keep going, keep focused, take small steps and your self-belief and confidence will grow.”

“Also, be aware when an idea is not working. Decide to re-focus and find another solution.” Telling other people about her ideas made them seem more real and the feedback of friends and family helped Caroline refine her ideas.

Incredibly, Caroline had the courage to appear on the TV programme Dragon’s Den and survived an in-depth interrogation. “They loved the idea and complemented me on my business plan; but they told me that I didn’t need their help. I just needed to win some customers.”

With sheer hard work, Caroline got the applicator to market in just six months. One technique, Caroline found invaluable, was mind-mapping. This is a visual way of capturing thoughts and connecting them together with colour, bubbles, pictures, texts and images. It’s similar to the ‘spider diagrams’ you’re taught at school, only more sophisticated and interactive. Caroline used Mindjet’s mind-mapping software and she says, “It allowed me to de-clutter my thoughts; power my creativity; and ultimately let me break down the mammoth task I had ahead into manageable chunks.”

Caroline went on to the finals of the British Inventor of the Year competition and, in the same year, won the award for being a Woman Global Innovator and Inventor. Since then the business has gone from strength to strength, and the range has been expanded to include the BackBliss back scratcher.

Now the business is flourishing and Caroline is hoping to inspire other would-be entrepreneurs with an ebook she is writing about inventing and the creative process. It will be published in the style of a mind map and include a central map with hyperlinks, audio files, video footage and text.

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