Woodfarm

I built a holiday accommodation business in the heart of Suffolk, from scratch, into something worth a few million quid.

There will be a lot of detail in the forthcoming book entitled ‘I built a holiday accommodation business in the heart of Suffolk, from scratch, into something worth a few million quid’. I say “forthcoming”, which means hopefully sometime before I die. This is a mere snippet.

I spent years renovating period properties in Essex & Suffolk, including a diddy little old bakery and reading rooms in Kersey. That’s where my idea for total world domination began. I had the white cat, monocle, maniacal grin and everything.

Over time I assembled a team, and renovated a beautiful 500 year old Farmhouse and a 300 year old Granary Barn. Then popped in another five Barns, added a dollop of two Dutch Barges, and then bought a wreck of an old farmhouse in Tuscany. Tuscany is a relatively new thing. To me anyway. Tuscany has been there ages (see history books for details).

Along the way I scraped together some cash where I could, fought regional and local government for a few years, begged banks, and flogged my guts out to get it done. Then I built a reputation, giving us now well in excess of a thousand Five Star Tripadvisor, Google and Facebook reviews, Visit England Gold Awards for everything, and enough money coming in to line the pockets of some lovely colleagues, and keep me in pretty toys. The business now contributes around £1.8m a year to the Suffolk economy and nobody wanted to know when I told them it would. Trouble is, I’m a stubborn kinda chap, and I don’t take no for an answer. Not when I know yes will work.

The Tuscany part of the plan went a little by the wayside when a pesky pandemic rocked up. The house is all up and running, and booking nicely.

I’m available to anyone in the industry outside of Suffolk, who wants to pay me to understand how I did it. With any luck, I can help them outperform their competitors too. There’s more to it than a white cat, monocle, and a maniacal grin.

You can have a look at all my properties if you wish to be magically transported to another dimension. Click the pic below…

Work related blog posts for Woodfarm Barns are HERE.