Our company is involved in the tile business but my background is language. For 10 years I was an English teacher, for 5 years an editor, and for another 15 years I was a freelance educational materials writer. I wrote 20 books for Pearson Education and National Geographic. None of that prepared me for the task of co-running a tile business and explaining the uncommon beauty of handmade, screen-printed ceramic tiles. For that I have my wife, Marianne, to thank; she set up Smink Studio and grew it for 10 years before I joined. But more about that in a minute. When I think about it again though, or ‘after think’ as the Dutch say (Marianne is Dutch, I’m English), perhaps it’s not so strange that I’m doing what I’m doing. Good teaching involves not just talking to the class, but making connections with individual students. Smink Studio, as a small business, has prioritised making super-strong connections with our clients and that’s been part of my role. We are there for our clients from first enquiry to final installation and beyond. When clients are spending thousands of euros / dollars / pounds with us, then they deserve this. And at the same time, like a well-written text book, the way we explain and demonstrate what we do has to be clear, concise and yet inspiring. We share responsibility for social media, brochures, the website and all other aspects of marketing and we do that by playing to each other’s strengths. She is the designer with a background in fashion; I’m all about the words. Our business needs both, we think. So when I’m not communicating with clients, working on marketing, processing sales or tracking relevant metrics (i.e. filling in a spreadsheet) then I’m working as part of a team, the closest kind of team you can get, to work out how to grow the business in the right way. When Smink Studio (then called Smink Things) started making screen-printed tiles for interiors, it was a one-of-a-kind business, an outlier. It grew through other people posting images of the tiles on Instagram and Pinterest - Marianne had no time for that. Now that we supply hotels, restaurants, all the hundreds of stores for a global clothing brand and, of course, private individuals who want an exceptional walk-in shower, then the business requires something else from us. We’re trying to work out what that is and do it in the right way. All we know is that the right way involves working together beautifully, just like our tiles.