It’s official — I am unemployed and no longer a business owner. My Hubby and I have moved to Melbourne in Victoria. It all started over seven months ago…

…when my husband got offered a promotion that would involve moving from Brisbane to Melbourne. This was all on the proviso that the company won the government public transport contract. So we had some decisions to make — neither of us are getting any younger and opportunities like this don’t come along everyday, so we decided to take up the offer. The wait was on: We hadn’t told anyone at this stage just in case it didn’t come off and I was still maintaining our AV business so keeping a big secret was very hard.

To cut a long story short, they did win the contract in April so it was actually happening. They wanted my husband to start in June and commute in the mean time (effectively doing two jobs).

One of the hardest decisions was to sell our Audio Visual business that we had owned (I managed) for the last nine years and the other was what to do with our beloved German Shepherd Dog (Sabre). You see we would be renting in Melbourne inner city area and no one allowed pets in the rental properties, let alone a 40+ kg dog, we were also worried about the stress the move would put on him. So we decided to re-home home him. Unfortunately none of my friends or family could take him – so I advertised him for “adoption.” We were lucky to find a “very fit pensioner” (his description, not ours) who was looking for a new companion. We met with him and his family and they got on well. The day we dropped him off for good was heart wrenching for the both of us, but we look on the bright side — he now has company all day and we know he will be very well loved by the “very fit pensioner.”

The other tough decision was to sell the business — a colleague who I had actually brought the business from and who did all our installations offered to buy it back. He was going to merge it with his install, security and data business. This would be an ideal synergy for the company as the audiovisual industry had become very difficult in the last 12 months so to merge it with his other services was a good idea. I was pleased that the company name could live on and that my two very loyal staff members, Emma and Adam, would still have jobs. The next task was to tell my staff and my clients.

To be continued…