Camilla Ross, chief executive of MyPlaneta, explains why the business should win the home business category of the Guardian Small Business Showcase competition.
MyPlaneta is an eBay-style website for local producers. The business’ goal is to save the world by helping to reduce carbon emissions and strengthen local communities across the globe through local trade. Not only do we work from home, we want to help the whole world work closer to home.
Although our company is Scottish, we run it from our sunny balcony in Valencia, Spain which overlooks our daughter’s school yard. Life is a balance and we use every digital trick we can to keep our lives our own.
To keep ourselves sane, we take our meetings at the beach instead of a boardroom, we share a long table in the living room with our ten-year old daughter as a communal workspace. She does her homework while we plot saving the planet.
Our work is mostly cerebral, so we need to keep our minds healthy. We try to limit our time in front of the computer screen, but enterprise is addictive and we use a goal-orientated reward system to break up the day. We set our deliverable tasks and when we achieve them, we go outside with the dog for a walk or to a cafe. You’d be amazed how many problems we resolve effortlessly when we’re not staring endlessly at pixels.
All entries which meet the competition criteria are published and our judging panel select a shortlist of the top three for each category. Winners are announced at an awards ceremony in summer 2016.
