'I was 26 years old with ten years' childcare experience when I decided to open a nursery. I wrote to large companies, hospitals and universities in Glasgow city centre asking if they had a demand for childcare.
'Stobhill Hospital replied saying it was putting out to tender for a nursery. That was in January and the deadline was 1 June 1998 giving me six months to prepare a business plan, showing how much money I would need to borrow.
'Glasgow Development Agency (GDA) was a great help in telling me what I should include in the business plan - market research, predicted income (the nursery fees) and expenditure (everything from salaries to equipment, insurance and heating bills), staff recruitment and implementation plans.
'I sent questionnaires around the hospital asking what fees staff could afford, the hours they worked and what they would expect from the nursery and used a computer spreadsheet to illustrate the nursery's predicted profit and loss over a year.
'I won the tender and received a 20,000 "soft" loan from GDA. I then approached banks with a list of clients and a detailed business plan. It was so disheartening. The first bank said, "That's an awful lot of money for a young girl to borrow" and the next kept me hanging on for four months.
'I was getting desperate for someone to support me when I went to the Bank of Scotland. Within a week it had approved a 100,000 bank loan for the business and I haven't looked back since.'