Christine Burns

From Gin to Jelly Babies ...

Christine Burns was born in the south of England in February 1954. Her mother was for a time a soprano, and her father an electrical engineer .. before both became publicans and then took to running a sweet shop ! Now they're retired together in Chester.

She got interested in computers more or less by accident at school .. although the interest took root so quickly that, by the time she was doing her A levels she knew what she wanted to study at University.

To University ...

At University, in Manchester, she rather surprised herself, by rising quickly to the top three in her year .. which then gave her the confidence to branch out and try other things ...

She became a contributor to BBC Radio Manchester's weekly student radio programme, and then its' producer .. and developed a passionate interest in photography, as she graduated with First Class Honours and went on to undertake research in computer operating systems.

And then a varied career ...

But it was not to be an academic career. With an M.Sc. to her credit, and half way through her Ph.D. research, Christine realised that she wasn't happy. Unwilling to complete her study, she shocked herself as much as those around her by "dropping out" .. and went to work for a major computer manufacturer instead, designing and writing training courses.

Next, she took a spell in marketing for three years .. specialising in the company's small computer range and trying to get her seniors to see what was happening in the infant microcomputer industry, years before the term "Personal Computer" was to enter the general vocabulary.

Then, as the company moved belatedly into microprocessor-based distributed computer products, Christine went back to being a technical specialist .. working with the company's major customers as a consultant alongside the sales force .. a position which she held until the inevitable occured, and a customer asked her and a few colleagues to join THEM and create a new computer services company.

After eighteen months, Christine and three colleagues were presented with a once in a lifetime opportunity to buy out the business they'd been building. So she became, for the first time, a director instead of an employee. And BIT Computer Services (as the business was called) grew healthily too .. from £750,000 in its' first year to almost £3 million per annum by the time she decided to sell out and trade on her own, five years later.

Leading to her own business ...

"Being a director can be rather like being married", she reflects, ... "and if you find you don't like the way your colleagues squeeze the corporate toothpaste, divorce is eventually the only option". However, Christine's "divorce" from her colleagues in business was, in hindsight, "the best career move I could have made at the time". Cheshire Computer Consultants was a one woman outfit, where the "one woman" had a very straightforward philosophy ...

"I realised that the thing that made me unhappy before was the conflict of interest .. between what was best for my clients, and the demands of a business that needed to grow and make a profit". Cheshire Computer Consultants had very simple ground rules, therefore .. "I only took on the business I KNEW I could do well, I made it a rule not to borrow money, and I had no intention of taking on staff". This didn't mean that the company didn't invest, however .. nor that Christine wasn't serious about being in business. "I turned over between £40-£50,000 each year consistently each of the nine years it ran .. purely from professional fees .. and I invested about 10% of this each year in upgrading or replacing hardware and software. It was nicely organic, it paid enough for me to change my car occasionally and have holidays .. and I slept well at nights".

The secret to enjoying your own business is knowing when to stop, however.

"For the last couple of years, I began to realise it was time to move on again. Working for myself had become a very isolating experience .. particularly as electronic mail and fax meant that it was rarely necessary to venture out of my office at home. I'm sure I began to bore my friends rigid talking through how I'd much rather be part of something larger again."

So, in late 1996 Christine quietly stopped looking for new business, wound up the company's affairs, wrote her last pay cheque and became an employee again. She now works for a major computer services company, as a specialist consultant.

And privately ?

Christine nowadays lives in a village in Cheshire, where she mixes work with less technical pursuits such as the local Conservative branch and (till recently) chairing a women's social group. "I used to squeeze in some voluntary counseling work too", she says, "but with a working day that certainly isn't nine-to-five, and a lot of time away on assignments, you have to be realistic". As for partners .. "I'm in a phase at the moment where there's nobody special .. and I've no great desire to alter that. You get very attached to living on your own after a while", she adds, "... and I've been hurt badly enough to be very wary of risking that stability now, simply for the sake of it."

"Equally, however, I don't imagine being single for the rest of my days. I'm old enough, though, to know better than to try and predict tomorrow, let alone next week or next year..."

More ?

Well, yes there's a lot more .. but that's explained better by going back to the home page.