EIGHT years ago, Sarah Blake and Kerrie van Ristell found themselves facing redundancy. It was unexpected. They were professionals, they had worked hard to get their qualifications. And they worked for Boots, a Nottingham company which was a by-word for security.
This was 2005. Boots had earlier set up a Wellbeing service which included chiropody, looking after people's feet.
But Boots got cold feet and, to mix metaphors, pulled the plug on its business initiative leaving staff like Sarah and Kerrie without a base from which to practise their profession.
The story is about following the two women taking bold decisions to set up their own clinic. They found premises in Lower Parliament Street, doing much of the fitting out work themselves.
Boots generously gave them their equipment at advantageous prices. Banks declined loans because they did not know what chiropodists did. In fact they perform a vital service keeping feet in good shape, especially important for the elderly and those with debilitating illnesses such as diabetes.
Sarah and Kerrie were thrilled, all smiles when only weeks ago they passed the £1 million turnover mark since opening the clinic. They have 5,000 patients registered with them. They have survived the growing pains many small businesses experience such as taking on more staff.
Today, Sarah is 36 and Kerrie 33 and they still worry about issues ahead. Kerrie and her husband will want to start a family. It is still difficult for women to combine their own business and have children.
The two met more than ten years ago working together in the same branch of a national foot specialist and quickly became firm friends. They bought a flat together, money which later proved useful when they decided to set up their own clinic.
Sarah recalls her first business knock after leaving university. She opened a small clinic in her home town of Burton-on-Trent only to find a short while after that Boots was planning a trial chiropody service down the road.
She recalled: "I had been in business six or seven months when Boots set up their first flagship chiropody department. It was in a tiny branch of Boots, 200 yards from me.
"To be newly qualified, to start from scratch with no patients, and as I was just getting started, Boots opened. with their first-ever chiropody service. I was not going to fight with Boots."
It was a tough and undeserved lesson so she licked her wounds and joined a cruise liner as a ship chiropodist, seeing "half the world".
Kerrie said that their time together at a national chain taught them a lot about what they would and wouldn't do in their own business. They moved to Boots flagship Wellbeing clinic in the Victoria Centre only to be told three months later that it was closing.
Setting up their own business was now inevitable. "You either give it a go or fail," said Sarah.
The school of hard knocks has taught both to be careful with money. Sarah watches sales, outgoings and cashflow like a hawk. They each know precisely what the figures are day by day.
The tough thing now is balancing leisure and work, the constancy of having their own business which the two agree takes them over.
Kerrie said: "Taking a step back, it is really hard to carry on a normal life outside work. The pressure is on to keep it running once you employ people. Today there are six of us altogether – another part-time chiropodist and three receptionists.
"Once you have them on your pay roll, you have responsibility for others," added Kerrie. "It makes life decisions very hard such as trying for a baby or having a family."
It is a subject very much on their minds and how it will be managed. "I will only be able to take three months off," said Kerrie. "A year off is a luxury which people in the NHS or education take for granted.
"The business would never survive beyond three months if I wasn't there full time. A lot of my patients would not go elsewhere with Sarah and our third chiropodist covering. But it puts them under a lot of pressure. That is quite a worry.
"It is very frustrating when we have paid out so much tax and corporation tax over the years that we can't access what we have paid to help cover the business. My fear is if we have to take out a business loan.
"As a new mother, it will put me under a lot of pressure. Three months become a cut-off and I have to be back at work regardless. It has to be done. If I didn't have a business, I would probably have had children five years ago."
Growing pains show themselves elsewhere. Employing another full-time chiropodist would mean expanding the premises.
Recently, Feet First Chiropody advertised for a part time permanent receptionist and more than 300 applied.
These are issues that the two will get through because they are such good friends. "The business is our baby but cannot be the only thing in our lives," added Sarah. "It has to be our priority – it pays our mortgages, it pays our bills, our staff.. You cannot say it is not a massive part of our lives. But you don't want to get to aged 80 and say: 'I had an amazing business and I did nothing else'."