Meetings

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In the very early days of Football TravelHER, our entire business plan didn't live on a server, in a cloud, or even on a handy spreadsheet. It lived exclusively inside our own heads.


Two brains, approximately four million ideas, and zero structure.


Initially, it felt brilliant—we were a powerhouse of creativity! But very quickly, the reality of running a startup without a centralizsd master plan set in. It turned into absolute, unadulterated stress.


We would both wake up at 3:00 AM thinking about booking systems, only to realise we were both secretly trying to solve the exact same problem from different angles. We had no idea who was leading which action.Did you email the supplier?”
“No, I thought you were emailing the supplier!”
“I didn't email them because I was busy looking at insurance!”
“Wait, I was looking at insurance too!”


We were stepping on each other's toes, overlapping on tasks, and running in circles like two defenders chasing the exact same ball while the striker walks it into an open net. We quickly realised a harsh truth: if we didn't start communicating properly, the business was going to implode before we even bought a single match ticket.


The Non-Negotiable, Ever-Shifting Weekly Summit
We needed a strategy. We needed to meet. Weekly. No excuses.
But there was a catch. Because we both still work full-time 9-5 jobs and travel frequently for our day jobs, committing to a fixed, rigid slot like "Every Tuesday at 7:00 PM" was mathematically impossible. Flexibility wasn't just a bonus; it was a matter of survival.


So, we made a pact: our weekly catch-ups had to be completely interchangeable.
To keep from slipping into total anarchy, we agreed to maintain strict discipline. If a day job threw a wrench in Tuesday's plans, we immediately called an audible and shifted to Thursday. No matter what, the meeting had to happen.


Enter the "Satellite Offices" (And Our Caffeine Addiction)
This decision birthed the legendary Football TravelHER roaming boardroom. Depending on the week, our official high-level corporate headquarters changed locations between:
 Our Living Rooms: Where "discipline" meant trying not to get distracted by the TV or petting dogs while discussing European travel compliance.
Local York Coffee Shops: Where we would set up our temporary "satellite offices."


If you happened to walk into a coffee shop in York over the last few months and saw two women aggressively typing on laptops, surrounded by cold coffee cups, chocolate muffin wrappers, and neon highlighters, that was us.


We would rock up, unpack an entire mobile office onto a tiny circular table, and spend hours hammering out the details. We used these sessions to aggressively untangle our brains, divide the workload, and officially assign who was leading what.


The Verdict: Chaos Formally Managed
It took some trial and error (and a lot of espresso), but the discipline paid off. We finally stopped overlapping, stopped stressing about the unknown, and started moving like a perfectly drilled backline executing an offside trap.


Now, when an idea pops into our heads at midnight, it doesn't cause a panic attack. It goes straight onto the agenda for the next interchangeable coffee summit.


We've got the communication locked down, the tasks divided, and the caffeine levels optimised. Bring on the launch!