When sisters Nicola and Jennifer Ellis launched Wellington Wealth eight years ago, they could not have anticipated the speed at which the business would immediately start to grow.
What was meant to be a steadily growing family business, providing a certain work-life balance for its owners. soon took on a life of its own, leaving the pair scrambling to juggle the demands thrown at them from multiple directions.
But they were determined to grow at a pace they felt was healthy, and this philosophy continues to underline their business strategy to this day.
"There was no time to think," Jenny laughs. "You just had to go, go, go! Next, next, next - just to get everything off the ground."
Growing a business is like "spinning those plates", she adds. "It's making sure you give attention to all of the different parts of the business and moving everything forward consecutively."
Glasgow-based Wellington Wealth was launched by the two sisters, their aunt and their father, who is now retired.
Working with family members has served them well, though the drawback is "we never stop working" quips Jenny.
"We've always got on [well] and we've always worked together as a family, because when we were young our parents ran a hotel, so, you know, you pitch in and you get involved.
"And I think having the separate roles has been quite important, bringing different types of expertise," she adds.
Different strokes
Her sister Nicola, an economics graduate and adviser at the business, had initially eyed a job in fund management - an endeavour hampered by the stock market downturn of 2002.
Jenny, on the other hand, studied map-making at university and worked on a ship in the oil industry as a hydrographic surveyor, before returning to dry land to study motion graphics and virtual prototyping.
This lay the foundations for her growing interest in technology.
But it was their dad who worked in the advice industry and who sowed the seeds for what is now Wellington Wealth when he asked Jenny to look after his old firm while he was away on holiday.
Coming from a different industry background, Jenny says, she was somewhat shocked by the state of the technology the firm was having to rely on.
"Offshore there's processes and procedures, it's very process-procedure driven, and that's exactly what you need in a business of this type as well," she says.
A couple of tech jobs later, Jenny and Nicola - who was by then fully qualified - decided to set up on their own.
Hitting the ground running
Today's Wellington Wealth was not the first iteration of the business. They had agreed to a partnership with another person before, who they now believe had ulterior motives for doing so.
This soon led to a split and the learning curve was steep, they say, especially in terms of what it taught them about business management.
"It was the mechanics of a business actually," says Nicola, "you know it inside out when you go through a process like that and what exactly it means to give up certain controls of our company and the rules and the importance of it."
