I grew up in a council house in Brixton & people thought I was ‘bonkers’ when I quit my 9-5 – now I’ve made £20 million
FROM buying all her clothes from jumble sales and charity shops to helicopter rides and owning a luxury car, Samantha Gilchrist, 43, has totally turned her life around.
Whilst she’s now the Chief Executive of The Gilchrist Collection, the largest wedding venue collection in the UK, and lives a very lavish lifestyle, it hasn’t always been this way for this blonde beauty.
She was raised by a single mother and lived in a council house in Brixton, where money was always tight.
But now, Samantha, who doesn’t have any A-Levels, is the CEO of 12 wedding venues, and has turned over £20million.
It all started when she began wedding photography in 2006.
Samantha tells Fabulous: “My mum and my dad separated when I was four – my dad moved up to Edinburgh.
“I remember my mum would go to her 9 to 5 job, and then she would come home, and she would stuff mailings in the evening to earn extra cash. Sometimes I would help her, and she would also do some cleaning jobs to earn extra cash.
“My mum really knew how to make the best of a situation that may not have been ideal.
“We didn’t have lots of money. I spent most of my childhood at jumble sales, that’s where I got all my clothes – jumble sales and charity shops.
“I have no A-levels but I did a course in London College of Fashion when I was 21, so that was my way of getting back into education.
“I basically fell into wedding photography. I started a wedding photography business after doing a course where I wanted to be a fashion stylist.
“They had photography as part of the course, and it was just a one-year short course.”
The treadmill of life
But Samantha didn’t ‘fall in love’ with fashion the way she thought she would, and alongside her course, got a pub job to earn some cash.
She explains: “I was living in a flat at the time with friends, and honestly, I just got poor.
“I worked in pubs in the evenings and weekends and was then in college during the week, but obviously paying for train fares to go to London and trying to sustain all of that on a pub job was quite difficult.
“So my idea initially was to get a job for six months, get some money behind me, and then go and get a normal job because I needed some money.
“But that six months became six years. I got into the treadmill of life, basically.
“I then had a 9 to 5 job in HR and was just working weekdays, going out on weekends, living my best life in my early twenties.”
Shock cancer diagnosis
But things all changed for Samantha after her uncle John’s terminal brain cancer diagnosis.
She says: “Then my uncle got diagnosed with terminal cancer and basically sat me and my cousin down and was like, ‘Get it together’.
“I’ve had this incredible life, I’ve built a business that runs itself, I could’ve been off travelling the world, but I just thought there was so much more time.
“Then I went to work the next day and handed in my notice and decided to start a photography business.
“It was an absolute knee jerk reaction. I was walking to work, looked out over a bridge and had an epiphany moment of ‘I’m going to quit my job’.
“It was the scariest thing I ever did. I went from having at the time a very well paid job for my age, it was around £28,000.
Everyone thought I was bonkers
Samantha Gilchrist
“I think most of my friends thought I was insane. Everyone thought I was bonkers.
“I really didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t even own a camera. I didn’t know how to use Photoshop. I didn’t really know how to edit photos, so I had to learn that on YouTube.
“I think my first experience with wedding photography was helping someone at a wedding. I realised, ‘Oh, this is really fun’.
“I put a post on Facebook – back when everything was just Facebook – saying, ‘I’m a new photographer, if anyone’s looking for a wedding photographer, I’m willing to do it dirt cheap to build my portfolio.’ I think I booked four weddings from that.”
Starting a business
11 years after she began wedding photography, in 2017, things developed further, as Samantha then spanned into ownership of wedding venues, with her business partner, Stuart Guy, 42.
But Samantha admits she “knew nothing about starting a business”.
“I ended up with a wedding venue, and that was mainly because my life had gotten difficult in the summers,” she explains.
“My husband had been in a cricket club for four years, and they thought I was fictitious because I’d never made it to a cricket game. I’d started to miss important events for my friends and family because I was already booked for weddings – two years in advance, sometimes.
“I joked with my business partner about getting a business park. In Sussex, there are lots of farms that have business parks with barns on the property. I thought, ‘he’s a serial entrepreneur, we could put all your businesses in the park, and on weekends, I could put weddings in the barn.’ He was quite up for it.
“I accidentally found out that The Ravenswood [a venue in the heart of the Ashdown Forest] was for sale because their website was down. I was helping someone plan their wedding and went online to get the link to the website, only to find it was down.
“I called them up to tell them their website was down, and the owner answered and said, ‘I’ve cancelled all the weddings, I’m selling it’.
“I called Stuart and said, ‘we’ve found our wedding venue, let’s go see it’.
“As we drove down the driveway, Stuart said, ‘Sam, this is not a barn! What is this?’ And that was the beginning.”
I turn over anywhere between £500,000 to £700,000 a week
Samantha Gilchrist
Samantha explains her love for weddings developed when she was a young girl, as she shares: “I was intrigued by the industry partly because of my background. When I was a kid, I was a flower girl at someone’s wedding.
“I realised that being a flower girl meant I got a pretty dress and got to be the center of attention, which, unfortunately, was totally me as a kid.
“There were weddings happening at the local church, and within my family, I ended up being the flower girl or bridesmaid at about eight weddings. I was around 12, and I knew what to do, and I was cute, so it worked.”
But Samantha and Stuart weren’t able to get a mortgage on the venue at first, as she explains: “We got this big building, we leased it off of the owner initially, because the bank wouldn’t give us a mortgage because neither of us had a degree in hospitality.
“We did the worst business plan ever – we were going to rent out all the rooms, and we forgot to put laundry as an expense.
“But after the first six or seven months, I booked 60 weddings, and we went back to the bank and asked again for the mortgage. They said yes.”
Cashing in
Samantha started her business with £0, but has now made over £20 million after taking on more and more venues.
She adds: “I would have always been happy with one wedding venue. And that wedding venue now turns £1 million pound profit a year.
“I was doing everything, I was very much involved in the venue, I’d be there in the morning, at night. My life probably would have burnt out.
“Stuart is a serial entrepreneur, and his viewpoint is one man, one van makes £1,000. Get 10 men, 10 vans, make £10,000.
“So when he initially was like, ‘let’s get a second wedding venue’, I was like ‘how would I ever?’
By January I will have turned over £24 million
Samantha Gilchrist
“I really feel like going from one venue to two was probably the hardest part, because I was spreading myself out to run both venues. But honestly, going from two to three to four to five to six was no big deal.
“I learned so many things from many errors along the way. But then, once I was in that elevated position, it was then a case of building up the head office and getting to a point where I had enough team underneath me to then be able to run the venue.
“It takes about three years to get a British venue to profit, because we generally take them over with nothing.
“But obviously we started in 2017, and by 2020 we hit Covid. So I had 193 weddings booked in at The Ravenswood that I had to move, and as part of having to move them, I’d already booked 170 weddings for the following year, so I had nowhere to move them. That’s where we then leased Highly Manor.”
Samantha explains how her career in wedding venues has given her incredible flexibility, as she recognises: “Now, I can go from doing a 60-hour week to turning up an hour a day, two days in a row, and then not coming in for three days.
“I have a huge amount of flexibility now and I’ve also gotten myself into a situation whereby I’m now looking to do other projects.”
I have been known to take helicopters to the venue with my dog
Samantha Gilchrist
Now, Samantha has 12 wedding venues under her belt, from castles and country manors to mansions and great halls, with some in Sussex, North Yorkshire and North Wales, and can make up to £700,000 a week in peak season.
She claims: “There’s no profit in a wedding until you’ve covered all of your costs. So you need to get it to deliver a certain amount of weddings a year, at which point it’s covered all the costs – it’s covered the mortgage, the staffing, everything.
Samantha's five business tips
IF you're thinking of starting your own business, here's Samantha's five tips you won't want to miss.
START: I know it sounds silly, but just start. It doesn’t matter if you’re not good, just start.
HIRE: Hire people that are better than you and figure out what can be delegated to someone else so that you can maintain that height of strategic planning and moving the business forward.
TRY: If you don’t try, you don’t know. What’s the worst that could happen? Seize opportunities that are in front of you and open your eyes up for the opportunity.
IGNORE: Don’t listen to anyone. Unless they have done better than you, it’s not a conversation. Don’t speak to people about your business unless they have achieved more than you.
ENJOY: Have fun. Life’s too short, don’t let things bother you. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade and make it better.
“Every wedding from that point forward is 60 to 70 per cent profit. So basically, that’s the game – make break for the venue and then get above the make break for the venue.
“I turn over anywhere between £500,000 to £700,000 a week. I’m doing 2,036 weddings this year.
“By January I will have turned over £24 million.
“Last year, I turned over £20 million.
“I’m on target for having booked almost 3,000 weddings for the future.”
A life-changing journey
As a result of her financial success, Samantha shares how her life has changed.
She beams: “I’m definitely comfortable, but I’m not flying on private chat.
“My husband and I bought a house – it’s not a mansion, but it’s a nice house.
“I have been known to take helicopters to the venue with my dog.
“I do have a Defender car which is beautiful, and it’s nice to just be able to walk into a shop and pick something up and not look at the price tag, even if that’s just New Look.
“So from that aspect, I feel like it’s given me freedoms that I didn’t have years ago.”
But there’s been challenges along the way for Samantha – not only has hiring proved somewhat of an issue, but she’s also had to deal with fertility issues too.
She continues: “I think some of the biggest difficulties I’ve faced is recognising that it’s okay to hire someone better than you.
“It’s quite an insecure thing to do is to, you know, hire someone that’s better than you and be okay with that. But ultimately, that’s what you have to do.
“The only way to grow your business is to hire people underneath you that are better than you. You can have the vision, but they bring the implementation to that vision.
“Fertility has been a challenge too. I’ve had multiple miscarriages.
“It was horrendous and it was very much a shock to the system. And of course, you know, I vanished for a week.”
When it comes to the future for Samantha, she concludes: “We’ve made the decision that we want to have about 25 venues, so we’re kind of in an investment phase.
“And the next focus is on the US.”