When I was younger, all I wanted to do was travel and explore the world. Photography was my passion, and at 21, I set off on my first major solo adventure: nine months backpacking through China and working in Hong Kong. This was a very different China from the one we know today. Large parts of the country were closed to foreign visitors, email was not yet part of everyday life, and travellers had to use special currency known as FEC. We were often required to stay in specially assigned hotels, and many areas were inaccessible to us. As foreigners, or gweilo, a term meaning “foreign devil”, we tended to travel along the same limited routes. This meant regularly meeting the same travellers, often moving in one direction or another with very little information to guide us.

The culture shock was enormous. Western society often celebrates individualism, while my experience of communist China highlighted the importance of collective responsibility and conformity. It showed me how differently people can interpret the same action, depending on their culture, experience, and expectations. What fascinated me most was finding a common thread through conversation, even when we did not share a language.

Listen with curiosity

One memory has stayed with me ever since.

Four of us had spent two weeks travelling unaccompanied through territory that was closed to foreigners, trying to reach Tibet, sleeping on kindly locals' floors, or out in the open, and talking our way into whatever hotel would take us. We were tired, hungry, and full of incredible stories. Eventually we walked into the nearest town, knowing full well what would probably happen next.

We sat down for a meal. Through the window, at least fifty faces were staring in at us. Then the faces parted, and a uniformed police officer walked in beside a man in a black leather jacket. They told us we could finish our meal first, and then they would take us to the police station.

Arrested. We signed the fine book, numbers 48, 49, 50 and 51. The very first entry in that book had been signed just after the Second World War.

But once the formalities were done, something unexpected happened: the police wanted to talk. Not about the two weeks we'd spent off the map, but about us. Where we came from, what daily life looked like where we lived, what we believed, how we spent our time. In a country still closed to the outside world, so much of that was simply unavailable to them: no open internet, no foreign press, no easy way to know what life outside actually looked like. So they asked. People who had every reason to be guarded, in a system built on caution, leaned in with genuine curiosity the moment we stopped being a problem to process and became their only window into a world they couldn't otherwise see.

That experience taught me one of the most valuable lessons I still use today: listen, really listen, without immediately imposing your own judgement, assumptions, or ideas onto a situation.

“Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. The greatest problem with communication is we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply. When we listen with curiosity, we don’t listen with the intent to reply. We listen for what’s behind the words.”
Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

It's a lesson I now use every single day with clients. If curiosity can open up a police station in a closed corner of China, it can certainly open up a client brief. Before I ask what a project needs, I ask what's behind it: What are you really trying to say? What do you want people to feel? What matters most to you, even if it's not written down anywhere? That curiosity is usually where the best ideas begin, and it's the reason clients tell me Lemonberry projects feel like *theirs*, not like something handed to them off a shelf.

AI touched up image of my very blurry original of the moment of arrest!

Finding my own seat at the table

When I returned home, I completed my degree in photography. But once I entered the professional world, I quickly realised that earning a living from the work I loved was going to be difficult. Two years working as a photographer on cruise ships gradually dampened my passion for it.

So I retrained, moving into IT during the run-up to Y2K, when demand for IT professionals was huge. I specialised in Unix systems administration, an unusual path for a woman at the time, and I was good at it, partly because I was a strong communicator who genuinely enjoyed working with people.

But I also noticed that my communication style didn't match what was traditionally expected in a male-dominated environment. My ability and assertiveness were recognised, yet there was little room to explore or lead in my own way. That gap, between what I could offer and what the environment made space for, is what pushed me toward entrepreneurship.

“If you don’t see a seat at the table, make your own.”
Nabela Noor

It's a lesson I carry into how I build Lemonberry today: if the way you communicate, lead, or run your business doesn't fit someone else's mould, you don't have to force it to. You build your own table, and I try to help clients do the same with their own brand voice, rather than pushing them into a generic one.

Learn your market

I took time away from conventional career progression and travelled through southern Europe, taking work where I could and building Lemonberry to support me on the road. Eventually I settled in Andorra for five years, embracing the outdoor lifestyle and local culture. That's where Lemonberry really found its direction: developing the communications and PR skills a small, tourism-driven community actually needed. When I didn't know something, I asked the people around me. I learned from books, conversations, and experience, at a time before the internet had instant answers for everything.

Most of my clients were small business owners: hotels, restaurants, family-run operations. Working closely with them taught me that a successful project is about far more than delivering a service. You need to understand the people behind the business: their ambitions, their challenges, the community they serve. Building that relationship creates trust, improves the work, and often leads to new opportunities. As your community grows, so does your reputation, and as your reputation grows, your client base tends to follow.

I also learned an important commercial lesson: you can only charge what your market is able and willing to pay. In that small Pyrenean town, self-promotion wasn't valued the way it might be elsewhere. Understanding the market, not just the service, was essential.

This is still how I approach every new client relationship: I'm not selling a fixed package, I'm learning your world first, so what I build actually fits it.

Building a business around life

Moving to the Netherlands in 2007 gave me access to a larger market, and I began building Lemonberry again, this time around my local community in The Hague.

Starting a family changed how I viewed working for myself. Running my own business gave me the flexibility to work at my own pace and shape my time around my children. I was fortunate to have a partner working full-time, which gave me the stability to grow Lemonberry slowly and organically. I also joined WBII (Women's Business Initiative International), investing time in supporting other local entrepreneurs: relationships that gradually built trust, community, and new opportunities.

That's when I realised entrepreneurship doesn't have to mean constant acceleration. It can also mean building a business that supports the life you actually want to live, which is exactly the kind of partner I try to be for clients who are building the same thing for themselves.

The power of collaboration

Over the last few years, Lemonberry has grown through collaboration. Through Lemonberry Creatives, I work with specialists (graphic designers, marketers, photographers, UX writers, copywriters, and other creative professionals) to create more meaningful projects and better results for clients. Different perspectives bring depth to the work, and each person contributes something that would be difficult to achieve alone.

Working with Lemonberry Creatives brings a different energy to every project: the thinking is richer, the work is more rounded, the process is more enjoyable. It means clients get the breadth of a full creative team, without losing the personal, thoughtful approach that's been at the heart of Lemonberry since that police station in China.

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
Helen Keller

Looking back, the path from China to Lemonberry doesn't look particularly direct. Photography led to IT, IT led to entrepreneurship, and travelling taught me lessons that still shape how I work today. But every one of those lessons points the same way: listen before you assume, build the table you actually need, understand the market you're serving, shape work around real life, and never underestimate what happens when people combine their strengths.

That's not just how I got here: it's what you get when you work with Lemonberry Creatives: a team that listens for what's really behind your brief, learns your market before proposing anything, and brings the right specialists together to get it right.

If that sounds like the kind of partner you've been looking for, I'd love to hear your story next.