Liz Venz spent 30 years running an international branded merchandise business from London, managing clients like Facebook, Instagram, and Netflix across three time zones. She lived in Notting Hill in a flat she’d owned for 24 years.
Then she sold everything and moved to Norfolk, two and a half hours outside London, to a 43-acre property with a Georgian house and deer running through the grounds.
“You can’t change from being a city girl yourself,” Venz told Rabbi Rami Goldberg on a recent episode of Biblical Money. “You can’t say ‘I’m not going to be a city girl anymore’ and then you’re not. I think my change came from God.”
The Dream She Ignored
A few months before selling their London flat, Venz had a dream. She was looking through a camera lens that gradually expanded to show an ocean view, growing bigger and bigger.
A friend said, “Liz, maybe you’re going to move out of Notting Hill.”
“I said, ‘I’m never going to move out of London.'”
Four months later, everything had changed.
When COVID Made Her Rich
Venz’s company specialized in branded merchandise, but her real innovation was creating online stores that let corporations track global sales in real time. After 20 years in partnership with an American company, they started negotiating a sale in January 2020.
Then COVID hit.
The pandemic should have killed the deal. Instead, it proved her business model. When events shut down, companies desperately needed products delivered to homes. “We sold more online stores in the first month of COVID than we had the previous five years.”
The sale closed in mid-2021. She and her husband Andrew both left the business in July.
When they looked at London flats they could afford, it was depressing. They’d be downsizing from their two-bedroom.
Then an estate agent called about a property not even on the market yet.
When they drove down the tree-lined driveway in February 2022, Venz couldn’t believe it. “I can’t believe we can buy this and we can only get a two-bedroom flat in London.”
Two deer broke out in front of them on the grounds.
“I just thought, I’ve got to live here.”
The Ancient Road
There were complications. A massive tax issue. An impossible timeline. But they bought the house in six weeks. “Every mountain got moved.”
Then reality: running costs of £10,000 a month. Insurance jumped from £700 a year to £5,000. Neither of them got the jobs they’d applied for.
They converted the house into an Airbnb.
Six months later, they needed planning permission that required proving access to an ancient road. Nobody could find it. They searched. The planner searched. Nothing.
One Monday morning, Venz felt it. “Today’s the day we’re going to find the road.”
Her husband was skeptical. “We’ve looked. Everybody’s looked.”
At the very end of the field, he jumped into a ditch. She spotted what looked like a bridge. He scrambled up.
“I don’t know why we didn’t see it before,” he said.
The ancient road had been there all along.
30 Years for Nothing
For nearly 30 years running her London business, Venz lived with one thought: they were going to go bust. She watched other companies collapse and knew exactly what it looked like.
“That thought was in my head most days. I lived with it closer to 30 years.”
The business never went bust.
“I worried about it for 30 years for nothing.”
Rabbi Goldberg laughed. “I’m right there with you. I just have this constant loop about how everything’s going to fall apart. And yet God continues to rain down blessing.”
A year ago in September, they had one booking. An elderly man’s 90th birthday, booked at an absurdly low rate before they’d set proper prices.
“I said to my husband, ‘This guy might not even last till 90, so let’s not worry about it.'”
He made it. They had a wonderful time.
One year later: nearly £100,000 worth of bookings already on the books.
“People taste heaven here,” Venz said. “They walk through the door and they just change.”
The difference now is space. Not just physical space, but room for God. “I used to say I’m going to pray every quarter of an hour, and it would be lunchtime and there’d be no praying because there just wasn’t time. Here, it’s just part of life all through my day.”
When burdensome letters arrive, she goes outside. “The beauty of it all makes me not doubt that we’re meant to be here.”
She’s learning what Abraham learned when God took him outside to see the stars: sometimes you need to be lifted out of the natural to see what God is doing.
“For the first time in my life,” Venz said, “I feel like I’m walking in the river of life. Everything flows.”
Rabbi Rami Goldberg serves as Director of Education and Content at Israel365. Biblical Money features conversations with business leaders of faith about the intersection of Scripture, finance, and entrepreneurship.
