Hello Gavin, all of this sounds horribly harsh, but better to enter into such an initiative with your eyes open. The young people around us who have made a go of it are those who have building skills and who largely target the English community. I do know a woman who came here as a teenager, went to school and college here, is bilingual, likely to marry her French boyfriend and is gradually building up a clientele as beautician, with all the necessary French qualifications. So this has taken her years. In our local town (population about 10,000) there are something like 15 beauticians and hairdressers, so competition is fierce. It will be a real challenge to persuade French people to become your clients. You may like the Pyrenees - so visit them on weekends and put your business bang slap in the middle of somewhere like Eymet in the Dordogne where there are a lot of English. Such an area may also be somewhere where you can use your property development skills and make an attractive gite for additional marginal income (again these days competition is fierce). I now go to a French hairdresser (a salon attached to a Leclerc). When I first came here and only spoke a little French, I used to go to English hairdressers, working from home (probably on the black) earning pin money while their husbands worked as builders. I now pay more than double what they were able to charge. A reconnasissance trip is essential if you seriously want to take this forward.
