Ailsa Symeonides recalls when she regularly used to get up at 4am for a gruelling eight-hour drive to London in an effort to avoid air fares her company could ill afford.
"We used to drive down there in the early hours, do our business pitch to major companies, then get in the car and come straight back up to Scotland," she recalls. "We just couldn't have flown there then - we couldn't afford it."
It is Symeonides' devotion to her business - now a £20m turnover global IT software firm which she founded with her husband Tasos in the mid 1980s - that has made it a rare Scottish success story.
The pair, who launched Axios from the dining table of their Eskbank home and fooled blue-chip customers into thinking they were running a bigger operation by planting family and friends into spare desks to pose as staff, now boast clients ranging from Clydesdale Bank to Associated British Foods to the Canadian government.
Tasos, a Cypriot national brought up in Glasgow from the age of 12, admits the couple have had to take a more hands-off approach as their staff numbers hit 250.
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"We have to delegate," he says. "We've got to a point where it's more like mentoring people." But the duo are not keen to relinquish control of their baby fully. A flotation is on the cards in the next five years, if conditions are right, but the Symeonides are not seeking an early exit.
"Who in their right mind would consider a flotation right now?" asks Tasos. "Four to five years is a sensible timescale. We will have grown the company more and it will be appropriate."
He adds: "We still enjoy doing what we do. If you float, you lose a bit of control and get very quarterly-focused."
The company's latest results for the year to September, due to be filed with Companies House in the first quarter of this year, will show that Axios has broken through the £20m turnover barrier.
It is expanding in Russia and eastern Europe, where it won 19 contracts in the past year, and the pair hope to double their trade over the next 18 months in North America, the home of big rivals such as Hewlett Packard and IBM.
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"The £20m turnover barrier was a landmark," says Tasos.Axios has always made a profit, with this year's numbers likely to match last year's reduced £500,000 figure.
"We've never made a loss in our lives," says Tasos. "Thank God we don't have any bank loans. With loans, you tend to waste the money you get. We don't do that."
Axios's strong cash base has let it invest in new products, with its most recent offering being a "catalogue" piece of software which allows staff to browse the IT products on offer through an online "shopping basket-style" listing.
Ailsa is visibly excited about the new product, Assyst Service Catalog, which is set to be a big earner for Axios in the coming months, tapping into the post-recession trend for cost-saving investment.
"It's hit the market at the right time," says Ailsa.
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Tasos interrupts: "We couldn't possibly have known what was going to happen a year ago - it was luck. Launching a new product was on our roadmap, but we didn't have antennae in the Royal Bank - if only we did."
The UK software market has slowed, yet local-authority contracts are still coming for Axios. But more than half of the company's business comes from overseas, more than double the proportion of three years ago.
Despite its international outlook - the company has around 12 offices worldwide - Axios has its feet firmly on the ground in Edinburgh. And that Scottish ethos extends to its business sense.
"The economy isn't what it was, so you keep your eye on things and behave in a responsible Scottish fashion," says Ailsa. "We're probably one of the few Scottish businesses which is living up to the Scottish reputation."
She pauses to indicate her husband. "And he's not even Scottish."