After 21 years in corporate life it was time to do something different. I’ve started several ideas, some have gone better than others. I rediscovered my love of writing, and being more creative in work and life. I was made redundant in 2016 and that was the start of a brand new beginning.
I live in the Lake District and love being out on the fells, but don’t do it enough!
Many years ago after being made redundant I found myself in an interview for, on paper, was a dream job. The interviewer asked me ‘Why do you want this job?’ and everything inside of me collapsed. I had an overwhelming feeling I didn't want the job, or any job like it. I just thought that was all I could be. As I drove home I decided to start search for something different.
Another Door Opens was born, supporting individuals, teams and organisations to navigate the messiness of change to find joy and opportunity.
I made many mistakes setting up a few businesses, including a blog called ‘How to be… made redundant’. This blog turned into ‘Another Door’ which turned into a community, podcast, book and business. This was over several years of trying, launching, failing, succeeding. The turning point was getting a book deal with Penguin Random House. A tricky time to sell a book as it was 2020, but so many lessons and opportunities.
I think the biggest lesson is to understand there is not a linear line to growing your own business. It’s messy, things go wrong, things go right and you should always leave space for a magic to come along.
At first I did that thing where you try to be on every platform all the time and sign up to all the courses to try to grow followers as you think that’s the answer. But I found it exhausting and I wasnt enjoying it. Most of my work was coming from recommendations and conversations with people, so I dialled down social media, and just focused on LinkedIn and my newsletter.
My approach is live learning, when Im working with people and teams I also leave space in the day to reflect on not just the work but what Im seeing, hearing, observing. I have hundreds of notebooks of reflections and insights - its where I create my courses and books from. So they feel like they are exactly where people are, because Im writing and creating into their space.
It’s ok not to ‘just leap’. I’ve made some stupid errors on the whim of a marketing ‘just do it’. And I do regret those things. I now make sure I’m reflecting and thinking better before taking action. It creates much better energy, and has much better outcomes.
Being clear on what you want, and what you need, in detail, up front lays down good foundations. We can just focus on dreams and what we want, but then become disconnected as we are not honouring what we need.
My podcast Another Door is designed to help be with you in your moment of change. People share their stories and lessons in a real, lived way so you don’t need to feel alone.
And of course my book Why losing your job can be the best thing that ever happened to you has practical advice for when you are navigating career change.
My new book Another Door Opens provides the deeper exploration for how we get better at change in our lives, so we can see change as opportunity, rather than a threat.
We all do change differently. The first step is to understand how you do change, I call it your Change Mastery. When you start to understand that we are all doing change differently it changes the game, we have better conversations, we can support each other and we can unite in common shared goals.
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