2020 was a year that changed my future direction. It started with my role at Martek Marine being placed on furlough last April. I am incredibly resilient, yet I often struggled in those early months of furlough.
I kept to a ‘work’ routine as much as possible signing up to various webinars, supporting friends and others in my network with their businesses. I scheduled in crazy fitness goals like walking the Edale Skyline in a day and completing a Yeti run for Cavendish Cancer Care in July, running a total of 30 miles over 24 hours. I used this time to evaluate options IF my role was made redundant and explored franchising as one possibility.
Furlough turned into redundancy and that was the end of my Martek chapter!
I now had a chance to take a leap into self-employment. Something that I had thought of before, but being the sole bill payer of a household, it would have been tough to walk away from the secure income of employment.
I embraced the opportunity of self-employment. I adopted the attitude of … start now, get perfect later including a website, marketing collateral, even a business name!
I joined a networking group, met people, and shared my story and referrals for work flooded in. With my background in talent acquisition, I was mainly working with smaller companies on recruitment, focussing on attitude and values fit. Along with supporting other clients with strategic planning, I was still crafting what my next chapter might look like and began to look at franchising models again.
At this time I met a facilitator and coach with The Alternative Board, Simon Banks, and started to work with him on my personal and company vision. I hadn’t heard of TAB before meeting Simon and wasn’t aware that this meeting was about to set the remaining chapters for me!
Fast forward 3 months and I made the decision to join TAB as a Partner. 2021 marks the year where I start to help other business owners write their story.
