Ten is the Magic Number
Tips for Remaining Fresh in Self-Employment
January marks the 10th Anniversary of Neon. My little offering to the world, born in 2013 has been growing for an entire decade and has made it into double figures! Hip hip hooray! I am grateful. I am happy. I am really proud. And yes, I still struggle to believe it!!
Strangely, my professional life so far has come in ten-year arcs. The first ten years was the era of social and probation work, marked most notably by my time in Romania helping to shape and establish the Romanian Probation Service for juvenile offenders. That was an incredible experience — possibly still the most stretching and rewarding of my career to date in many ways — and one that led me to leave the world of frontline social care for the world of consulting, leaving too the realm of personal change for that of organisational and systemic change.
Cue PA Consulting Group and the next ten years of my career, where I used everything I had learned about developing relationships that are catalysts for change albeit from a different perspective and in a different context. These ten years revolutionised my professional self-confidence, rid me of various shoulder chips and created for me a wonderful community of colleagues and friends many of whom I remain in contact with.
But my heart was no longer in it and so without much of a plan but with a huge dose of longing for something more human and more creative, I resigned and Neon was born in January 2013. As for the work that I do with Neon, it continues to grow and my focus and direction continue to evolve. I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about the essence of what I am about. I now feel really clear and will be sharing more of that with you soon. With that clarity has come an upsurge of energy and excitement. Just in time to catch the wave of the next decade perhaps.
So as I embark on my eleventh year, I realise this means that Neon is the longest arc so far of my professional career and one I can still see stretching out before me full of possibility, opportunity and fulfilment. I remain amazed and yet despite the incredulity I still feel, and the anxiety I still experience (“Was last year my last lucky year? Am I finished?” etc etc), I now see that running my own business is exactly the right thing for me, with all the space, freedom and agency it provides, along with huge dollops of challenge and learning, zero opportunity for boredom and maximum flexibility for living as I want to live baked in. I love it! Lucky little me.
I know all too well how hard those times of reinvention and transition can be. But with each change I made, I moved closer to living my very own Neon life, with colour in my fingertips and humanity rushing through my bones. Happy Birthday, Neon! My gift to you is renewed clarity of mission and direction. I trust you will use it well and ride the rollercoaster of the next ten years with purpose, energy and grace.
My tips?
1. Don’t be scared of reinventing yourself. It’s an inevitable part of the process, and an enriching source of discovery and development. It’s also the ‘secret sauce’ of success.
2. The more genuine and sincere you are about your work, what it means to you and how you express it, the better off the world — and you — will be. Keep searching. It is worth the wait.
3. Appreciate every step you make along the way and what each one contributes to the next. I still thank my days in social work for what they taught me. You stand today on the shoulders of what you did yesterday.
