Journey from employment to self-employed

2015 I gave up the day job - which I enjoyed - and entered the world of entrepreneurship and owning business(es) & investing in property.
 
And it has all been plain sailing since then…
 
I wish!
 
Starting and growing 3 businesses has had its ups and downs over the last 5 years with:

• woohoo months
• what the hell happened months
• didn’t have to work much that month
• there’s not enough hours in the day month
• deals that worked
• deals that didn't
• growth that was great
• growth that nearly killed us
• shiny penny syndromes
• full circle moments
• celebrations
• and hard times

 
Has it all been worth it, hell yes.
 
In my day job I enjoyed the laid back work style I had perfected through automating and systemising most of my tasks, enjoying coffee and pop master at 10:30 and leaving at 16:45 sharp to get the 17:02 train home. Sounds ideal? It was good but… boring, repetitive and didn’t challenge or push me to be better.
  
Starting business with Catherine was the opposite to this, challenging, courses, mentors, learning, grind, effort, every day different, abnormal hours all to make it work.
 
What made the biggest difference for me in our businesses? Systems.
 
I’m not sure why it took me so long to realise I could use my skills from the day job to create and implement processes and systems in our businesses (probably the same reason it never occurred to me in the day job I could create my own business!).
 
in 2015 we hired our first virtual assistant and since then we have employed a number of virtual assistants. physical staff, part timers, full timers, commission based roles and salary based roles and the common theme again is systems. 
 
It is easier to have your team work efficiently with robust systems, output is more easily measured with systems and overall your business is more sellable with systems. 
 
So why were we still not as far along as I planned?
 
Leadership & management! 
 
This started my thirst for knowledge in leadership and through audio books I believe I have improved over the years. But what I enjoy even more, is…
 
Automation! Speed up work flows, remove human error, reduce reliance on management and leadership and your team and let automation take the hard work out of repetitive tasks. 
 
This freed up time, resources and has ultimately lead to a smaller team, focussing on what they are good at with me tweaking automation and processes in the background (leaving the leadership to Catherine).
 
Back in the day job I was building automation into our custom estates and finance management software and now I am doing it for the marketing, sales, finance and admin of our businesses.

Automation was the step I missed when starting out in business, opting instead to hire first and this may have slowed down our progress.
 
And this is why I have launched the Finance Systems and Leverage Day, 12th February in Chelmsford, to save you time, money and effort in the admin of your business.

Whether you are just starting out or been working on your business for a number of years, if you have not automated and leveraged out the finance function of your business so you can just receive, interpret and act upon financial reports and KPIs then on this day you will learn exactly how to do this for your business.

I have 20 spaces, 10 on my interest list and 8 placed already taken.

If you want to come to this one off day event, let me know below and I’ll send you the details! 👇

I would love the chance to help you develop, improve and grow! Come and get involved!