I lost my job during the Pandemic. I refuse to see myself as a Covid Victim, however. Instead, I am a Coronavirus Phoenix, being given a great opportunity to re-connect with what I want to do and get out there and do it.
This story is one of re-birth, as I re-start my business, ZHR Marketing. I closed it in 2015 after nearly 11 years. And whilst it was the right thing to do at the time, there was always this sense that I’d failed.
My last few years have been spent in a Business Coaching environment. Whilst I wasn’t a coach, I learned a huge amount about what makes a successful business. My oft repeated statement to prospects was “If I’d known what I know now, when I was running my own business, my life would be completely different”.
Being put on furlough, and going into redundancy consultation, as a result of Covid, gave me a great opportunity to look back, as well as forward.
Realistically, I had many successes with ZHR Marketing over the course of its original life. I delivered some great work for clients, but I had no plan and I was just struggling to create financial freedom. I now know that the majority of small business owners will identify with that. The majority of small businesses don’t even last five years. I was doing something right!
Whilst working out my next career step, with the help of Nicola Pease of Ignite Coaching, a career coach who I would highly recommend, I identified that I really wasn’t feeling excited about finding another “job”. The idea of setting up on my own again had bubbled up, and I was feeling so much more driven by that.
Surely, I could heed my own advice – and apply all of my new learnings to make things better this time round.
And rather than give myself a hard time for having failed once, I chose to consider myself in good company:
- Steven Spielberg was rejected twice by the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts
- Stephen King’s first book, Carrie, was initially rejected 30 times by publishers
- Thomas Edison took 1,000 attempts to create the electric lightbulb
- James Dyson took 5,127 goes before he made a bagless vacuum that worked
And if that wasn’t enough incentive to give my business another go, Michael Jordan summed it up nicely:
- “I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
This opportunity to succeed has literally been handed to me on a plate. I owe it to myself to take that opportunity and run with it.
So, ZHR Marketing is re-imagined and reborn.
I’m excited to be working with start ups, solo-preneurs and small business owners, to creating effective marketing strategies and step by step action and measurement plans so that they know what marketing to do, why to do, how to do it and what return on investment their marketing is giving them.
I’m excited to be doing something to make a difference to other business owners. And I’m excited to see what the future holds for me and for all the other intrepid business owner out there.
Here goes!