I’ve known Amanda Roulstone for several years. We met through face to face networking in Bourne, and very quickly she became part of my networking team, and took on a leadership role within it.
Now that always impresses me. It did then, and it does now.
Why?
Because it shows me that that person is willing to get stuck in, make a commitment, support, rally & lead people and generally want to go the extra mile in that role (which, by the way, was a volunteer role, as was mine – oh, and is also why pushing someone into a leadership role will never work – if they don’t want to do it, they won’t invest in it, and you’ll end up doing all the work anyway – but that’s a whole other blog right there).
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah – here – so , Amanda joined my team of Area Leaders and ran a great area of face to face networking meetings until You Know What happened back in 2020 & the whole face to face networking world went to hell in a handcart and none of us knew what the hell to do next. That.
Prior to Lockdown, I had started to work with Amanda – she provided me with her Flaming Good Follow Up service, which was much needed at that time, and I provided her with business coaching as she was ready to grow her business & was looking at ways to do that. We paid each other. We still do. And that is also a blog for another time…
Those days seem a lifetime ago. My F2F networking team & I threw ourselves into getting our networking organisation online, putting huge amounts of time & energy into doing so whilst we had a lot of it on our hands. Some of it worked. Some of it didn’t. Some people showed their true colours, made some questionable decisions & were pretty self centred. But most weren’t – and Amanda was one of them. She & Rachel Haith, who had not worked together in the F2F world, set up & ran one of my most successful online groups for over 18 months. Which was awesome. And then we all started to get a bit jaded with it, found new ways to fill our time, new ways to market & network our businesses and gradually drifted away.
It's natural. It’s progression. It’s OK. Changing direction is not failing – its exactly what it says on the tin – a change of direction. Even better, it means you can decide to go back in that direction later on if you want to.
Now, during that first 18 months of Lockdown/Not Lockdown/Maybe Lockdown/Not Lockdown/WTAH is going on down, Amanda & I talked a lot. Not just about networking, and follow up, and marketing, and coaching, but about what it is like to run a business on your own. Mostly about what it is like to run a business on your own when you have a zillion other pressures on your time, and about the mistakes/advice/support we wish we’d had when we started our businesses.
Because there is very little of that around when you do decide to become self employed.
In fact, almost nothing.
Well, not from people who have actually done it. There’s plenty for you to throw money at written by employed people for corporations that offer great advice about being a ‘start up’, but do so from a perspective of wanting to make money from you, as opposed to having been that person taking a deep breath and going ‘OK, now what the hell do I do first?’.
And one day, Amanda said to me – ‘we should do a podcast of our chats’. And I laughed & said – ‘yeah – OK then, why not?’
And so we did.
The Flaming Super Business Chat Show launched on 8th June at 8:30am. We are releasing a new episode every fortnight & would love you to bob on over, have a listen & subscribe
It’s amazing what happens when a ‘can do’ mindset takes a throw away comment and makes it become a thing….