DigitalJenIPC

The Food Judge guest blog part 3

August 27, 2015 By // by DigitalJenIPC

This is part 3 of a 3 part guest blog by Nicky Richmond.

Nicky combines being a joint managing partner for Brecher with being a restaurant critic, and is a property and property finance lawyer with over 25 years’ experience. She is The Food Judge and writes a regular column for The Lawyer magazine. As a Foodie myself as you can see from our food themed LLClub web site, I am inspired!

In case you missed them, here are the links to part 1 & 2.

Part 1:
https://liberateyourtalent.wordpress.com/2015/05/16/an-edible-portfolio-career-1/

Part 2
https://liberateyourtalent.wordpress.com/2015/06/04/the-food-judge-nicky-richmond-2/

The rest of this blog are in Nicky’s own words.

Who or what helps you to manage your portfolio career?

No-one helps me to manage my portfolio career, but having a supportive group of partners in my firm who appreciate the good publicity that can come with raising the profile of any individual partner whether by way of restaurant reviews, opinion pieces or being involved with charities.
Not having to go through endless layers of bureaucracy to get my pieces approved is also a help and being an owner of the business means that I have more leeway than lawyers in larger firms where they may not feel entirely comfortable with a lawyer actually having an opinion.

How do you approach marketing your portfolio career?

In terms of law, through the conventional channels, attending industry events and writing in the legal and professional press. For the restaurant side, Twitter has been a great source of networking and contacts.

What if any, is the personal brand used for your portfolio career?

The Food Judge is my brand for the food blog. In general, my approach is straightforward advice with a sense of humour, whether it be legal/restaurant/charity work

What skills/experience/qualities would you say lawyers possess which makes them well suited to having a portfolio career?

Lawyers can work to a deadline, they are task driven, self-motivated, and having an outside life, in my view, makes them better lawyers

What advice would you give to give to someone considering a portfolio career?

Choose to spend your time on something you love and which makes you feel good about yourself

Your top 5 tips about portfolio careers from having one yourself?

1. Don’t be scared of trying something new
2. Put your head above the parapet – it doesn’t matter if it fails
3. Don’t expect instant success
4. Ask for help
5. Believe in yourself

Also – don’t wait until you have been in the law 25 years, like me, try something new. I look back and regret all that time I spent in the office at weekends or until silly hours of the night. There are times when that is unavoidable but if I’m honest with myself, I am allowed the job to take over and if I had had other interests/commitments earlier on, I may not have committed so much time to it and I would have had a more balanced and no doubt more enjoyable life.

Very few law firms will tell you that you are working too hard – you need to decide what is too much and how much you are prepared to give to the day job, they certainly won’t decide for you.

Allow yourself to do something for yourself that you enjoy.

More about Nicky Richmond

Nicky Richmond, Joint Managing Partner, Brecher:
http://www.brecher.co.uk/people/nicky-richmond/

The Food Judge – never knowingly underfed.
http://thefoodjudge.com/

Blog – Not Entirely Legal
http://strictlylegal.me/author/nickyrichmond/

More about portfolio careers:

Could a portfolio career give you the variety you seek? Download our free report ‘Discover Portfolio Careers’ and find out:
http://www.llclub.org/discover-portfolio-careers/

The Food Judge – Nicky Richmond #2

June 4, 2015 By // by DigitalJenIPC

This is part 2 of a 3 part guest blog by Nicky Richmond. Nicky combines being a joint managing partner for Brecher with being a restaurant critic, and is a property and property finance lawyer with over 25 years’ experience. She is The Food Judge and writes a regular column for The Lawyer magazine. As a Foodie myself as you can see from our food themed LLClub web site, I am inspired!

Here is part 1:
https://liberateyourtalent.wordpress.com/2015/05/16/an-edible-portfolio-career-1/

The rest of this blog are in Nicky’s own words.

When people ask you ‘what do you do?’ – what do you reply?

My day job is a lawyer but what I really love to do is to review restaurants.

To what extent did your portfolio career happen by chance/luck and to what extent was it planned?

My portfolio career was not planned at all and I fell into it and only realised how much it gave me once I have been doing it for quite some time. Doing the reviews didn’t feel like work and it was easy to combine it with my work life as whilst I will never willingly attend a sporting event, I will happily take a client to a food event and I have to do client entertaining as part of my business.

What do you most love about having a portfolio career?

Finally managing to incorporate my obsession with food into my day-to-day life other than just by way of eating it. Meeting a whole new group of people and getting to understand another industry, which has been fascinating. Feeling that I’m using all parts of my skill set and that there is still a lot to learn. Getting stale is so dull.

What are the challenges of having a portfolio career?

Realising that you can’t do everything that you want to do because there are not enough hours in the day. You have to really plan and be disciplined about the time you spend on each thing that you do and you have to be equally committed to the non-core aspects of your portfolio career.
The temptation with law is to let it take over – I certainly did for the first 25 years and I ended up being tired, and a little bit jaded. Doing the charity work is good for the soul however much of a cliché that might appear, and the upside is that you get to meet a whole new group of people from different walks of life. The sort of people who volunteer are the sort of people that I really like to spend time with.

Part 3 of this 3 part guest blog coming soon.

More about Nicky Richmond

Nicky Richmond, Joint Managing Partner, Brecher:
http://www.brecher.co.uk/people/nicky-richmond/

The Food Judge – never knowingly underfed.
http://thefoodjudge.com/

Blog – Not Entirely Legal
http://strictlylegal.me/author/nickyrichmond/

More about portfolio careers:

Could a portfolio career give you the variety you seek? Download our free report ‘Discover Portfolio Careers’ and find out:
http://www.llclub.org/discover-portfolio-careers/

Interested in finding out more about whether a portfolio career is to your taste? Come along to The Law Society Portfolio careers event on Friday 12 June. See link for more details:
https://events.lawsociety.org.uk/ClientApps/Silverbear.Web.EDMS/public/default.aspx?tabId=37&id=1077&orgId=1&guid=eb63cc9e-13ed-45c4-8b66-4b52db7a0c94

The agony of feeling trapped in the wrong career

May 31, 2015 By // by DigitalJenIPC

So there you are. Feeling trapped. Feeling stuck. The agonising pain of needing a career change.

So, what do you do? Do you take action? Do you do research?

What do you do?

Is it any of these?

•You chew your pencil (there must be a few pencils still left out there in a world of tablets!)
•You bite your nails.
•You have a moan to your partner or a friend.
•You go shopping. Alot.
•You go to an expensive restaurant.
•You go to an pricey hairdresser and have a haircut and your colours done.
•You visit a Spa for a day to pamper yourself and make yourself feel better.
•Your body gets ill, waves you a ‘red flag’ and goes on strike to take you away from the office and give you some time to create the future. You sleep.
•You drink too much.
•You search for free career change resources on the web.
•You do drugs.
•You get depressed.
•You comfort eat. Multi packs are your new ‘best friend’.
•You moan to your partner or friend. Again.
•You plan a weekend away or holiday to distract yourself from how bad you feel.

And then you come back from a break and return to work and your life. Things are exactly the same. Only they aren’t. You have money on your credit card to pay off.

If you convinced yourself that you couldn’t afford to change career before, you definitely can’t now. Your mortgage is too big. Your credit card bill too large. Your tiredness and lack of energy too much to make a change.

So what do you do?

You start planning your next holiday to escape from your life and your job. A temporary refuge from the agony of being stuck in the wrong career. And feeling it is too late to do anything about it. It isn’t.

Can you relate to this? Does it remind you of someone you know; a partner, friend, family member or colleague?

If you are ready to create a virtuous circle and invest in yourself rather than keep recreating a vicious circle, get in touch. If you are not, please don’t.

What next?

Please share this post with someone who you feel needs to read it.

Read our client testimonials:

https://liberateyourtalent.wordpress.com/energise-client-testimonials/

Download your copy of our free report:

http://careerstrategies.co.uk/changingcareersreport/

Read inspiring client examples:

https://liberateyourtalent.wordpress.com/client-examples/

Energise Career coaching:

http://careerstrategies.co.uk/careercoaching/services-1/services/

Funke Abimbola guest blog #1

May 29, 2015 By // by DigitalJenIPC

This is part 1 of a 2 part guest blog by Funke Abimbola, Managing Counsel, Roche Products Ltd. UK & Ireland.

Funke is a practising solicitor and currently Managing Counsel at Roche UK, leading the legal team supporting Roche’s pharmaceutical operations in the UK, Ireland, Malta and Gibraltar. She is also Data Protection Officer for the UK. Her career began in private practice before moving in-house. Funke undertakes a lot of work to support diversity & inclusion in society as a whole and within the legal profession in particular. An award winning lawyer and diversity champion, she was most recently a finalist for ‘Diversity Champion of the Year’ at the inaugural 2015 Excellence in Diversity Awards and won the ‘Career Woman of the Year’ award at the 2015 Women4Africa awards.

What are the components of your portfolio career e.g. study, paid freelance work, part time job, volunteering etc.)?

I have a full time job as a lawyer leading the UK & Ireland legal team for a large pharmaceutical company. In addition, I hold a number of voluntary roles within diversity and education. I am also a regular speaker at various conferences and to students both at school and at University.

How did your portfolio career come about?

My portfolio career came about out of a genuine desire to make a positive difference within the legal community and my local community. I was particularly frustrated by the ongoing diversity issues in the legal profession and once I realised that I was in a position to make a positive impact in this area, I decided to devote more and more of my spare time to diversity initiatives.

How has your portfolio career changed over time?

Because of the limitations on my spare time (I am a working mother), I have had to re-prioritise this year. For example, this meant resigning as a school governor simply because I did not have enough time to do that together with other schools-related work and my diversity work and speaking engagements.

When people ask you ‘what do you do?’ – what do you reply?

I tell them that I wear many hats! I often reply by saying I am a lawyer, leader, diversity champion, mentor and very proud mother.

To what extent did your portfolio career happen by chance/luck and to what extent was it planned?

It certainly was not planned but came about by chance as various opportunities to make impactful changes came up. I was approached about specific diversity initiatives, for example, and things have snowballed from there. Also, the school governor role came about due to a genuine need to get involved in the school’s development at the time.

What do you most love about having a portfolio career?

The ability to meet people that I would not have met otherwise; also the chance to broaden my experiences and change my perspective. I have been able to apply some of the new skills learnt from my voluntary work into my work as a lawyer/leader and this has made the experience all the more rewarding.

This was the first part of a two part guest blog by Funke Abimbola for Energise LLClub.

Follow Funke Abimbola on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/diversitychamp1

Are you a woman lawyer interested in a portfolio career? Download your free LLClub report ‘Discover Portfolio Careers’:
http://www.llclub.org/discover-portfolio-careers/

To book your place at the Law Society Women Lawyers Division Portfolio Careers event on 12 June, click on this link:
https://events.lawsociety.org.uk/ClientApps/Silverbear.Web.EDMS/public/default.aspx?tabid=37&id=1077&orgId=1&guid=45fb5b5b-61ae-421d-84e4-3ccb65a5c20b

Funke moved from private practice to an in-house role. Did you know that The Law Society (all divisions) are having a Changing career direction event on 20 October (evening)? Save the date. See link for details:
https://events.lawsociety.org.uk/ClientApps/Silverbear.Web.EDMS/public/default.aspx?tabId=37&id=1092&orgId=1&guid=f18e5ce0-e39c-4e5d-9f6a-4915fa3c27fc

Simon Strong’s portfolio career #4

May 22, 2015 By // by DigitalJenIPC

This is the fourth in a series of 6 blog posts by Simon Strong about his portfolio career.

Reading how people have created their own portfolio career can be useful to inspire you to create one yourself.

In case you missed them, here are parts 1, 2 & 3

Here is part 1:

https://liberateyourtalent.wordpress.com/2015/04/11/simon-strongs-portfolio-career-1/

Here is part 2:

Post on LLClub

https://liberateyourtalent.wordpress.com/2015/04/16/simon-strongs-portfolio-career-2/

Here is part 3:

https://liberateyourtalent.wordpress.com/2015/05/04/simon-strongs-portfolio-career-3/

The rest of this blog is in Simon’s own words.

To what extent did your portfolio career happen by chance/luck and to what extent was it planned?

Utterly by chance. But in retrospect, it seems totally planned. I was chatting to my mum and dad the other day, and they commented that they always knew I wouldn’t take an obvious route through life. They’ve never been able to predict what I would say or think on any subject on any given day! I’m contrary by nature and have an eclectic approach to my interests.

But I wonder what it must have been like to be the first lawyer. There must have been one. How would he have described himself at ancient networking events?! And even if you have a job title that people recognise, why should it define you? I remember meeting a marketing director (have you already got a picture of her – the archetype of a marketing director…?) who started her career as a wing walker in the Cadbury’s Chocolate Crunchie Flying Circus… Now then – what do you think of her as a marketing director? Or my first boss who was hard as nails – but who’d started her career as an underwear model for Lady magazine (you know that old trick of imagining people who make you nervous are in their underwear – that just made me more nervous with her!).

I’ve found that people really like to have you ‘in a box’. If I ever work with a client, they tend to think that whatever I did for them is the only thing I can do. They are surprised when I tell them all the other things I get up to. This sometimes leads to a perception that I must therefore do these things part time and therefore not as well as someone who does only the one thing. I think the diversity of my perspective makes me a more rounded thinker who brings more to each project and therefore makes me better…!

I remember I bumped into a couple of guys who were a couple of years below me at school. They were shocked that I worked at Saatchi & Saatchi at the time. ‘But you’re a meathead’ they said. Because I played rugby (I was a prop at school and played under 18 county level, before moving to the back row – and captained the English Advertising Agencies) they had me pegged as ‘an unthinking lump’. They couldn’t conceive of me as someone who had a rich intellectual life.

I think my own path has given me an appreciation of the diversity and possibility in the lives of others. I’m constantly fascinated by the incredible potential hidden within people– the kitchen porter who is learning German so he can study architecture in Berlin – the research chemist who teaches Zumba – the cashier in a Coop corner shop who brews honey mead – the learned academic who rocks a comedy set… And to see how these interests shape life. The kitchen porter is studying fine arts in parallel to his German and temp work so that he has the qualifications and skills to make the most of his studies in Germany, the chemist is now a full time fitness instructor after the pharma company closed down her research lab, the cashier now works at the best pub in the area (which also sells his honey mead), and the academic has a public speaking life opening up and is increasingly in demand for media appearances.

So I think that our lives follow the shape of our interests. And I guess it’s no accident that I have a portfolio career!

Part 5 of Simon’s 6 part guest blog series coming soon.

View Simon Strong’s LinkedIn profile:
http://https//uk.linkedin.com/in/simonstrong

View the Human Zoo web site:
http://www.humanzoo.biz/

What could your portfolio career be made up of? We help our clients create, market and manage their portfolio career.

Find out what your transferable skills are by downloading our free report:
http://careerstrategies.co.uk/changingcareersreport/

An edible portfolio career #1

May 16, 2015 By // by DigitalJenIPC

This is part 1 of a 3 part guest blog by Nicky Richmond. Nicky combines being a joint managing partner for law firm Brecher with being a restaurant critic, and is a property and property finance lawyer with over 25 years’ experience. She is ‘The Food Judge’ and writes a regular column for The Lawyer magazine. As a Foodie, I think Nicky’s portfolio career is wonderful and I hope to accompany her soon to a restaurant……………!

The rest of this blog are in Nicky’s own words.

What are the components of your portfolio career e.g. study, paid freelance work, part time job, volunteering etc.?

My day job is as managing partner of a law firm, a role that I have undertaken for seven years. In my free time, I write weekly restaurant reviews for The Lawyer magazine and I have a restaurant review blog called The Food Judge. I also write articles for various publications and my other blog, Not Entirely Legal. I am also a trustee of a children’s charity, Kids Out and have recently become involved in Action Against Hunger which seems a good counterbalance to all that eating out.

How did your portfolio career come about?

I have always been a little bit obsessed about food and eating out; in fact I thought that I was going to be a lawyer for about 10 years then open my own restaurant. Real life got in the way. I started writing in a non-legal sense when I wanted to do some publicity for my firm and because I had only written like a lawyer for the previous 25 years.

I wanted a little bit of practice and to try and find my own writing voice, so I started writing restaurant reviews for myself. The Lawyer magazine tweeted that they were looking for restaurant reviews and it seemed like a gift. After a little bit of stop/start, I ended up being their weekly reviewer. The charity work came about because I have always had a strong interest in giving something back. I never quite found the right charity but then I think I never really looked properly, or hard enough. You have to find something that chimes with you and where you can really empathise.

How has your portfolio career changed over time?

For about 25 years I did very little other than law, partly because I was simply too busy and partly because I didn’t actually make the time to do anything different. When I started doing the restaurant reviews, I had no idea that they would take off in the way that they did, or that I would meet a whole new network of people through doing it. And whilst I always did pro bono work for charities, that was under the banner of a law firm and the charity work that I do now is nothing to do with the law firm although my legal/management expertise is useful.

Part 2 of this 3 part guest blog series coming soon.

Nicky Richmond, Joint Managing Partner, Brecher:
http://www.brecher.co.uk/people/nicky-richmond/

The Food Judge – Never Knowingly Underfed.
http://thefoodjudge.com/

Blog – Not Entirely Legal
http://strictlylegal.me/author/nickyrichmond/

Interested in a portfolio career and liberating more of your talent? Get in touch with Rachel Brushfield, Talent Liberator.

Rachel is doing a talk about Portfolio careers on 12 June 2015 at a Law Society Women Lawyers Division Portfolio Careers event in London.

Simon Strong’s portfolio career #3

May 4, 2015 By // by DigitalJenIPC

This is the third in a series of 6 blog posts by Simon Strong about his portfolio career. Reading how people have created their own portfolio career can be useful to inspire you to create one yourself.

In case you missed them, here is part 1:

https://liberateyourtalent.wordpress.com/2015/04/11/simon-strongs-portfolio-career-1/

Here is part 2:

https://liberateyourtalent.wordpress.com/2015/04/16/simon-strongs-portfolio-career-2/

The rest of this blog is in Simon’s own words.

How did your portfolio career come about?

It certainly wasn’t intentional. In part it came about because I find it hard to say no. In part because I’m always having daft ideas (my outdoor cinema for the football world cup was an unmitigated disaster!). And partly because I started to give myself permission to do things if I thought they were interesting.

How has your portfolio career changed over time?

It started with a business focus underpinned by the arts. I left advertising and got involved in using improvisational comedy as a tool to facilitate creativity, professional development, culture change, and branding workshops. I discovered there was this world of amazing people who did extraordinary business work: horse whisperers who did leadership development, a poker player who taught risk assessment and decision making, a Tai Chi master who taught negotiation skills etc.

For a short time I drifted away from a business focus to a more arts based interest with a business underpinning, partly due to the impact of the recession when the budgets dried up and companies found it difficult to justify working with someone like me!

I have now come back towards the business world and seem to be finding a way to combine my interests in really productive ways. I feel creatively potent and productive at the moment.

When people ask you ‘what do you do?’ – what do you reply?

Ummmmm…

My mum is really happy about the coffee shop – it means that she actually has an answer! But it is something that I have struggled with and angst over. Probably unnecessarily. It has been especially difficult at networking events when I think I should have something smart and concise to say.

Really, it depends who asks. Sometimes I say I am a barista or that I run a coffee shop or cafe. Other times I say I run a creative consultancy. Mostly I laugh and say I do stuff, for people, for reasons!

Part 4 of Simon’s 6 part guest blog series coming soon.

View Simon Strong’s LinkedIn profile:
http://https//uk.linkedin.com/in/simonstrong

View the Human Zoo web site:
http://www.humanzoo.biz/

What could your portfolio career be made up of? Find out what your transferable skills are by downloading our free report:
http://careerstrategies.co.uk/changingcareersreport/

Simon Strong’s portfolio career #2

April 16, 2015 By // by DigitalJenIPC

This is the second in a series of 6 blog posts by Simon Strong about his portfolio career. Reading how people have created their own portfolio career can be useful to inspire you to create one yourself.

In case you missed it, here is part 1:
http://liberateyourtalent.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.php

The rest of this blog is in Simon’s own words.

How have some of the projects in your portfolio career come about?

Engaging students in learning

A couple of years ago, an ex-colleague from advertising days contacted me. She’d started teaching German at Radley College (boys public school just outside Oxford) and was intrigued as to how we could do something creative with her students. So for the last couple of years we have run the Radley Business Challenge in which we give the students a real business issue (Stabilo pens in the inaugural year and the German National Tourist Board last year) so that the students have to learn about German culture in order to create a marketing campaign. Last year another 6 schools took part in the challenge and I got the former Head of Sales and Marketing for Diesel UK and former Brand Communications Director of Orange Mobile to run workshops. Last year, for the first time, all her ‘A’ Level German students got A*, and more students have signed up for German than ever before. This year we hope to get extend the project to even more schools.

Coffee shop

My wife commutes to London every day for her job (CSO at ad agency Ogilvy and Mather) and she wanted a decent coffee on the train. So, because I love her, I opened a coffee shop at our local train station. The Zoo Café at Milford Train Station opened just over 6 months ago, and it’s just doubled in size when I took on my first member of staff three weeks ago. We serve 100’s of cups of awesome every day with clients including Lord Seb Coe and my very happy wife. I plan to develop a deli for commuters to pick up their evening meal on the way home, and also offer a dry cleaning service so they can drop off on the way in and pick up and the way back out. I’ve also go permission to set up a semi-permanent photographic exhibition on the platform, and I also want to run a pop-up restaurant out of the café (I’m in contact with Kerstin Rodgers of the Underground Supper Club who I met at a KFC workshop a couple of years ago who I hope to entice to cook at the café).

River of lights

A couple of years ago I organised an event in Guildford I called River Of Lights. It was inspired by a memory I had as a child of watching an event on TV (probably John Craven’s Newsround!) where tens of thousands of candles were thrown off a bridge like a waterfall, and which then floated down a river. In 2010, and again in 2011, I invited the community around Guildford to celebrate the winter solstice by floating candles on the River Wey. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvdBbMqy6NQ

It got flooded off in both 2012 and 2013, and last year I took a break. Next year I am planning to do it in the village of Witley where I live.

Other projects

I chaired the PTA for our local infant school where my two boys went (Lucas is still there). Although I stepped down almost 2 years ago, I still run the annual fireworks event that I initiated, as well as dad’s poker night!

There are lots of other projects that are simmering in the background (a community energy project, Shakespeare in the park, something to do with pants, a Quidditch tournament, “hats for cars”, and I have a strange desire to direct ‘Waiting For Godot’…). And I’m sure other stuff will crop up…

Part 3 of Simon’s 6 part guest blog series coming soon.

View Simon Strong’s LinkedIn profile:
http://https//uk.linkedin.com/in/simonstrong

View the Human Zoo web site:
http://www.humanzoo.biz/

What could your portfolio career be made up of? Find out what your transferable skills are by downloading our free report:
http://careerstrategies.co.uk/changingcareersreport/

Simon Strong’s portfolio career #1

April 11, 2015 By // by DigitalJenIPC

This is the first in a series of 6 blog posts by Simon Strong about his portfolio career.

Reading how people have created their own portfolio career can be useful to inspire you to create one yourself.

The rest of this blog is in Simon’s own words.

What are the components of your portfolio career e.g. study, paid freelance work, part time job, volunteering etc.?

I don’t really have components as such. More a load of stuff that I’m doing. Some I get paid for. Some I invest in. Some is just because I want to. Interestingly, it’s often the stuff I do just because I want to that leads to the most satisfying and lucrative work opportunities. Probably the easiest thing to do is tell you what I’ve been doing recently and what I’m up to now.

I ran Pecha Kucha Night in Guildford for a couple of years which allowed me to connect with so many amazing creative people and their stories. This led to being asked by Ellen Dowell (who runs Einstein’s Garden at the Green Man Festival, and whose academic work is based on interdisciplinary collaboration) to help set up Bright Club Guildford – where University Academics do stand-up comedy based on their research. Ellen and I ran Bright Club for 3 years before we stepped down in January this year. We have handed over to a fresh committee who we hope will be able to take it on to the next level.

I run a creative consultancy, Human Zoo, named after a book by the amazing Desmond Morris with whom I had the great honour of working when in advertising. We work with our clients across a broad range of projects including branding, innovation and culture change, running lots of seminars and facilitating workshops and conferences. We act as Ambassadors for the University of Surrey Business School and are involved in delivering seminars on their MBA and executive MBA programmes. I’m currently consulting with a global print company and am about to go out to Dubai to run a conference.

Last year my business partner in Human Zoo and I got bored of expending so much energy on client projects that went nowhere, so we decided to start investing time in our own innovation projects. We’ve got three projects currently underway:

1) We won a funding competition from the Technology Strategy Board (now Innovate UK) under ‘Re-Imagining The High Street’ for a feasibility study on an innovation we developed and we’ve just been asked to apply for phase 2 funding for a market test which we are just about to submit.

2) We are working on developing an accelerated learning platform which has been proven to deliver the same learning outcomes as 27 hours of traditional classroom based learning in just 1 hour. We are working with the University of Surrey Business School to run a learning tournament to compare different learning techniques in one of the largest studies of its kind – and we are engaging the top 1,000 businesses in the UK on how this will impact on engaging Gen Y and creating ‘Business Ready Brains’.

3) We are working with one of the University MBA students to take a charity start-up idea to market. We are about to go into a funding round…

Part 2 of Simon’s 6 part guest blog series coming soon.

View Simon Strong’s LinkedIn profile:
http://https//uk.linkedin.com/in/simonstrong

View the Human Zoo web site:
http://www.humanzoo.biz/

What could your portfolio career be made up of?
Find out what your transferable skills are by downloading our free report:
http://careerstrategies.co.uk/changingcareersreport/

Banking of a different kind

April 10, 2015 By // by DigitalJenIPC

During the downturn years, I have been doing some serious banking. Not financial banking, but banking of a different kind. I have been banking insights, self-awareness and tools to make myself more useful for my clients and kinder to myself. In a world of uncertainty with disruption the ‘new normal’, this has been an excellent investment, with far greater returns than the interest in a saving bank account would have yielded. Self-interest is not selfish, it is wise and make you resilient and resourceful. More kind to yourself and more useful and self-aware with others.

I have been banking a number of useful commodities that I am sure you can relate to easily; new high quality contacts now tagged connections on LinkedIn to create ease in future, thought leadership with books, chapters and articles published, content to share for a content hungry world, trend digests to help me make focused and sound business decisions and to add additional value to my time-poor clients. But I have also been banking something that many people ‘poo poo’. Insights and tools from personal development, that soft fluffy thing that is so hard to prove the benefit of or justify in business. Or is it?

The personal development that I have done on myself in the downturn years and indeed throughout my life has given me a rich treasure chest of useful tools for lifelong use. If such a qualification existed, it would equate to a PHD. In a coaching market that is currently unregulated, isn’t that reassuring to know?

As I sit writing this, I picture you reading this, cynical, sceptical. Am I being unfair to you? You need evidence, I know, practical tangible evidence.

Ok then, here you go. Some examples of how personal development has been useful:

• Staying present and achieving a complete turnaround of an outcome in an hour with a stressed HR law firm client. Closing gambit – “I apologise, I took out my frustration on you, we do want to continue working with you.” Opening gambit “We think you are too expensive, you are not giving us what we want and we are not sure we want to work with you any more.”

• Making decisions in line with my personal values, the things that are important to me, so that I am always authentic and fulfilled

• Staying resourceful and resilient when my back has been against the wall at the darkest time post 2007 crash

• Preventing a high potential employee from derailing their career. They were physically running out of the room before delivering a training. In 4 hours of coaching, I helped them understand why their fight or flight mechanism was kicking in and to develop a detailed strategy and plan to feel comfortable and choose to stay in the room. It worked first time.

• The instant disappearance of anger in a client by working out the insight that the anger was caused by frustration. The cause? Conversations were always moving on to a different topic because an introverted and reflective French speaking father was thinking in French, translating into English and preparing what to say, compared with his extroverted fast thinking and speaking English wife and children.

Why have I made personal development a priority? The future has been firmly in my sights – a happy inner future as well as a prosperous financial and reputational outer one.

Finally, one last thing to share. One of the things that has stuck in my mind when I researched and wrote an article for Managing Partner magazine on emotional intelligence was the insight that a feeling is faster than a thought, neurologically speaking. Now that could give you a serious competitive advantage. Not so soft and fluffy perhaps.

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