How Did You Get Here?

How did you get here? Looking back on route you took to where you are today in business is probably not how you imaged it to be at the start.

My circuitous route to becoming an independent marketing consultant started in road transport. I was working in Romford as a Traffic Clerk for Chris Hudson International. If you are of a certain age, you might remember their green and white 12metre trailers on the roads of Britain and Europe.

In the early 1980s, Chris Hudson International won a contract with IBM, requiring a specific type of trailer. And I was appointed manager of the contract. Well, I didn’t like it one little bit. The company was under-equipped for the contract, and I was also having to handle the accounting – me and numbers aren’t on speaking terms. So I quit, believing I would walk straight into another transport job. Don’t ever walk out on a job without somewhere to go. What happened next was a life lesson for me.

I didn’t walk into another job. In fact, I was out of work for three weeks. Not long, but with a wife and newborn son to provide for…

A friend of my brother, Dave Cormack, ran a graphics company in Upminster – Vidack Communications. He needed a salesman, I needed a job. I was hired and would be trained in selling graphic design and mechanical artwork (that’ll mean something to people who know what CS10, PMT’s and Rubylith overlays mean). The training lasted one day. I was pitched in at the deep end.

Time to sink or swim. My job meant visiting British Telecom’s graphics centre on Old Street, London. Vidack had a contract for outsourced artwork, so I’d visit each contact at least daily to ask if they needed anything done. I knew nothing and had to learn on the job. Thank you, Joy Houellebecq, for giving me my first order – six Photo Mechanical Transfer prints.

After a year of learning from the guys in the studio and the very patient clients at BT, I knew I’d arrived when I found myself explaining to a college trained and qualified designer why their design would not work when it was printed.

After Vidack Communications came Eureka Arts, then Inner Vision which became ABC then Offsite. From hand-made artwork to desktop publishing to digital printing. I’ve been around for a long, long time.

In 2007 I made the break and flew solo. Most of my work came as a freelancer for The Design Partnership, a website design company. I was the client-facing suit’n’tie. One of the challenges of designing a website is understanding the objectives of the website. Most often, a business owner did not really know why they needed a website, they just wanted one. Then getting content out of them was a mission!

I gradually realised that there was a role for someone to pick the brains of a business owner and translate their thoughts into coherent instructions for a web designer, printer, digital marketer etc.

And that’s where I am today. Nothing to do with road transport and a long, long way from mechanical artwork. I help owners of small businesses find their voice and deliver their message to a target audience. I design a little. I write the content. I consult and advise.

If I sound like the kind of person you’d like on your side, please get in touch.

Now, how did you get here?