There’s a view that if you let life happen, if you’re open to possibilities and take your opportunities when they come along, you’ll always be fine. You don’t have to force it.
And conversely I do know a lot of people who always have excuses, and who turn down great opportunities when they are right in front of thieir face – and then afterwards they complain that they have no job or no customers or no money – or no fun.
So here is what has been MY experience during my working life:
| Thinking about leaving university lecturer’s job as money not enough | |
| Made redundant and given the customers | |
| Where will the new customers come from? | |
| Met Christopher Bayliss and he pushed me into Vistage – 20 years of great customers | |
| Needed a bit more work | |
| John Andrewes had the idea of doing accredited courses | |
| Needed longer term bookings and better paid work | |
| Massive company ISS found me via my website and ran 19 two year diploma courses with me and John, over a ten year period | |
| Tired of driving around the country – and thinking about pension. Need passive income somehow! | |
| Daughter Louise discovered Udemy and we made courses on Leadership, Sales and Negotiating | |
| Made a project management rap for fun | |
| Lynda saw it on youtube and approached me to make courses for them. Made one then two then eventually 44 | |
| Ran out of things to film | |
| Son Miles had the idea of filming other people, so we did. Made 150. | |
| Wanted to do training as well as videos but fed up wtih driving everywhere | |
| Pandemic led to Zoom becoming accepted, so USA and India etc became possible | |
| Linkedin stopped wanting courses from me | |
| Contacted by Coursera just at the right time, | |
| Wanted to use exclusive Udemy courses on Coursera | |
| Udemy/Coursera merger announced, which allowed transfer of all Udemy courses to Coursera |
This looks like a pretty lucky series of events. But there was some hard work and some creativity involved – but mostly just taking the next opportunity when it became visible. You jsut dont know what’s over the horizon coming next, but there will be something – it’ll be fine.
