This year saw 4 e.g. Consulting turn 5, 5 years of freelance, creating my own business and shifting my skillset. Landmark or not, it instinctively prompted me to take moments throughout 2022 to pause and think about evolution.
What comes next? Let’s stop for a moment. Let’s take a look back, not self indulgently but honestly and openly.
In all honesty I didn’t have a 5-year plan, or a plan at all when I started 4 .e.g. but what grew from difficult work circumstances, responding to the market at the time and my place in it, I have absolutely no regrets. I, because there is no other, I gave myself time to reflect on what and how I have done and with whom and it has been really meaningful. Taking stock for me allows to evolve future plans that are real, achored in my strengths and values.
Part of that is paying due care and attention to the elements my business and clients need and nothing more so than the face or shop window of 4 e.g., my website. Websites are tricky things to invest in, time, money, expertise and let’s face it interest. I loved my original website, colours were classic and clear, the layout descriptive of me and my services. But time moves on and so does my hosting WordPress too, so much so they are retiring the style I used effectively rendering it useless. Nothing like a deadline to spur you on! Maybe I could have done this completely on my own, but where is my time and energy best placed, not in web design that is for sure. So, with the expertise and support of Will at Zookri who has empahtetically guided me through the process, offering up options and solutions and challenging me to ask What do I need it to do, how and why.
This is crucial to any small business owner and these questions whilst about my website, have been so timely to everything I do. Through this process, I have upgraded its functionality, evolved the look through colur, layout and photography that puts me front and centre of 4 e.g. which is tricky for an introvert.
It also presented me with the opportunity to think about my business model, what works, what stands my work aside from others and how I communicate this. What I came to realise through needing to update the content, reviewing, editing and writing new copy was how much more I was doing. And, the key place I wasn’t talking about this was my own website. I have new channels in leadership coaching & outplacement, developed associate work that specialises in niche sourcing for my recruitment clients. All this as well as my mental health first aiding studies and they weren’t even mentioned.
Much writing later, I am now ready to launch my new website. This has been a dicotemy for soemone that is happily dyslexic, likes prose and reading but doesn’t find it easy at all. I have re written this several times already.
Everyday’s a learning day as they say, working on and seeing my website evolve is more reflective of whom 4 e.g. and will be. I hope you like it too and would ask that you take a gander.
What do you think?