I love this time of year. September always feels like the start of something new. Everyone’s back from holiday, the schools are back and people are generally focussed on what needs to be accomplished between now and the end of the year.
This year has been really busy for me. Since April I’ve been flat out on a range of different projects and I’ve been too busy to think about where the next project is coming from. In July, lounging around on a Greek beach, I realised that my pipeline was drying up and panic set in.
I had a busy August but after that, to be honest, it was looking very quiet. I’m very lucky to be part of the ICG – a network of independent consultants – that works better than any other professional body I’ve every been part of. We share questions and work and thoughts and sometimes musings. At the end of last month an email popped up from someone who had a client in need: this client had done a big customer survey and, because of changes in the team and the organisation, they hadn’t done as much analysis on it as they wanted to and were looking for a freelancer to come in and help. Ta dah!
Perfect timing, a week later after phone calls, proposals, references checked it turns out I got the job. Hooray! It’s a big project with an interesting client and it all kicked off today. Very grateful for the ICG and for the clients who said nice things about me because I’m sure that helped.
So here I am again, working hard (and probably too hard to do any business development!)
