Why the 'endings' chapter doesn't come at the end my book

'the end' is never 'The end'...

We often think of "the end" as being the final point in something, after which there is nothing more - the end of the movie, the end of a book, the end of a relationship, the end of a business...

But endings don't actually signify a finality of things stopping and not continuing. They're just a transitional stage (albeit sometimes a bumpy on) that leads us into the next thing. After all, if nothing ended, nothing new could begin (because there wouldn't be enough space).

Endings are also not an automatic sign of failure - I've referenced elsewhere how my business has outlasted 90% of all others who started out at the same time as me 20 years ago. But just because they're not still trading like I am, doesn't mean that we should see them as having failed: some may have been designed with an intentionally limited life as part of a stop-gap for people; while for others the world may have changed too much for them, and they decided that they didn't want to twist and subvert themselves for the sake of carrying on being a part of it.

And that's why when I was putting 'Flushed!' together, as part of marking the 20th anniversary of my business, I deliberately didn't make the chapter titled 'endings' the last part of it - to highlight that things can, do, and should, still happen after 'the end' has been announced by someone.

If you want to dig more into this idea about endings not being what most people think they are, and how to approach them better, you should check out the decelerator -https://decelerator.org.uk/ 

20 years of making hard things possible, amplifying voices, and enabling action

I recently openly asked people who've had had type of interactions or contact with me over the last 20 years, what they thought my most important impact has been over these 2 decades.

This isn't (just) for the sake of gratifying my ego, but as part of a genuine intention I have, that's been sparked by my business' porcelain anniversary, to start to try and take my enterprise more seriously.

As in previous cycles of this 'game', I've tried to anonymise all the responses I received at the end of this post, so you can check my workings out - but this time, I tried 2 different ways to try and make sense of what people kindly took time to share back with me: my own reading of the comments, and AI's analysis of them.

Firstly - to my own interpretation:

It strikes me that there are some common threads emerging:

1) championing less sexy and overlooked causes and injustices that people agree are important, but no-one seems to know what to do about them;

2) building other people up so that they can go further, and with more confidence, than they believed they ever could;

3) helping people make sense of things that most others see as in-sensicle (is that a real word?) - supporting them to understand and navigate systems and processes that otherwise appeared too technical and complex for them to cope with.

And the above seem to speak to not only impacts, but also the approaches I use it doing it (which nicely echoes an argument in my latest book, that the important thing about impact isn't what we do, but how we do it).

But nothing pointed to a single event, change, or new thing (which I find interesting, as there are workspace buildings that now exist because of me; and specific pieces of legislation that are different to what they were before I 'targeted' them). However, on reflection this is a good thing - as it echoes some of my core sentiments about the importance of relationships we have with each other (after all, in the ultimate end, that's all we ever have).

Secondly - to AI.

I fed it all the quotes and testimonials I'd received, and asked it: "Analyse the attached document of things people have said about me (from what they've seen and known that I've done and been involved in), to find what my biggest impact has been. And I'm defining 'impact' as "a marked effect or influence"."

For the sake of not wanting this post to turn into something that will take another 20 years to read, I'm going to extract some of the core points it generated from the swathes of ideas, suggestions, and follow-up prompts it created:

Across all the testimonials, your biggest impact seems to be: You enable others to do    more than they thought possible—by simplifying complexity, advocating for justice, and generously opening up new perspectives. In other words, your influence is both practical (making systems/processes work better) and transformative (changing how people think, act, and feel capable).

I asked it to reframe this into an 'impact statement', to try and make it flow a little better:

Adrian makes complexity accessible and give people the confidence to act. Through generous support, principled advocacy, and creative facilitation, he helps others see new possibilities, overcome barriers, and shape fairer, more effective systems. His influence lies in enabling people and organisations to do more than they thought possible—while amplifying voices and issues that might otherwise go unheard.

But this still feels a bit wordy and corporate jargon-y, so I asked to get a final version as a single sentence statement:

Adrian makes the complex simple and the possible achievable—equipping people and organisations with confidence, clarity, and courage to create fairer systems and lasting change.

Which somehow lost the opening core essence of what it originally found in its analysis. So I made a final attempt, by asking for 3-5 work taglines. These felt better:

* Making the hard things possible

* Amplifying voices, enabling action

It seems to me that AI didn't find anything substantially different to what I read and identified (so a useful sense check), but boy was it wordy in how it got this to a point that I think makes it easier to share with other people in ways that will be easy to understand and not sound like the usual patter of most consultants?

And as another sense-check on this, I also went back to the tag-line I created for my business nearly 20 years ago when I was first setting out - Insight, Development, Encouragement.

And it I think that based on what people have shared about their experiences of me and my work since then, I've done pretty well at sticking to those core 3 words?

(and the outcomes of this exercise also echoes my favourite testimonial which someone I once worked wrote about me, but which I've also struggled to be able to actually use in anything until now: "Adrian made us feel less stupid".)

The full schedule of all comments received from different people:

“What I’ve valued most is the generous, thoughtful, timely feedback at critical stages in promoting cooperative education in voluntary, and policy work undertaken.  Thanks Adrian you are a gem.”

“Every time I hit a brick wall and ask for help, yours in the name that keeps coming up”

“Well, I think the biggest thing that you’ve helped me with has been the change to our governance model and making sure we were doing it right for people living with HIV. You guided us through what was potentially an incredibly challenging process, identifying some of the landmines and encouraging us to prepare for and pre-empt them, which was incredibly useful in supporting people to feel able to vote for the change at an EGM.”

“From what I see, you have made the often complicated world of social enterprise governance, finance and development much more accessible to both entrepreneurs and those of us that support them.  You use your experience and knowledge – of both the sector and humans – to meet people where they are and offer them the input they need (even when they might not yet know they need it).  I think the impact of this is an increased number of social entrepreneurs, and their supporters, who are equipped with the right critical questions to navigate the world of social business (and social business support!).  I know I have certainly grown in confidence in the decisions I make, questions I ask and support I offer, as a result of learning from and observing your work.”

“For me, you've helped me reframe what a sponsor or donor could look like.  Because I think I had this fixed idea in my head that I had to approach larger organisations (often with dodgy values) if I wanted to get some sort of investment in my business.  And actually since your generous support of my Write the Book programme began, I've also had support for my podcast from a couple of other freelance businesses who've signed up to sponsor it.  I'm not sure I would have had the idea to contact them if we'd not worked together.  Or at least I might have contacted them without much hope of a positive response, but I think I'm more optimistic and open to the idea of freelance businesses being potential supporters now, and that's very exciting.”

 “I’m not sure that there is any one specific thing in terms of biggest impact, because I have seen various things and then there’s the next thing.  But overall, I would say the biggest impact you have had outside the direct services you provide is your commitment to putting your head above the parapet and shouting out for justice, whether that is for self-employed directors who are also carers, #Payin30Days, Excluded UK etc.  Quite hard to put a measurable impact on that!”

“I can only comment from the perspective of your support for Co-operative Climate Action.  You are one of a tiny band of co-operators who support our co-operative option rather than conventional (and often discredited) offsets.  As such you are helping vulnerable communities I Malawi adapt to climate change, protecting biodiversity, and supporting the development of new co-operative businesses that will reduce poverty, give them hope, and a financial incentive to care for the trees in the long term. Thanks to your interest and encouragement we are gradually gaining momentum and giving hope to people."

“Adrian has been a dedicated and powerful voice for carers, sharing his experiences to illuminate the challenges of caring when you’re self-employed.  The searing honesty in both meetings and in the Carers Aloud blog series has not just been moving but has helped instigate change within the organisation, making carers a priority area for future campaigning and lending strength and insight to existing campaigns, particularly on the fatherhood experience.  His insights on our research have been valuable and will be taken forward in developing future research.  He was also able to stand up for the self-employed when talking to the Department of Business and Trade at a focus group on carer’s employment experiences, which will hopefully feed into shaping future policy.”

“Challenging preconceptions and barriers to understanding and engagement. Innovative, creative and engaging learning." 

“Inspiring communications and stimulating conversations.”

“Finding the fun in the fundamentals of business processes and sound practices. Fixing the fundations!”

"I see someone who, despite having SO much on his plate, just Gets On With It. Never a hardy outward whinge or woe-is-me moan about how much of a challenge everything is. Sure, you acknowledge it and know that the setup is anything but 'normal' but you still Get On With It. You find a way to move through the challenges, conduct your work, look after your wards, and make the world consistent and consistently better for those around you."

"Your facilitation generates immediate thinking from different perspective.  The legacy of these 'penny drop' moments have guided the team through difficult conversations.   Your questions have empowered the inner voice to be louder."

I'm part of the 3%

Some people may have heard me refer to how life was, when I started my business 20 years ago - and they gaze in wonder and how I managed to find and deliver any work at all, in an age before iPhones, Dropbox, and LinkedIn (we used sharpened stones to carve messages on stones, which we then threw in people's general direction).

But as I've been reflecting on my porcelain anniversary, I've realised that a lot of the social media that's embedded in our daily lives today was still 'growing up' when I first started to play with them.

Looking at the histories of platforms like LinkedIn, I've realised that I was in the first 3% of people who now use it to Link; and in the first 2.5% of people who started to regularly tweet.

Being part of this very early crowd of users meant that I experimented a lot with social media, because it felt safe to do so - they weren't that many other people in the spaces to laugh at me if I accidentally created what turned out to be a nsfw hashtag. And doing so got recognised as one of the top 500 most influential tweeters globally for a time in 2012; and LinkedIn celebrating me as having an 'all star'/can't possibly be any better, profile.

Social media also felt a lot more accepting in those days - the pace of posting was slower, and it felt that people were generally more accepting and understanding of each other's content. But I'm mainly taking my realising that I was amongst the early adopters of these now mainstream platforms as another sign of why it might be that my business has been able to last longer than 90% of all other startups: I'm curious to try out new things, and experiment/play with them. And other people were too - which led to some of them creating their own hashtags about me: #TwitterKingAdrian, #ChatToAdrian, and #SocEntSexGod.  

Social media has never helped me land any big client projects, or seen me go viral - but I didn't get into those spaces to do that. I'm in these spaces because this is where other people hang out, and ultimately I'm interested in other people. After all, it's the relationships we have that help determine our future successes, so why wouldn't I want to be showing interest and willingness to try out new things, if other people think they may be interesting too?

 

The sums behind my % claims =  

I was in first 33 million people to join LinkedIn (in 2008) - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-did-you-first-join-linkedin-heres-how-find-out-andy-brown-k9fpe/. In 2025, 1.1bn people have profiles on Linked In, which means I was in the first 3%.

I joined Twitter/X in 2009, when there were 15m active users (out of the 75m who created a profile but then never did anything). In 2025, there are 611m active X users, which means I was in the first 2.5%.

How I've become a daily 1 minute habit for people in 20 countries around the world

As part of reflecting on 2025 being the 20th anniversary of my business, I started to wonder what else was similarly 'birthed' in the same year.

It transpires that YouTube and I both share the same anniversary!

So unless you've been auto-playing the contents of my channel there, I wanted to take this opportunity to do a mini-audit of how my life on YouTube has played out over our lives together so far.

What I've found is that since launching my channel, and generating content for it, most people who find me there do so through my shorts (the videos, not the apparel) or from a direct link from someone else's website.

They've come from over 20 different countries, and over the lifetime of my channel have watched an average of at least 1 minute of my content every single day of every single year.

That doesn't seem too shabby?

The specifics (if you want to get grainy about it) = 

Firsts

1) The first video I uploaded was in 2010, being interviewed for a national project about empowering adults experiencing mental ill health to create their own social enterprises:

https://youtu.be/8AduAsnWMjE 

2) The first content I purposefully created wasn't until February 2020, and was about why should never trust your business adviser (which includes me!):

https://youtu.be/ZpPYqBlt1Ek

3) and my first short was in November of the same year (2020), celebrating the special relationship that social enterprises share with toilets (the first, but not last, time I sat on the porcelain throne to record content!):

https://youtube.com/shorts/EFLDDvLwOrU?feature=share

Biggies

1) My most viewed short on YouTube was about how I'd made a low-tech Meeting Owl Pro:

https://youtube.com/shorts/flf0GExdbsc?feature=share

2) My most viewed video was a rallying cry to stop people using the word 'pivot' during a pandemic: 

https://youtu.be/4G-iHsWIszQ

Guesting

1) The first video I appeared in anywhere on YouTube that someone else had created and uploaded (to my knowledge) was in May 2013 - effusing about the Responsible Business Standard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBx1qWHWt_U

2) The most viewed video of someone else's that I guested in, was recorded in Sept 2023, about redefining the concept of social entrepreneurship with Anne Scottlin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxm8p7w59uQ

Playlists

I curate several playlists in my channel, the most popular of which is my collection of shorts and being interviewed by other people on their podcasts on the topic of imposter syndrome:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbjwTqLUXg99vP8ZLwQhn_vPYY1xlF0ON

So, if you're a Youtuber too, how does your content and audience compare?

Who do you share your anniversary with?

As I've been (trying to) reminisce about what I've been doing in and with my business over these last 20 years, I started to wonder who, and what else, I'm sharing this porcelain anniversary with.

The below list is far from exhaustive, but highlights a few others who started on their respective journeys and adventures at the same time as my businesses did - and which I take to show that I'm in good company!

YouTube - It feels like it's been with us forever, but it really is only 20 years old.

Dr Who (the RTD reboot) - it was 20 years ago that our lives were reacquainted with the wheezing and groaning of the TARDIS as it returned to out TV screens after what felt like a lifetime of being in limbo in the time vortex. And running. An awful lot running also returned with it.    

The global Impact Hub network was formed - a movement to harness, encourage, and amplify entrepreneurs working to create, well, impact (for good). I've been fortunate to have opportunities to work with some of them in overlapping our common goals in this regard. 

The Freedom of Information Act was introduced - I've always tried to be transparent and open in my business model and practices, so it's encouraging to see that other things were starting to change in the wider world to encourage others to do similar at the same time.

Enterprise Nation was formed - they've subsequently shortlisted me as the UK's top business advisor 3 times, invited me to lead 2 of what have become amongst their most popular Lunch and Learn sessions, and profiled me as one of the featured advisers. Which is nice.

English whiskey was re-established in England - 'nuff said.

UK's The Apprentice aired for first time on the BBC - and I'm still waiting for the call from Lord Sugar... 

The (American) Office premiered - and none of us ever looked at a ream of paper (or desk) in the same way again.

But who and what does your respective enterprise, charity, co-operative, or other, share its anniversary with?

How did I get here?

I take an unusual approach to helping people understand the balance sheet part of their accounts: I play the Talking Head's song "once in a lifetime", and explain how the lyrics actually explain how this strange set of numbers can be read and understood easily by anyone.

And a core part of this activity is a lyric in the song - "how did I get here?".

But this isn't a post about accounts or David Byrne - instead, it's a roundabout why of introducing a question I was asked by an early-stage entrepreneur, as part of a Mindset for Success gathering that I was invited to speak at earlier this year. 

When they heard that I'd made it to 20 years (and in doing so, beaten the survival rate of 90% of all other businesses), they were keen to know how I'd managed it: "how did I get here?".

And it's a really good question - because as I reflect on my blog posts, annual impact reports, stories I've shared across the various podcasts I've been invited to guest on, I don't think anyone (including me) has ever really stopped to try and figure out what my 'magic fairy dust' is.

After all, if you've seen other posts I've made on my blog earlier this year, you'll have read the litany of everything I've had to endure and work through during these 2 decades - any one of which by themselves would be sufficient to kill off any business; yet I've managed to not only survive so many such critical moments, but also get to my porcelain anniversary too. So maybe there's something about how I work which might actually be quite relevant to any business?

In the session I offered a few off the cuff thoughts, but promised I'd come back to the question to try and better reflect on it, here on my blog. 

So - I currently think that the reason(s) that I've made it this far are:

1) curiosity

Not the NASA rover on Mars (although part of me is embedded onto its successor, Perseverance, that's currently trundling around the red planet).

I find myself always wondering 'why?' and 'why not?' - and on reflection realise that this has been important in stopping me from becoming complacent or stale in how I work and what I offer.

It's also meant that I've introduced new practices which have gotten me noticed more; helped me change my position on different topics and themes so I've been seen as even more credible and relevant by others; contributed to strengthening my resilience (both personally and professionally); and helped me make better sense of everything I get involved in, which has directly supported me to be able to maintain my motivation through some very trying episodes.

2) being a glass half empty guy

Normally, the person who looks at the glass and says it isn't half-full is labelled the pessimist (and therefore more likely to turn down opportunities, and otherwise miss out on life).

But my looking at the glass and seeing it as being half-empty doesn't stop there - I have an idea that what's important isn't what we see, but what we do because of how we see it: because I see the glass as being already half-empty, it means I'm always looking for the next tap (which also helps in trying to avoid complacency).

It also means that I invest more energy in contingencies (which some people will have heard me refer to as my 'professional paranoia'): because I see the glass as being already half empty, it means that I'll feel any unexpected shocks more greatly because there's less water in the glass to absorb the shock wave from it. And having a range of contingences (even if only half-formed), means I'm more confident in my resilience when things start to go off-track, and able to recover from/endure them more easily and quickly.

3) trying to say yes (not no) more

There's an 'accepted wisdom' offered by many self-proclaimed experts and coaches that we should all be trying to say 'no' more.

But I've always struggled with this, initially because of my parents.

My parents tried to instill a set of good manners in me as I was growing up - which included trying to be helpful, and offering to support people if they ask you nicely.

Over time, this has seen me developing possibly one of the most diverse portfolios of any business consultant / freelancer. And while this comes with its own challenges (how do I best summarise in 1 pithy sentence what it is I do and who its for, when I work with national government departments on new national policy initiatives one day, and a consortium of market traders the next?), it's also meant I've found myself stretching my skills and comfort zones in ways that I wouldn't otherwise have even considered trying to (or seeing the benefit of). This has been really important for how I've kept my business going for this long - because I've fingers in different types of pies, it means that if one type of work/sector/etc starts to slow down, there there's usually another that I can focus more on to keep the lights on.

It's also meant that I was well ahead of the curve when the first lockdowns hit in March 2020, based on the number of national bodies who immediately enlisted my support to remodel how they work and redeliver their respective programmes and services in the world of zoom - up to that point, video calls and events were very niche and usually avoided by many, but I'd been asked to volunteer host a national body's monthly on-line meetups that were held over zoom several years prior. This meant I'd had lots of opportunities to play with/think about how to make this format best work for as many people and circumstances as possible.

4) always looking for escape exits

I have an idea that if you know how you'd be able to quickly exit a situation, contract, etc with the least amount of blood on the carpet, it can help you take more risks - you find you enjoy it more, because you're not worrying about what might happen if things start to go wrong. And you're not worrying because you've already looked at the glass as being half empty, worked out what the major risks might be and put things in place against them, so if things do start to go off-track, you know which glass to break to active your remedy to it.

Taking more risks also means you're confident to push things further; and the more we try new things, the more unexpected and exciting things can start to happen.

      

5) enduring more than my fair share of crises

I've recently shared about the full scope of hits I've had (professionally and personally) over these 20 last years. As any of of these could easily have killed any business, but I'm still here, then I've obviously built a lot of resilience in my business to be able to cope with shocks (which I've also considered in how I've also likened myself to a toilet elsewhere).

How I've thought about, and practiced, developing resilience is covered in other blog posts, podcast conversations, etc elsewhere - but investing in building this protection (both in my business model and personal mindset) is also recognised in various studies and research as helping people to:

• have greater self-awareness (which can help avoid the Dunning-Kruger effect)
• improving your psychological health (so enjoy greater mental well-being)
• better understand, and work with, others
• enhance self-management (really important if you're a freelancer or self-employed, like me)
• better decision making     

As well as the benefits that these would offer to any business, each of these is also recognised as helping people to better manage stress (which might also explain how the long-term stresses I live and work with aren't notably affecting my professional judgements, as evidenced by my business still being here 20 years on?). And pro-actively trying to manage stresses are important, because unmanaged stress can lead to a propensity to make more mistakes; make it hard to think clearly; and cloud your sense of what you're trying to build for the long-term, which leads to demotivation, despair, and closing your business.

So Kemi Bowley, this is the fuller response I promised you in that Mindset for Success session - the reasons I think my business has outlast 90% of all others are:

- I'm curious;

- I try and be pessimistic;

- I try and say yes to everything;

- I'm always looking for a way out;

- and in enduring everything that's tries to knock my business/me over, I've created new models of resilience.

To everyone else reading this, I'd be interested to know what it is that you think has helped your business get to the age it is today (especially when so many businesses that start will be gone within the first 36 months of their launching). 

What's really changed in 20 years?

As some may know, every few years I pose a seemingly random question to clients, collaborators, and other cheerleaders, to help me better understand what I should be trying to do more / less of, in order to be the most helpful and useful consultant I can be.

This is part of a wider CPD framework I've built around myself and business, and is based on the 360-degree feedback model (but in a way that shouldn't mean you need therapy or a solicitor afterwards).

In previous rounds, this has seen me being turned into a statue, donning superhero tights, becoming a painting, throwing Molotov cocktails, growing onions, etc - https://thirdsectorexpert.blogspot.com/search/label/superpowers 

And as this is the 20th year since I set my business up, it feels right to be inviting people to play along with me again in this occasional activity, but I wanted to try a slightly different type of question:

What do you see (or think) my biggest impact (or footprint?) has been over the last 20 years, from what you've seen and known that I've done and been involved in?

(and I'm defining 'impact' as "a marked effect or influence")

And yes - this is a really mean question in a lot of ways, as (1) some of you haven't known me for this full period,  and (2) I'm not looking for the usual 'outcomes' that might typically relate to a specific project or programme.

Instead, what I'm fishing for are things that have shifted in how things are done, work, or thought about; or things that you've seen introduced, changed, or created as a result of something I wrote, did, or said.

They might directly relate to your role or organisation; they might be about things you've seen across a wider community; or at a whole sector level. They could even be what you've heard others say about me. And they can also be less than flattering (not all impact is always good - some new things can push out other stuff that was already there, and which was actually better).

In the interests of trying to keep with the original model of 360-degree feedback, if you'd prefer to anonymise your answer, you can add it through this form here: https://forms.gle/QijEizLHRduB6vFp6 

As always, however you feel you can respond (which can include not at all), it won't affect your standing on my Christmas card list later this year - and I'm looking to collate and share back what this finds after the summer.

And thanks in advance for anything you're able to share and reflect back to me.

Half way through the year; missed most of my goals so far; but still feeling ok

So we're officially now in June - half way through 2025, and only 6 months to Christmas! 

And tied to our collectively reaching this calendar milestone, seems to have been a recent small flurry of emails, posts on social media, etc from lots of people encouraging us to reflect on how well we've been smashing things for these first 6 months of 2025.

Except when I look back over my shoulder at what I've 'smashed' since January, I find myself at serious risk of giving up on the second half of this year:

- as part of marking the 20th anniversary of my business I wanted to publish my second book out (a retrospective of these first 2 decades). And although I've somehow managed to get the manuscript done, there's still the getting around to sorting out and completing final details that keeps eluding me...

- I wanted to get my website redesigned (I can't remember last time I did it); similarly as part of the porcelain anniversary this year. But I've not yet started that conversation with my web-hosters, SmartBear (but maybe by being so openly public it'll help me be more accountable?).

- I signed up to a few on-line/self-paced courses, which I've not even opened session 1 of yet (I'd hoped that paying actual cash for them would help me better follow through, but turns out not).

Now, none of these involve training to climb a mountain, staging a global conference, or creating a new on-line course, so what have I been playing at to let these things slip so much? After all, if you break them down, they could all have been easily be covered off if I'd devoted just 1 combined hour a week to them all.

Which brings me to the crux of this post - it's easy to set ourselves the goal, and equally easy to miss it (kudos to Douglas Adams for the sound effect of when we do), and when we see it happening we get disheartened, and so are more likely to leave things unfinished. Worse, we're probably also less likely to even try to set a future ambition as a result.

But here's the trick that I'm using to keep my motivation going: what the hell have I been doing in these last 6 months which which meant that I missed achieving these otherwise very achievable things?

Professionally - the start of this year saw the end of a lot of funded business support programmes of various types; and I found myself being approached by several to help them make sure that they'd hit all their targets, had all the audit paperwork trails in place, and enterprises being supported by them were in the best possible health as they cut the (financial and support) cord after March. Anyone who's managed funded projects knows how hectic the last few months of any can be. Multiple that by 3 to 4...

Personally - my unpaid caring roles were notably ramping up (and continue to). I'm not going to share details here, because the stories about the immediate family members I support are theirs to share, not mine. But for context, the government's (and most carer support services') support for carers is based on the assumption that you only care 1 for person. Recent research is starting to come out that's helping to highlight the different and more stressful experiences of the 'sandwich carer' (someone who cares for 2 people who span different generations). I'm in the next camp of being the sole unpaid carer for 3 people. Added into this, I'm self-employed (which means I'm not recognised in law as a carer), so I'm needing to spin the plates of supporting them, keep my business running to help keep the rent paid, and all with no support for myself in these roles...

So maybe missing my targets is OK - because I can see that a lot of good stuff has still been happening in wider communities, and for those closest to me. And that only happened because I didn't stick to my goals and pursue them above all else, (and there's still another 6 months for me to catch up with them, right?).

Just as I shared earlier this year about giving up on a dream that I'd been chasing for 20 years, maybe we should also hold the goals we set for ourselves more lightly too - and try to recognise that sometimes not achieving them can serve a greater purpose?    

Tubthumping

In this, my business' 20th anniversary year, most people would usually be pausing to reflect on the highlights, achievements, legacy, etc of their work, and be making commitments about what they'll change/do in the next chapter. 

And yes, I'm doing this in various places throughout 2025, but I also wanted to pause to reflect on just how f*cking awesome my reaching this milestone is (and not just because only 10% of all businesses make it this far).

You see, I've endured my share of challenges since I first registered with HMRC at the start of 2005. I've alluded to some them in brief in various podcasts and interviews I've featured in over the years (which is possibly why I'm repeatedly asked to guest on the topic of resilience - most recently as part of the Freelance Thrive and Freelance Sucks podcasts). But I thought it was maybe time to 'go in record' with all of the big hits - not to encourage you to break out the tiny violins for me, but as hopeful solidarity and encouragement for anyone else out there, who may be struggling with similar, that you can come out of the other side of it (eventually):

• When I started freelancing/became self-employed, as well as having no savings to speak of, no clients, and no leads, I was sole financial supporter of my family for 12 years. During this time, I had to earn enough to cover all the household bills and costs, family expenses (clothes, trips, entertainments, etc), as well as my own business' needs. And I also had to financially support and cover some of the costs in my now ex-wife's business that she started up, for 7 of those years.
• As a family, we were made homeless by flooding twice, and I had to make up some of costs of rebuilding our home both times, as the insurance wouldn't cover everything - managing the rebuilding of your home, trying to encourage and support your family (which included young children) as they bounce around various temporary accommodations, whilst also keeping your own business running, were 3 plates that I'm not sure I always managed to balance as well as I should have. 
• I went through a divorce with my ex-wife that took a lot longer than my solicitor's experience said it should have - amongst other things connected with this, the process saw me disowned by my parents; lose my savings; and cede full ownership of the house I'd paid the full mortgage of. So at the age of 50, I started my life again with no house (other than the one I rent with my new wife); no savings; and no pension (many people who are self-employed of my generation have tended to buy their home as their pension fund).
• I've become the unpaid carer for 2 of my now adult children (likely lifelong), and another immediate family member (likely to be temporary) - and owing to how systems are designed (or not) for people like me, there's no support I'm able to access, nor am eligible to apply for, to support me in this role, nor them.
• My father has suffered through multiple sudden illnesses that technically should have killed him at least twice on each occasion, and he lives with my mum at the other end of the country to me - trying to keep all of the above progressing, whilst also taking time out to be with him and my mum as best I was able, meant that some of those plates I mentioned before probably weren't as balanced as well as they should have been.
• I've had several clinical procedures on one of my eyes to help me retain my sight in it (which also involved the wearing of eye patches, and not being able to read laptop or phone screens for several days at a time. But it did lead to an accidental discovery that I've always been missing part of my brain...).
• Following an unexpected ride in the back of an ambulance, I needed several years of treatments to help me resolve, and live with, skeletal issues (that were diagnosed just before my 40th birthday, and coincided with my celebrating my 10th year of being in business). As a result of these prolonged works on me, I'm able to move freely and without the need for painkillers on most days.
• I had surprise visit from police officers at 11pm one night, owing to unfounded allegations other people had made about me; and have had to break off client calls while working from home owing to neighbours (literally) kicking off at my family, on my doorstep. 
• The CIC Regulator opened a file on me once, because I openly questioned them about why they were knowingly allowing the CIC form to force social enterprises adopting it to compromise some of their core defining values that otherwise identified them as such.  
• There was a spell of about 5 years, when there was at least 1 client a year who was making official complaints about me (all of which were fully investigated by external bodies, and all of which fully exonerated me).
• I've been investigated by HMRC 3 times for suspected tax fraud (and fully cleared each time).
• Several people have written blogs attacking my professional reputation, standing, and credibility; and I've also been un-invited from speaking at conferences, after my book that challenges what everyone thinks they know and understand about imposter syndrome was published.
• My website has had to be taken down twice, owing to it becoming targeted in deliberate attacks by others.
• And I once had to write off a nearly £10,000 overdue invoice to a client that had accumulated over the course of a year - I was working with them on the basis that they were drawing funds from a grant making body to pay me, but they'd hit a temporary cash-flow hiccup as some Councils they were delivering contracts for were dragging their feet in paying them on time. I'd agreed they could use the cash that they'd received to pay me to temporarily plug this gap while I continued with the project, and then 'catch me up' with payments after said Councils cleared their overdue debts. Except those Councils never did pay up, and the enterprise went into administration.

And there's all the other typical challenge that most freelancers / sole traders contend with: ghosted by clients; late payment of invoices; tech explosions; falling ill; etc...

I've endured, navigated, and come through the other side (of the ones I was able to - some will remain with me for life), without access or recourse to sick pay, holiday pay, or any other employee assistance programme that I would otherwise been supported by were I salaried on a payroll. Being self-employed has meant I've had to find ways to deal with all of the above by myself, without help from anyone else.

I've written in the past about how I also find myself working in some vary 'dark places' with certain types of clients, (which I won't recant here, as they're usually to do with taboo subjects that most people find difficult to talk about, let alone ever want to actively acknowledge or think about). And as part of that blog post, how I deliberately try and bring some 'humour' to go some way to balance this (for both the people I work with who are living in/with those circumstances, as well as myself). 

But in light of the above, is it any wonder that my humour seems to sometimes border on the hysterical?

As Spider-Man once said in one of the many comics he's appeared in: when asked why he's always telling jokes despite the multiple traumas he's endured in his personal life: "It's because if I didn't laugh, I'd probably cry".

And the moral of the above (if there is one?) - however much you think things can't get any worse, the universe can always find a way of making it so... but if can hold your nerve and find ways to keep investing in your resilience, there's always a choice somewhere that can help you come out of the other side of it (and if you're lucky, in a way that doesn't include you having to lose any limbs/organs, or have things start to come to light when you next get a DBS check on yourself).

What does my business need next, after 20 years?

I'm increasingly coming to the idea that most training, workshops, seminars, events, etc, that are created for, and aimed at, freelancers and the self-employed like me, seem to usually be focussed on those people either thinking about, or having recently, started out in this way of working.

That little which isn't, seems to be focussed on how we can build our 'evergreen content' into a passive training course that people click to watch, with an occasional mastermind session that would allow me to work less (and so be involved with less things that impact the world, as much of my client work offers me opportunity to), and charge people more (and so excluding people who may otherwise benefit, but simply can't afford to, through no deliberate fault on their part).

This year is the 20th anniversary of my 'striking out' as being self-employed/freelancing, after I was 'stitched up' by one of the then leading national social enterprises in the UK who'd just encouraged me to relocate my family to the other end of the country - to take up when they promised was a dream career offer that they were creating for me, but turned out to be nothing but well meaning intention when it came to allocating me a desk...

And over the last 2 decades, it strikes me that most of the CPD events I go to are now on a loop of those profiled in the opening of this post.

And that's not automatically a bad thing - I recognise that very few businesses of any type get to this porcelain milestone, and in one of the chapters in my book about imposter syndrome, I detail how realising that you're in such training events (and not getting any apparent benefit from doing so) is a sign that you really are doing alright in how you're running and managing things in your work.

But... I don't want to get stale/complacent - the way that I've always approached designing, and revisiting, how I work is based on trying to keep me constantly moving forward, challenging my understandings and ideas, and ultimately trying to avoid falling into habits I see in other consultants and advisers, which are ultimately only to the detriment and cost of the groups and enterprises who have looked to them for support and guidance... 

And I'm also aware that I'm not in the same place I was when I started out 20 years ago - I'm now an unpaid carer for several immediate family members (so no longer have the same amount of time available to devote to my business or earn money, but aren't eligible to apply for any support for myself in these roles), and also no longer own a house nor have the savings I used to (which had been forming the basis of how I imagined I'd fund my 'retirement', which is looming in the next 20 years).

So - where should I be looking for the next 'good stuff', as I now start to think about my next 20 years in business?*

* (assuming that there's still no-one out there who'd be open to putting me back onto a respectable payroll? I never meant to be self-employed, and am still not sure it's my life's calling..) 

I've given up on my dream of ever getting a job

20 years ago I was 'personally and professionally shafted' by one of UK's then leading social enterprises after they'd approached me out of the blue with a dream career offer. Acting in good faith, I recruited my successors in the co-op development agency I was employed in at the time, relocated my young family from Cambridge to 'up north', and was then suddenly told by their managers that I'd been speaking with, that it turned out that they didn't actually have the authority to follow through on the offer and invitation they'd made to me...  

I immediately started knocking on doors in my new adopted home town to find a next job (where no-one knew me, the internet and smartphones weren't yet a thing, etc). And the first offers of work I found required me to be self-employed - a necessity to support my family, rather than a deliberate career choice (as so many others' stories I hear about seem to be).

However, I was always looking to get back onto a respectable payroll - if only for the security it offered (after all, I had young family!); and then as years went on, for a sense of community, support (IT, etc); and sick/holiday pay and pension contributions.

It's now 20 years on - and despite setting various job alerts on different sites; having had my CV reviewed by different 'experts'; being encouraged to apply for roles by senior people in organisations I've been an associate to; and various interviews; I've still not landed a job offer. 

And its been increasingly challenging to find jobs that offer a salary and flexibility consummate with the caring responsibilities I now have, let alone be able to get shortlisted for interview.  

So having now reached my 50th year (which shouldn't make a difference, except we know it can), and with caring responsibilities which mean that I wouldn't be able to employ me if I were applying for a job with myself - I've reached the decision to officially 'give up' on this dream I've been chasing for the last 2 decades. This is because I recognise that it's never going to be able to happen in a way that I now need it to, but didn't them (chiefly because of the unpaid caring responsibilities I've been gained from the universe during this time: something I share with the 600+ other people who are having to quit their salaried jobs every day).

(Now, I should probably clarify that I don't begrudge being self-employed: there lots of positives I've enjoyed, and impacts I've been able to create, that universe might not have otherwise benefitted from because of the restrictions that being on a salaried payroll would otherwise have imposed on me.)

And strangely, I find myself not feeling any sense of loss in having made this choice. I've just given up on a dream I've been chasing for 20 years, which has in part been helping to sustain me, and which should surely make me feel mournful in some way? But instead, I find myself with a sense of release and freedom - and feeling (slightly) less stressed by having 'taken something out' of my expectations for my future, and focus for energy.

But I also recognise that this means I may actually start to properly take being self-employed seriously (for perhaps the first time ever!), as I've now abandoned my 'safety net' to it... 

after 20 years, it's time to go to the toilet

My business is 20 years old.

20 years! Only about 10% of enterprises that start-up get this far. 

To put this in perspective - when I started out, smartphones didn't exist! (it would be another year before the first tweet was posted; 2 years before the first iPhone was released on the world; and 3 years before Dropbox was launched. The typical best internet speed was 1Mb compared to around 900Mb today - we had to rely on using sharpened bones to scratch messages onto stones, and then hope people picked those stones up when we threw them at them).

Now, it turns out that the material associated with this particular anniversary is porcelain - something that most of us here in Britain associated with toilets.

But for me to have gotten this far, porcelain actually seems an apt simile for me:

• it has a high elasticity - to be able to keep up with all the changes in the world over the last 2 decades, the range of work I do, and types of organisations I support across all sectors, means I've had to be able to easily keep stretching myself.
• it has considerable strength and hardness - I've pushed hard on some things over the years, often to personal and professional criticism and opposition. This includes: (successfully) challenging CIC legislation; publishing a book that exposes most of the claims that people make about 'imposter syndrome' to be unproven and/or not based in any factual evidences; shining a brighter light on the 500,000+ unpaid carers who are discriminated against by all the bodies that are supposed to be supporting them because they're the only type of carer who aren't recognised in law for the sole reason that we're also self-employed; and calling out the apparent unprofessional practices of some social investors, which are damaging the wider sector; to name but a few.  
• it's translucent - I've openly published details of how I'm creating (or not) impacts of different types each year; and also been honest in my blog posts about when and where I've gotten things wrong.  
• and it has a high resistance to shock - if you've followed my blog over the years, you'll know that since becoming self-employed, my family has been made homeless twice; my father (who lives at the other end of the country) has almost died twice; I've navigated a difficult divorce; been investigated for tax fraud by HMRC three times (and cleared every time); had 'unannounced police visits' late at night; and so on. So much so, that the few people who know just how much 'shock' I've had to respond to and work through over these last 2 decades, are all amazed that I'm not only still in business, but not needed to be admitted anywhere...

So I'm actually pretty chuffed to be associated with porcelain.

But I also didn't want to miss the opportunity to try and mark this milestone - so, linking back to the toilet analogy, I've decided to twin my office toilet with a school in Uganda via https://toilettwinning.org/

25% of all human beings today don't have somewhere safe, clean, and hygienic to go to the toilet. Not only does this create all sorts of associated 'bio-hazards', it strips fellow people of their dignity. And if schools don't have toilets, then kids will find ways not to go there for those reasons, and as a result, lose the chance for education and so lose the future that they could/should have had, including the opportunity to break generational poverty.

So the next time you're paying a visit to the loo this year, please think of me and what you might be able to do to similarly 'be more porcelain'; and maybe if you might also be able find a similar excuse to twin your toilet with someone else's.