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I’m 43 and I could fill pages and pages of a blog with all the times my ideas to make a positive impact have been dismissed or ignored.

I recently had a difficult conversation with someone. They had an idea on how something should look and I had delivered something that did not match their idea. The conversation made me curious about how we, as humans, behave. Are we spending all our time trying to make people see the world the way that we think it should be seen?

We now appear to be entering what could be a Post Covid 19 Build Back Better period. I’m inspired by the growing number of references to how this unexpected and shared life experience, is creating a new future for us all.

Collaboration has always been a key value for me. Over the last month I have been part of two hackathons, four webinars and numerous Facebook, linked in groups and conversations.

Throughout my career I have never been scared of leadership roles-maybe because I could always think of ideas of directions in which we could go or maybe because I just thought if not me then who?

I’ve always been a talker and when I look back through my education the parts I value the most were those that taught me how to be able to speak in groups, communicate clearly and say something even when the voices in my head are shouting at me to ‘stay quiet’.

In February I was at a conference in Spain for the event sector- news was filtering through that Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was being cancelled because of COVID 19.

Sometimes it feels like most of my career has been about talking to people about things they do not understand or believe in. I don't know what job role that would be - Chief Explainer?

I wish I was better at breaking rules. Throughout school I excelled in keeping rules - during university, I learnt how to "bend them".

Commitment is a big word and one I’ve recently paused to think about and what it actually means to me.

Does the sentence ‘Who are you to do this?’ go straight to setting off every imposter syndrome feeling you have?

The best piece of advice I was ever given was when I started by business and someone said ‘you are going to be working really hard so make sure you are creating exactly what you want’.

I regularly ask myself to play a game of ‘let’s hear 5 ‘no’s in the next 24 hours’. Spoiler alert: this is a really hard game to win.

Someone once said to me ‘people are telling me that you…’. The description that followed the opener was untrue and a criticism.

A client recently told me: ‘I don’t like being asked about budgets and budgeting periods too soon’.

For a few years I have run a 3-month internship programme for people who want to gather evidence of having had an impact and be able to talk about that in job interviews.

At least two of my entrepreneurial ventures started as partnerships with other people. The first time that happened was with my first business and it was because I just couldn’t imagine starting a business on my own.

Over 10 years into an entrepreneurial journey, if someone asked me what a mistake was, this would my answer: ‘if you write a document and spell something wrong or send the wrong invoice to a client but most importantly if you don’t take action’.

An entrepreneur without a team is a busy person trying to earn a living. During the first week I employed someone I woke up at 3am nightly with the same alarming thought – ‘how do I definitely know I will be able to afford someone’s wage?’.