12 months of scaling the squiggle

In October 2018, I left my role at Microsoft to scale Amazing If, a venture that had operated for the 5 years prior as a side-project for Sarah Ellis and myself. 12 months on, it's time to check in, reflect and share insights and lessons that might help others considering scaling their own side projects.

My last update was in March and the 5 biggest things that have happened since then are:

Growing a team! In addition to our Amsterdam team, we now have a social team and an assistant working for us. Social is a big part of how we can reach people with our tools, insights and research, but it is time consuming. Having people in the team who can help us grow our audiences across LinkedIn, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter in an authentic way is really important part of how we scale the squiggle. In other big news, my co-founder Sarah has changed her role to commit more time to Amazing If, moving from Managing Director at Gravity Road to Strategic Client Director.

200,000 podcast listeners. Just a few weeks ago, we celebrated our 100th episode of the Squiggly Careers podcast, shortly followed by the 200,000 listener milestone. We are so happy that the podcast is a useful source of career advice for people. Reading the reviews that people leave us makes all the late night recording efforts worth it! Our guest podcasts have been a real highlight for both of us, giving us the opportunity to speak to and learn from so many different and inspiring people.

The book is done! All the writing and editing is now complete. I've even signed a few of the 'proof' copies (signing your own book is a completely surreal experience!).

The Squiggly Career is officially out on January 9th, and ready to pre-order now. We can't wait to start sharing it with people next year. It's a huge career highlight for us and an important part of how we help people at scale.

Our amazing clients have grown. One of my biggest fears in leaving corporate life was that I would feel disconnected from working with large organisations. This couldn't be further from the truth. As our client work has increased, our proposition has evolved through the partnerships we have built and now includes career development programmes for individuals and managers and the design of internal structures, tools and processes to embed new approaches to career development within organisations.

Becoming a Trustee at Working Families. Our mission at Amazing If is to make work better for everyone and Sarah Ellis and I are constantly challenging ourselves about the action we can take to achieve this. One of the ways we think we can do this is in supporting other organisations whose work aligns with this mission. One such organisation is Working Families, a charity that I am proud to support as a Trustee.

What's been hard

So, lots of good news, but there have also been challenges along the way......

A new website - we're happy with our new website, but it has been a very painful experience. There are a lot of lessons to be learnt from it and too numerous to share in this post, but for something that seemed quite simple, it has taken far too much effort, attention and time!

Balancing different roles. On any given day, I'm a Content Creator, Podcast Host, CEO, Business Development Manager, Client Manager, Admin Manager, Consultant, Trainer, Writer, Strategist, Project Manager, Events Organiser....... Running a small business pulls you in many directions, context switching constantly and moving from project-to-project. It's somewhat of a necessity, but I think it can lead to inefficiencies and distraction. It's also tiring and there is a risk of dropping balls. Hiring new people definitely helps and we're looking at tools and systems to make sure we stay on top of everything. I'm also implementing 'CEO Day' (see below), to focus at least some of my time on my 'given' role in the business.

Ideas. We have so many ideas! Products we want to create. Services we want to develop. Communities we want to build. Research we want to initiate. Prioritisation and patience are a definite challenge when there are so many exciting things to be involved in. All the wisdom of scaling businesses seems to talk about the importance of focusing, but it's hard and something we have to check in often.

Finally, what I'm going to do differently in the months ahead....

CEO Day. I've decided that one day a month I'm going to develop my 'CEO' skillset. I'm going to meet with 1 CEO each month and learn from how they operate, I'm going to reflect on how I'm spending my time and really define what it means to be CEO of the business. It's not a role I've ever done before and I need to do some 'unlearning' and 'relearning' to bring my best to the opportunity.

The last 12 months have been brilliant. Sarah recently said that we're lucky that we have 'found our thing'. I couldn't agree more. I'm so excited to see what we can achieve together with Amazing If and the people we can help in their careers through our work. I look forward to sharing our scaling story with you over the next 12 months.

Helen

www.amazingif.com