14 years of Sustainability at Terra Infirma
This weekend sees the 14 anniversary of the founding of my company, Terra Infirma. It’s a bit of an arbitrary date as I’d planned to take summer 2006 off to build a dry stone wall in my garden while getting things like a website set up when my arms got too tired. Half way through the first morning of that 3D jigsaw puzzle with huge stones the phone rang. Next thing I knew, I was in the shower scrubbing off the grime, then pulling on the suit I thought I wouldn’t wear for a long while, and heading off to what turned out to be my first client. Everything took off at a dizzying pace – the dry stone wall took another 18 months to finish (although first child appearing in Feb 2007 may have had an influence too).
When I look back over those 14 years, the thing that hits me most is the freedom. I’ve never done anything I didn’t want to do. I fancied blogging, so I started a blog. I fancied writing a book, I ended up writing five. I wanted to move from delivering taxpayer-funded schemes to corporate clients, and I ended up working with the BBC, JohnsonMatthey, Stanley Black & Decker and many more. More importantly, I haven’t sat in a meeting wondering what the hell I’m doing there for 14 years. I am now completely unemployable!
Obviously the last year has been an odd one with the Covid19 virus sweeping the world. But I’ve been delivering webinars remotely for years and had switched platforms to Zoom in January, so I was well prepared to do it. The discovery that I could facilitate workshops (the basis of my consultancy work) remotely using Zoom and some mind map software, meant that things could go on almost as usual. I’ve currently got three projects running and three quotes out there for future projects so my fears that everything Sustainability would grind to a halt proved unfounded. Meantime, my Green Academy training series is having its best year ever, and we’ve had over 1,100 delegates on our online Green Jujitsu employee engagement training course.
So, despite the global uncertainty, things are all good in our little world of Sustainability. I’d like to thank everybody who has been on that journey with me over the last fourteen years and look forward to the next 12 months, whatever it may bring! Sláinte!