It was 20 years ago this week that I took the leap into the unknown and started my first and only company – the very one you see before you. This leap was given added frisson when, the day after I handed in my notice at my reasonably comfortable University job, the Prof discovered she was pregnant with our first child. It felt like everything had been thrown up into the air, and I had to build an aeroplane out of the pieces before I hit the ground.

It was an interesting time for Sustainability. I had spent 8 years at two Universities (Newcastle and Teesside) as that’s where I could do the exciting stuff – eco-design, industrial symbiosis, product-service systems, green product marketing etc. However, over time, my job at Teesside had evolved into securing funding to keep others employed to do the fun stuff, which chafed a bit – I wanted to be delivering, not managing others’ delivery. And I realised from the treatment of several peers that if I failed to secure enough funding, the University would say “thank you, goodbye” in a heartbeat (hence the ‘reasonably’ in ‘reasonably comfortable’ above). Nearly getting wiped out by an idiot on the A19 one dark morning was the final straw – I was going.

Environmental management at most large employers was then focussed on running ISO14001 systems, ‘destroying the planet in a well documented manner’, which didn’t appeal.  So self-employment was the obvious alternative. I took with me a dormant contract as an Envirowise advisor (a Government resource efficiency scheme), and some savings I’d accumulated for the transition.

My plan was to spend August 2006 putting together a website, getting stationary etc sorted, while building a dry-stone wall in the garden (I have some rather niche skills). I would then start looking for work in September when people were back off holiday. That was the plan.

On day one of solving the world’s most strenuous jigsaw puzzle, the phone rang. Before I’d actually left my old job, I’d fired off a random e-mail to a regional design initiative, and it turned out they needed some help with a project. My contact was about to go on holiday, could I meet that afternoon? So I dived into the shower to clean off the sweat and grime, put on a suit and got to his office within 90 minutes. We agreed a plan of work and a fee – this was easy. And the first time I wrote an invoice, printed it off (it was 2006…) and walked to the postbox to post it, it still took a fraction of the time and none of the grief it used to take to get a finance department to send out an invoice for me. The wall took 18 months to complete.

As that first project progressed, the Envirowise work ramped up. This was great in terms of getting me into a diverse set of businesses, but I soon learnt that ‘clipboard consulting’ was pointless. Yes, I was getting well paid to advise these companies on cutting waste, energy and water bills, but those companies weren’t taking the advice – even the really basic no-brainer win-win stuff. The frustration with this eventually led me to my current approach – to co-create solutions with my clients. If they own the solutions, they’re far more likely to actually implement those solutions.

This is the main upside of being my own boss – complete freedom to innovate. I could change my business model on a whim, I could write my five books, I could blog, I could host a podcast, I could do online training before Zoom was a thing (even if I had to use Webex… put it this way, it was worse than Teams). I could do whatever the hell I wanted – if the sun was shining, I could hop on my bike and ride off to a distant cafe for a coffee without anybody raising an eyebrow. That was, and remains, priceless.

The downside is the peaks and troughs of business. One quarter everybody wants a bit of you, the next it’s tumbleweed. I have endeavoured to build sources of passive income (training courses on Udemy, book sales etc) to smooth out the oscillations, but to be honest they only really cover the costs of doing business, they wouldn’t feed the family in the event of, say, a serious illness. And I keep finding my somewhat iconoclastic approach is incompatible with tendering for work – most tenders are far too prescriptive of the ‘how’ rather than focussing on the ‘what’. After all, if you’re confined you know exactly ‘how’ you want something done, why not do it yourself rather than paying a consultant? Typically, my clients tell me what they need, I propose how we should meet that need, and we agree a deal. It’s a much better way of doing business, but it does restrict opportunities.

Anyway, despite that grumbling, here I am – still standing, still happy, still, I hope, making the world a better place! I’d like to thank all my clients, associates, partners, podcast guests, friends and family for taking this journey with me. I may be solo, but I’m not alone.