How tf did i get here?!
Hey friends,
One of the questions I get most at CoCollaborate is - so how did you get to be doing this, what ever this is.
So here's a bit of the story and a few embarrassing pictures too, just for fun.
I came out of Otago University with an Accounting & Finance degree and a graduate role at Deloitte as an Auditor. After a summer of juice artistry on the coast of Sydney, I had a sweet tan and was SUPER excited to get stuck in with my spreadsheets despite the fact that everyone I knew and met told me:
"You don't seem like an auditor"
What did they know - I was going to be the Sherlock Holmes of Accounting, no balance sheet was safe while I was on the case. As it turns out, they were right, (don't you hate that), no amount of spreadsheet love made up for the fact that I was just not made to be an auditor.
Enter my next gig, Learning & Development Consultant, I left Deloitte for a gig in the competition, KPMG. Except this time I WAS the inside man, designing online courses, facilitating workshops, inducting the newbies and everything learning. I LOVED THIS. I was at KPMG for just under 4 years, during which time I became accredited as an LSI Practitioner through Human Synergistics, spoke on various panels, inducting thousands of newbies and got a couple of cheeky promotions along the way. I even got to use the occasional spreadsheet.
Me in another life, as a WaterSki Instructor
In my second year at KPMG I took a career break to go work in a Summer Camp in Massachusetts as a Water Ski Instructor, and surprisingly learnt very little about boat driving and a tonne about leadership. It was around this time that I learnt about The Social Experiment. I stumbled across these awesome humans on facebook and I was instantly curious. I attended their second ever Social Experiment and my world opened up. That little voice right at the back of my head that had been whispering for most of my professional career: "hmm maybe theres more, is this really what we're supposed to be doing", well she started screaming didn't she.
I went on to help facilitate a Social Experiment and it was at this experiment that the voice broke free. I found myself declaring in our actions session that in the next year:
"I would quit my job and find my next challenge"
Which is how I found myself helping businesses to make sense of their sales process in the context of technology, working in a marketing automation agency that primarily implemented HubSpot. While I loved learning how to implement technology that would help businesses to automate and identify opportunities and thus inevitably GROW, it still wasn't right. I missed the feeling I had when I was in the Social Experiment Community, of talking to people who were PASSIONATE about making an impact, and whose mission it was to serve the world with their businesses and their content. I was co-facilitating a the Social Experiment's Runway Programme at the time, and hearing the amazing missions the participants had, I was called to help. I had started helping a bunch of organizations for free just to keep the voice quiet and feel like I was contributing to something a little bigger than myself. I designed my first ever website (don't judge me we have to start somewhere) and started a a concept called Learn Club for my immediate community - where the group would take turns sharing their subject matter expertise ft. margaritas with the idea that we each have ideas and knowledge that collectively we can use to solve BIGGER problems and create real change.
The sum of our collective is more than the total of our individual parts.
So, let's take stock;
I had an accounting and finance degree
I'd been an auditor
I'd designed and delivered a range of online & in-person workshops & courses
I am an accredited facilitator in LifeStyles Inventory
I am a certified red cross lifeguard & water ski instructor
I am facilitating design thinking for the Social Experiment
I am helping clients to implement and understand their marketing automation & crm systems
And to balance all these things I am
Hosting "learning parties" for my people
Working for free for a bunch of purpose-led social enterprises & organisations
THEN, two big things happen at once;
One of the Social Experiment Facilitators and what will become my first "real client", Briony of Untapped with Briony says something that I can't get out of head. "find the thing you would do for free - and then do that"
My partner gets a secondment to Vancouver, ie; free rent.
Hello universe, I am listening
CoCollaborate also got a team cape in Canada
CoCollaborate is borne of all the above, on the notion that sometimes we need a little help to bring our thing, whatever your thing is, to the world, to outsource the skills we don't have and harness the impact we have the ability to create.
I work with a range of clients, all with a business or an offering that is centered in helping people and creating an impact for a community or the world at large. My clients range from a Pocket Coach Chatbot to a a student flatting organisation to life & mindset coaches and everything in-between. Almost all of my clients start with a strategy session to help organize all the amazing ideas they have and define their priorities in relation to the impact they want to create. We come out of this session with a clear plan of action on all the things we need to set in motion in order to get there.
From there some of my clients will choose to go it solo and check in when they need to. Some will opt for a do it with me model, we'll have weekly meetings, set actions, work through challenges together and identify additional resources as they need them.
Others will ask for a do it for me approach, where me and my talented people will do the work to bring it to life in line with their vision, setting up the systems, automations, creating the content and engaging outside services on their behalf where necessary.
In all cases my clients get the support they need to maximise the impact of their business, course, product or service, technical help and direction, connection with talented and reasonably priced resources such as copywriting and brand designers and all of the digital high-fives they could possibly want. Do you have a business or a course that is going to make a big impact and want help turning your ideas into a reality, or optimizing what you currently have so it reaches more people (without the need for heaps of your time doing admin)?
Let's talk - I'd love to hear about it Alternatively, if you've got it all sorted but you're just bursting to tell somebody - drop your thing in the comments below - digital high-fives will follow!
Lets change the world, my friends,
Megs.