Waking up at 5am, my immovable exercise hour at 6am, probably a quality coffee in the sunshine (the past is always sunny) and then the usual day of team support, planning a workshop of some kind, signing off a report, doing some finance, troubleshooting and meeting a potential customer, likely after the fifth chasing email.
This day-in-my life feels like the optimal day during my time at Your Own Place. This was likely somewhere around 2018 . The recently enlarged team felt settled, I had moved into Norwich, making my work-life balance a lot simpler, there was an excellent coffee shop on the corner near the office and we had the novelty of a base. It was pre-Covid and post the three-year-hump when lots of Community Interest Companies fail. The team had grown, but not so much that I was constantly worried about money – every year had seen a surplus. Something else that changed during and since Covid.
At some point in the second half of my decade, something shifted. With Covid, the cost of living crisis and the catching up of the austerity years, the financial outlook felt bleak. Whilst our own fortunes had not radically altered, the backdrop undeniably had.
This final post isn’t about doom and gloom. Quite the opposite. It’s about the journey you go on over ten years in social business. Because at some point something changed for me too. Not for good or for ill, but just different. Something I see when I look back at my social media output, my email approaches and how I conducted myself.
Having created Your Own Place from a deep sense of injustice that some people, through no fault of their own are more likely to become homeless than others, the focus of my time, the podcasts I listened to, the articles I read and my broader interests, shifted not away from social justice, rather towards leadership as well.
Effectively a self-employed one-woman band for the first 18 months of Your Own Place’s life, as the organisation grew in size, ambition, quality as well as complexity, I needed to up my leadership game. This hadn’t been in the plan. With a long way still to go and to learn, I’d like to think I’ve done okay. I’ve made a gazillion mistakes, but in the impact language I love so much, there’s no counterfactual. We don’t know what would have happened if I’d done something different/nothing.
That Your Own Place has proved me to be competent and more than competent not just in delivering workshops (it was this skill that led to our model), but in creating profit and loss accounts, public speaking, pitching, managing impact, making decisions, being resilient and tenacious, leading a strategy and a team and influencing and inspiring others is a chance revelation. And this is exactly why we exist in the first place. That it’s chance and good luck that I got those opportunities. And it’s chance and bad luck that others don’t.
So as I enter my last two weeks, the team is strong, we’re recruiting in Colchester and this year looks very likely to be our best yet financially, I find myself brimming with gratitude. Brimming with gratitude for the person that Your Own Place has enabled me to become and with hope that others get their opportunities too. I am grateful for every single interaction, connection, opportunity and kindness shown to me . Please continue to show it to Zoe, our new CEO, our team and everyone you work with or support. You never know what someone can become.
See you on the other side.
