Friday 21 June 2013

DHL Global Forwarding detox & Manchester Grammar School

Good afternoon All

In my last blog post, I talked about the lightbulb moment and the idea of the company name. I set up Straightforward Consultancy as a limited company on 4th September 2009 and secured web addresses for www.straightforwardconsultancy.co.uk and www.straightforwardconsultancy.com.

It's almost 4 years ago now so I can't remember the exact timelines but I do remember creating our first basic 3 page website and then putting my toe in the water and going to a local business networking meeting in Lymm, I think it was a South Warrington Business Forum. I'd received some excellent business start up advice from Business Link, a government funded body who were there to help people with start up businesses and they'd helped educate me on what was involved in starting your own business, whether to be a Sole Trader or Limited Company, and lots of other things such as seeking out an accountant etc.

Anyway, it was quite a special moment, talking to other attendees of the networking event and talking about my business for the very first time, after 30 years of working for logistics/forwarding companies as an employee. I got home later on and my wife Diane told me that one of our neighbours, Stuart Leeming had popped round whilst I was out and wanted to discuss an opportunity with me. He'd only just heard about my redundancy with DHL and thought he could possibly help me out short term with a job opportunity. Stuart was the Deputy High Master of Manchester Grammar School, a very prestigious private school and we'd been neighbours for around 9 years.

The next morning, I went over to see him to find out about the job opportunity - I was a little curious as I couldn't imagine them needing anyone with my international freight forwarding or Customs experience but it all became clear. Stuart told me that they had a very active Educational Visits Department which coordinated all the extra curricular activities for their students (say an overseas ski trip or a trekking expedition to Morocco) and their trips coordinator had just left. Although they intended to replace this person, Stuart thought it might be a great opportunity to inject some external commercial expertise into what was of course an academic organisation. I told Stuart from the off that I wasnt sure that I would be a good fit because I had no experience of schools, minibuses, health and safety and all the other things that made the department tick.

Stuart said he thought I would be ideal, he had known me for nine years and we'd had plenty of chats over the gatepost so to speak and he thought my core and interpersonal skills were very transferable into their environment. I explained that I had just launched Straightforward and so I could offer my services on a consultancy basis. I made the proposal the same day and it was accepted.

Our very first customer was Manchester Grammar School!

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