My business was a mistake!
This school book that one of our twins brought home last week is one of the best they’ve had so far.
Don’t get me wrong – I love the ‘Biff, Chip and Kipper’ book series as much as the next harassed parent (but whatever happened to Roger Red Hat??).
But this one is an absolute classic.
It’s about famous mistakes in history.
Like Columbus discovering America inadvertently.
Alexander Fleming discovering penicillin (which he originally called ‘mould juice’!)
And the Kellogg brothers discovering cereal by accident.
At the risk of sounding majorly arrogant, it made me think of my own business.
When I started The Carvalho Consultancy five or so years ago, it was with the intention of seeing clients of law firms, mainly divorcing and separating clients.
Providing therapeutic support and mediation to them. Makes sense right, given my former role as a divorce solicitor?
But the thing with having your own business is that you have to let things flow. Read the room. Be alive to the signs of where you should be concentrating your efforts.
I’m not advocating the complete absence of strategy. But I am saying it’s important not to be too wedded to it.
For me, I was surprised initially to see how many lawyers started wanting to access my services.
Then the pandemic hit.
And that changed everything for everyone.
Lawyers were carrying a heavy load of their clients’ woes. And their own. They needed more support than ever.
And they wanted it from us because they knew that, as former lawyers, we’d walked in their shoes. And we knew what we were on about.
Those same lawyers wanted our rapidly evolving training programme too.
To learn how to work in a trauma-informed way.
How to work with vulnerability and suicidality.
And hostility, emotion and aggression.
I love what I do. And the business has evolved in a way that I could never have anticipated or imagined.
Which paths has your life taken you down ‘by mistake’ that have turned out to be great?
I’d love to know in the comments