I’ve had many highs and lows in my career.
The lowest point was being made redundant just hours after my youngest son Sammy was born back in 2007. I’m not kidding. Kathryn and I left the hospital at around 7am and, by 10am, I received an email from my employers making me redundant.
But life has a funny way of working out when you look at life with a glass half-full. A few days later, I witnessed love and kindness from an unlikely source.
Let me set the scene first…
In 2001, at 26, I quit my supposed dream job at Orange shortly after a panic attack. Despite having just bought a new flat and self-financing most of our wedding, Kathryn and I decided to react immediately. I resigned the day after we returned from our honeymoon. Being happy was more important to us.
In the space of a week, I went from working as the lead for ‘personalisation’ at Orange to mowing the lawns for the council, but I couldn’t have been happier! Tick. ✅
Though happy, I knew I wasn’t meant for a life as a “landscape gardener” (as the Council called it). So, I started Sandstone Digital Marketing (I named my business after Stroud’s local stone, only to find out later it was actually limestone – classic Rob!).
I bought myself a new computer and worked hard to set up my new business. I had five promising leads. Then 9/11 happened and every opportunity vanished overnight as the world panicked.
A few weeks later, with no money left, I got an interview with Zurich Financial Services for an Online Account Director freelance position. I was interviewed by two ladies – one of who was called Elaine Hudson (now Penycate). The interview was a disaster but they still offered me the job and I snapped it up.
I smashed it at Zurich to the point where they asked me to join permanently and lead their online team. I declined citing my experiences at Orange. I proposed working with them through my own business instead. Others had been shown the front door when attempting a similar move and I was forewarned not to try. Fortunately, they didn’t raise an eyebrow and my new business, “Read & Woolf” was formed.
Zurich helped me establish my business at the second attempt, and for several years Rich Read (not the shoe bomber) and I ran a successful creative marketing agency in the Stroud Valleys, serving them and other major brands.
Rich ran out of steam so I bought him out. Kathryn and I moved to Cornwall in 2005 (which I’ll elaborate on in another post) but it didn’t pan out as planned. Commuting up country was exhausting and our “Rich replacement”, who was based in Bristol, started moonlighting. Overall, moving to Cornwall was bad for business. We messed up.
So in 2007 I made our business dormant and joined a local company based at The Lost Gardens of Heligan. I was in heaven.
I remember walking down a wooded trail a few days before Sammy was born, walking into work on a beautiful summer’s day, thinking I had completely lucked out on life. I was living the dream in Cornwall, I no longer had the stress of running a business and I was about to have my second child with Kathryn. Life, again, seemed perfect.
Three days later, I was made redundant by my employers citing that they had a large debt to pay off and they could no longer pay me with immediate effect. For good measure, they then threatened me with legal action if I didn’t finish off my projects that they could no longer deliver without me. I wished them good luck.
In these moments, you realise that life is neither perfect or imperfect. The truth about life is it’s not a straight line. Just like the Cornish coast, it’s full of ups and downs, twists and turns, and many hidden gems. And that’s why it’s so beautiful.
Nevertheless, with a beautiful new addition to our family, my eldest son Joseph tearing around the house and three grand in life savings, I accepted that our Cornwall dream was over. We would have to sell up and move back to Gloucestershire.
I reached out to my former clients, including Elaine, and told them that things hadn’t worked out and I was thinking of reopening our business. She wrote back and said they had a project that they urgently needed my help on. Once again, I snapped it up and have worked my arse off ever since. That was 17 years ago.
The truth is, that project didn’t actually exist. Elaine created it just to help me in my moment of need, and I’ve never forgotten her kindness. I’ll always be thankful for what she did, and I’ve made it my mission to help others who deserve it as well.
So, this blog is dedicated to her. A fag-ash-lil with a dirty sense of humour, but a woman with a heart of gold and one of the nicest people I have ever worked with.
And, by the way, I asked her one day why she hired me despite my car-crash interview. This was her reply, “Well, Robert, we didn’t understand a word you said so we thought you must be intelligent”.
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The tag “let love rule” is named after the Lenny Kravitz song. It’s fairly self-explanatory.