Seize opportunities to reach your goals, even if it’s outside your comfort zone.
Those who know me know that I’m not someone who tends to hold back and will make the most of any opportunity I spot. But even for me this one really took the biscuit!
Picture the scene, I’m in a virtual meeting testing the tech in advance of the 2022 Creative Coalition Festival for a session I am co-producing with Solas Mind. The organisers are held up and I find myself in the virtual room with a nice lady from FutureLearn, a company I’d been following and had tried, unsuccessfully, to win a tender to work with a few years ago.
We start to make a bit of small talk and then, I can’t help myself but start to pitch my book as an online course – it’s completely shameless, deeply inappropriate but in that moment, I figured I had a small window and nothing to lose.
To cut a long story short, she gave me her email, I wrote to her straight away, arranged a zoom call and they were interested. Soon afterwards we struck a licensing deal and got to work designing the course.
And here we are now in January 2023, after all our hard work the course is live, and bringing value to freelancers from every industry, across the globe. Making an online course has allowed freelancers, wannabe freelancers and side-hustlers to access the learning from anywhere in their own time. I’m also loving the FutureLearn vibe which is all about social learning. This style of course enables me to hear the unique stories and challenges that the learners are facing when it comes to their freelancing.
What has made this project particularly special to me is the opportunity it gave me to work with the Year 12 students at BOA Stage and Screen Production. The BOA students shot, and directed all the video and audio content for course. As someone with a TV background, I was adamant that production values would be high on all audio and video content. I wasn’t happy to merely record something on my phone or on Zoom.
I approached BOA and they were delighted to work with me on this project and offered the Year 12 students and their TV studio. To create the audio and video content I worked with my producer Vicky producervics and the BOA students to plan and organise a mini production mirroring the process for a film or TV show. And they were top-notch. A great and professional crew and I’ll certainly be back to work with them again.
The students fed back after the project that they had learned a lot about freelancing in the process! They used the project as a real-world brief to practise the theory and technical skills they learned during their time in school and the content we were recording got them thinking about what a freelance career might entail. So that has to be a win-win situation!
What would have happened had I not seized that moment, that hiatus in that virtual meeting? Nothing would have happened. I’d never have been able to realise this opportunity.
It’s important to embrace new opportunities, even if it’s outside of your comfort zone, as it can lead to great outcomes. Yes, I took a deep breath. Yes, my heart was in my mouth. But what was the worst that could happen? They’d have said no and we’d have all smiled sweetly and gone back to talking about the weather. Well, I am British after all what else is there to talk about?
