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Written by Jo Jeffery
In the case of Emma “ THE HOLLIS ” with a calculator.
I love Emma's story. How many people would sit down with a calculator, decide how much they want to turnover in their first year when they haven't even got a specific business idea, type in the figure, then actually achieve it?
Well, it took her 2 years.
I'd say that's fairly good going for someone who punched the digits 1,000,000 into a calculator one afternoon, stared at the number for a few moments and then tossed it into a drawer, laughing.
Laughing maybe, but with every intention to do it.
With no prior knowledge or experience within the industry, she took her ballpark figure and decided that to achieve it, her business would have to be in recruitment.
As simple as that.
Already pleased with her future success, she claimed to a colleague, “I want to turn over a million. It’s gotta be recruitment.”
It was actually £1,200,000 that she turned over at the end of her second year. A field that she had decided upon despite being wholly clueless about.
Now, if you're anything like me, then you might be wondering how she did it. When I asked, I was expecting some highly-articulated business speak about the importance of vision, strategy and financial forecasting. Or how she went off and wrote a 20-page plan.
Nope.
Now don’t get me wrong, Emma can talk. Can she! No shrinking violets here. She can deliver words to you in a torrent and string them together with a silver tongue if she wants to. But she wasn’t going to on this one.
"I just did it," she tells me.
Okaaaay I'm thinking. "I just did it." What does that mean? How, how, how, HOW?!
“How did you do it Emma?”
"I just did it."
I listen on the end of the telephone thinking that she’ll expand on from there. She doesn't. In the silence between us, I start wondering if perhaps the whole venture was just a serious fluke.
Right, she was the lucky one that fortune blessedly bestowed upon from thin air , I thought to myself.
I repeat her words back, “You… just…. did…it?” hoping that when she hears them herself again it might prompt her to give me the step by step details. A nice little recipe. But I get the same answer.
"I just did it."
Ahhh, the penny drops. I get it. That's it. That is exactly what you did. You just did it. Like that. You just did it.
“You just did it Emma. I’m with you.”
This is a woman that has never looked to be spoon fed in her life. She’s certainly not going to be playing choo-choo trains for me. Nor is she up for talking through every minuscule and unnecessary detail of how to grow a business. No one needs to know that stuff - it’s irrelevant.
Emma doesn’t do irrelevant.
“I’m an executor.” She says in her GORGEOUS Yorkshire accent. “It was going t'appen. I was ‘aving it.”
Great. Let’s hear more about that executing Emma.
I know you want to talk about that.
And I want to hear it.
If you’d like to read about it, please look out for part 2. She’s friendly and as keen as she always has been to make new connections. She is also great fun and full of energy.
My wordy, this is a woman FULL of energy.
“Kryptonite!” she tells me.
“I can feel it in me belly.....and I can see it.....
It’s green.
GREEN energy.
Green like KRYPTONITE!
GREEN FOR GO !!!!!!"
I don't think I have ever come across anyone with such enthusiasm for life.
She is BUZZZZZING. A whirlwind of energy, embracing every second and experiencing being alive to the max. She is also so grateful. Appreciative of everything and everyone. She carries a gratitude stone in her pocket every day. It’s green.
(Of course it is.)
A few days following our conversation, I receive a small parcel in the post. She's sent me a gratitude stone. Well, more like a crystal. Ha! A piece of her Kryptonite.
And I reflect on our conversation from my conservatory holding it and looking out across at the verdure of the woodland valley that winds around me.
She sees green. She feels green!
I can hear it in her voice and she may relate to it as kryptonite, but she reminds me of a green aurora. Like those Northern lights. Incredible energy under a unique set of conditions.
I can still hear that energy in her Northern drawl.
So, I consider what green means to me and how I see it. It's those 4 leaf clovers that I kept finding as a child - another random natural occurrence.
Pondering on it, green has always been my favourite colour too. I can't function without it.
Green is life. Renewal. Magic.
Green is YES. Activity. Power. ON.
Thank you so much Emma.
This is what good mentor does. This is what a good leader does. They get us to think for ourselves . They motivate us through their own motivation. They transfer to us what they feel themselves. They give us a piece of themselves without trying to strip us of who we are.
Their primal setting is to empower.