My parents came from an era when you took a trade and a job for life. They said that with a trade you could earn a £1,000 a year and be made for life. Thankfully, I took about as much notice as my childen did of my advice.
In my ‘era’ you told your kids to get a degree. While this would hold them in good stead, it was no more a solution than the guidance that I was given by my parents.
Times change and your experience is never as transferable as you believe!
At job interviews you are often asked, ‘Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?’ While I usually had a trite answer for this, I never really had any vision of what I wanted to be, what I wanted to do or where I wanted to be – I’m still looking!
While at school/college I could never have envisaged a Sinclair computer, let alone that I would become its exclusive distributor for the UK, France and Peoples’ Republic of China [cutting from 1984].
However my dad often said ‘Buy land, they’ve stopped making it!’ When I went into event management it was perhaps no surprise then that my first subject choice was property [Pictured below - with my wife Jane in 1989].
But looking back over the years there were very few occasions when I had any concept of what might happen in the next year, certainly no concept beyond that!
My working life can be summed up by the ‘Six Ss’:
Sales Systems Software Shops Satellites Shows
And one regularly occurring ‘A’ :
Answercall answering machines; Pacer cordless…Read more…