After nearly 3 years, my time internal to businessDEPOT will come to an end this Friday.
As an advisor, I help clients define and achieve their ambitions. Their commercial objectives. Their cultural aims. Their wildest personal dreams. And it wouldn’t be practicing what I preach if I wasn’t going the same thing (with the help of my coach) for my life.
Earlier this year, my beautiful wife and I welcomed our happy and calm daughter ‘Flash’, and many of you have followed our journey and struggles in that regard. Her arrival helped herald the next milestone in my business, which is shifting towards a more location independent approach where I can work remotely with clients all around the world. In the past 5 years I’ve worked with businesses from 12 different countries, and I’m testing that further by trialing some remote work from August to November travelling around Europe and North America.
Rest assured, this is remote working not a jaunt, and I will remain as available as ever. (Which is to say, it generally takes a while to get a deliberate response and I’m impossible to reach by telephone!)
(In some browsers that picture flips upside down. Assume that represents me on the other side of the world, but still working with my Australian clients!)
Naturally, this has meant some changes within the team at businessDEPOT Advisory, that you should be aware of. Specifically:
– As of July 1, I will no longer have a businessDEPOT role and will move back to the external businessDEPOT Collective
– My advisory business and clients will revert to my personal business and brand and I remain available for any conversations or business guidance you may want from me. My mobile number will never change but you may find WhatsApp the better way to use it; my new email is jacob@jacobaldridge.com
– Earlier this year, Anna Chipperfield accepted the offer to become the new businessDEPOT Head of Advisory & People, leading a great team including Brad Dean (Business Planning and Sale Ready specialist), Andrew Holmes (Senior Manager of Financial Advisory), Anna herself (Specialising in People, Culture, and HR) and of course my mate John Knight, (Managing Director of businessDEPOT and a guide to your strategic needs even if you don’t know what you don’t know).
Look out for updates about the stronger team approach businessDEPOT Advisory will be taking moving forward.
If you’re on our strategic business advice database, you’ll receive the final episode of Blackboard Fridays this week. And there’s a recent episode I’d like to remind you of – that many business owners don’t need a business coach, they need a concierge.
In there, I talk about how critical it is to be able to reach out to an advisor who doesn’t think they know everything … but rather knows enough about enough in business to help where they can, and to make a specific introduction when that’s the better solution.
This Concierge approach is the businessDEPOT style, embodied by their hand-selected collective network of external experts. It was the aligned commitment to the client that drew me to join the businessDEPOT Collective in early 2016, which led to a developing relationship and the opportunity to step inhouse and be businessDEPOT’s Director of Strategic Advisory for two years. My email address has changed, but I remain committed to that mission of helping entrepreneurs make it happen – whatever ‘it’ may be for them.
If you do have any questions, either Anna (a.chipperfield@businessdepot.com.au) or I can answer them.
In the immortal words of Douglas Adams: Don’t Panic.
Talk (very) soon,
Jacob Aldridge
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