Sherie Griffiths

Just before Christmas, a colleague said to me, “I bet you’ll be glad to see the back of this year, won’t you?” I knew what she meant – 2009 had been tough for most of us in business and I’d had some major personal challenges thrown in. Yet I hesitated over my answer. Yes, there were moments I’d rather not remember and definitely wouldn’t want to relive, but for all that, it had been an incredibly productive year for me. I’m not talking financially, but in terms of focus. In August, in the middle of a family issue which very nearly led me to throw in the towel in business, I finally broke down a personal barrier which had held me back in every area of my life – very liberating! Then in November, sixteen months on from opening and six months after the official launch, I finally worked out what my business was all about. “Wasn’t that a bit late?” I hear you ask – and you’ve got a point. Better late than never though!

At 5.00am on 6th November 2009, after yet another sleepless night, wondering why I seemed to be working my socks – and various bits of my anatomy – off just to stand still, I stood in my kitchen, coffee pot in hand and it hit me – no, not the coffee pot – the revelation! THE ANSWER! “EUREKA!” The lights went on and I saw it all – where I’d been going wrong, how to put it right – and more!

“So that’s my core skill! I thought, amazed – “I know how sound works!” Here I was, more than a year and a half after my decision to make the leap – and leap it certainly was – from law into business podcasting, finally realising that I know how sound works. Yes, I am a bit slow – especially at five in the morning!

The truth is, I knew how sound worked, how people used it and what it could do if they used it properly long before that moment – I just didn’t know that I knew. As I poured that much needed first cup of coffee, pieces of a jigsaw which had been floating around my head for nearly two years, never quite forming a picture, suddenly clicked into place and I saw the image clearly – the image of my business, how it came to be and where it could go. I spent the next several weeks redesigning services to fit that picture.

Before 6th November, the most positive response I had to my marketing efforts tended to be, “I’m really interested in what you do, but I don’t get it.” Now it’s, “I’m really interested in what you do – when can we talk?” Like most of the changes I made to our offering, it’s a small shift on the face of it – with a huge impact.

Nineteen years ago, someone said, “You should write a book” – but I was only twenty-three then and probably knew even less about life than I did about writing. So although I gave it a go, it didn’t happen. In November last year, I was planning a series of books about starting and running a business; but after that 5.00am “EUREKA!” moment, they were pushed aside by something else which insisted on being written “NOW!!!” From a pure business perspective, the timing was all wrong. I should have waited until we were truly out of recession, until the company was more established. In fact, I probably should have waited until I retired, but this book would brook no argument – the words fell out faster than I could type! The baby was coming, whether I or anyone around me liked it or not!

It started life as a practical guide to business podcasting, against a background of my experience as a lifelong media junky and obsessive communicator; but it evolved into the story of my forty-year apprenticeship in sound – the foundations on which my company and everything we now do is built. It also tells the very personal story of my development of the “womble” principle – of which, more later.

I finished the book last Thursday evening. Over the next couple of months, as I prepare for publication, I’m going to tell you a bit about how it came together and some of the things I learnt from writing it – because I did learn. Two people, both dear friends and close colleagues, have been slightly less than fulsome in their support for the project. I think that’s mainly because they’re applying cost/benefit analysis principles, looking at the amount of time this kind of undertaking demands, against the likely financial return. On that basis, I’ve just “wasted” three and a half months of evenings and weekends – but I know I haven’t. Even if no-one else ever reads the finished product, it was worth writing because it helped me work out what I’m about, how I got here and where I’m going.