TLDR;
I’m back
I was off doing a health course in UCC
I miss events (speaking at them) and in-person training
Comedy circuit here I come (you’ll see)
Sure I’ll speak on your podcast, at your event
A good couple of years ago I took an interest in death and dying. This was as a result of me researching how to break bad news for corporate clients (mostly about hacks/data breaches). Then I started looking at health communications and the way bad news is broken to people. Dozens of books later including Being Mortal and I thought I’d like to do something in the area of End of Life care and Ageing. I did a short course for carers on End of Life care and thought I’d like something more formal. All the detailed courses were postgrads though and you needed a medical or nursing degree to do them.
And lo my partner said on to me “then do a nursing degree”. And this is what I did. Applied to UCC, rented out my apartment to keep the mortgage paid, moved back with my very patient folks and put Mulley Comms on pause mode. This is all happening at the same time that I had been telling people that when I started Mulley Communications I was going to give it maybe 10 years and then switch to something else. Maybe it was giving it five years and switch to something else? People would be all You’re doing well. Why would you do that? And what would you go for? My whole attitude was, I don’t know what comes next but I’m sure I’ll find out in time.
For the past five years I was doing a general nursing degree in UCC and then took the non-clinical exit route, which is pretty unique, I think, to UCC and nursing. I now have a health qualification but won’t be practising as a nurse. My whole attitude while doing nursing was I wouldn’t lock myself into end of life care but see what interested me most. What I was interested in was ageing and looking after older people. Specifically then I’ve been looking at nutrition and dementia. This is where I’ve been for the past couple of years.
And what happens to a sole trader business when the owner goes back to college full time? I managed to keep it ticking over with the Social Media Awards so it’s still an entity that filed taxes and was registered for VAT but the orange standby light was on.
If you’ve been wondering why I’ve been quiet in the past couple of years, that’s why. I’ve bumped into a few of you over the years in a hospital and it was weird seeing me in a nurses uniform I’m sure.
What next for Mulley Communications?
After five years away, a total rebuild. Arnold Schwarzenegger was away from competitive bodybuilding for five years and trained hard over 8 weeks and (spoiler alert) won the Mr. Olympia for the 7th time*. Total Rebuild is the documentary covering this amazing feat. It’ll take more than 8 weeks for Mulley Comms and me to get back up to speed. I’ll be back on the road doing events and training bits and all that. Oh and more automated tweets on Twitter about business and marketing and the like.
The Summer of Yes
I’ve written a few times about Jerry Seinfeld getting back into doing standup and how he did the circuit. Did 5 min routines in comedy club after comedy club all on the same night and tried out new materials, got his timing right until he was happy with it and then he did gigs in front of 10,000 people and made millions. Now if you’ve read down this far, I’m going to do a few free ** training events to get in the hang of doing courses for people. I’d rather in person but it does seem online courses are the future. I’m going to be doing some on Twitter, LinkedIn, SEO basics, if you want to be a live audience, sign up here. My previous blog post Fuck You, Pay Me tells you to know your worth and to expect others to do the same. Don’t do things for free etc. Unless you are starting off and want the benefit of someone else’s audience. This is going to be my Summer and maybe autumn of yes. Yes to speaking at your event, yes to guest posting, yes to coming on your podcast. Meet for coffee to pick my brains? Uhmm. No? Or maybe it’ll be like improv – Yes, and?
* It was totally rigged and he was nowhere near his old form and in 5 years people had gotten way better than old him.
** Not really free, you can donate something to a charity I nominate, this values my training above zero value that free suggests