Year note - 2023
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Like most people, I’ve been crawling my way to the Christmas break this year. This sticker by Ross from Third Sector Lab really summed it up for me.
The Third Sector Lab sticker
My word for 2022 was experimentation and this time last year I was on a high. Newly engaged and revelling in the glow of a successful first year in business.
Let’s just say this year has been very different. Challenges in my personal life coupled with economic uncertainty have meant, although I didn’t choose it, that my word for 2023 was ‘lost’.
I say this because the last 12 months have felt a lot like being lost must feel. I’ve felt deeply lonely. I’ve grabbed for things that I thought would lead me to safety. I’ve let anxiety and overthinking overwhelm me at times. But I’ve also enjoyed the peace of time by myself. I’ve learned a lot about myself and ultimately I feel like I’m emerging from the forest slightly stronger and wiser - I hope!
But less of the doom and gloom. There have definitely been some highlights and reasons to celebrate this year.
Celebrations
Launching on Substack and gaining close to 1000 followers in 12 months.
Launching my first paid for mentoring course and selling out both cohorts.
Speaking at my biggest conference yet, Brighton SEO, and overcoming serious anxiety to do it.
Developing a new talk and teaming up with my partner in gender inclusive Joy - Lee Brown.
Getting back into local government work and helping design real services that will actually help people.
Surviving what a lot of freelancers are calling their worst ever year and only being £12k down on my turnover from last year.
Highlights
Even though it was a tough year, I looked after myself. I moved to a 4 day working week, taking Fridays off to see friends, family or just have a day to myself. I swam more (including taking the plunge with summer time lake swimming). I finally found an exercise class I like - spin. There was more spa time and more massages.
I invested in professional development. I did 5 courses and attended 3 conferences - all in the name of furthering my practice. KA’s in person co-design training, SDinGov and Camp Digital were the highlights here. Ooh and Magnify Conference. I’m going to write up my review of everything I did this year soon so subscribe if you’re interested in that.
I did work I’m really proud of, especially in the local government space.
I did more in person co-design, facilitation and training. I ran workshops in schools and an in person strategy day for UKSIC then worked with residents in Newham to co-design aspects of their complaints service.
I found momentum and success with my writing, got commissioned to write pieces for The Catalyst and developed my own ideas for pieces.
I loved doing more mentoring this year. I get a lot out of helping people 1:1. Service design work can be hard and I’ve been pleased to be able to provide a sounding board for designers working in house, people figuring out their career and designers looking to move into freelance.
I’ve also had an eclectic year for holidays. I rode a downhill toboggan in Madeira, watched the F1 in Milan and built Lego in Billund.
I also really enjoyed meeting my secret girl crush Emma Gannon. When I say meet I mean attend a small talk she did and then get too scared to go to the signing afterwards.
Learnings
While I did look after myself pretty well there were times when this slipped. I worked when I was sick, which made me much sicker. I also let anxiety consume me this year - much more than usual.
I had a couple of pieces of work end earlier than they should have - for different reasons. This has made me take a more thorough approach to deciding whether or not to take on work.
I feel like bits of work I did lacked impact, especially in the capability building space. This experience really made me realise how much I want to fix, build, design real services that people use.
I also had a look over last year’s goals and it has to be said - I had quite a few! They were also a real random collection of things from finding a permanent office (fail) to launching a paid for mentoring service (success) and taking 90 days holiday (almost).
My goals for 2023
So what does next year hold? Something I was keen to do this year was to intentionally design the future. I’ve spent a lot of my career moving away from what I didn’t like. This year I finally feel ready to dream and imagine. To think about a future I want to inhabit and consciously move towards it.
The lovely Emily Bazalgette kindly shared her thinking for her future with me before I headed off to Broadstairs. It was inspiring stuff but as an imagination rookie it definitely felt like I wasn’t quite ready for such clarity. I did try but it didn’t quite come.
What I have done though is think about how I can design my business around my values. Two things happened when I did this exercise:
Consultancy work was the last thing on my mind. My values led me to writing, mentoring and speaking - not consultancy.
I started thinking much more about me as person rather than Joy as a business.
So this year I want to own being a service design consultant, mentor, writer and speaker. One of those wanky sorts with a portfolio career! I want to put more focus on mentoring, speaking and writing and refine my work in these areas that I’ve thought of a ‘sidelines’ until now. I also want to get more balance across the four areas and ideally increase my revenue from mentoring, speaking and writing. This is not to say I don’t still love designing services, I do, and I want to keep doing this as it feeds everything else. But I’d like to be less reliant on consultancy and able to be more selective about the work I do.
I also want to explore what creating something bigger than myself could take shape as. Since day 1 I’ve been pondering over whether to scale Joy. I think what I’ve interested in here is two fold:
What the future agency looks like
How to create a company that’s not a company
Turns out I do have a vision for this and I have to say this fell out of my brain so quickly: A collective with a culture of care who are bound by belonging but free to explore.
Watch this space.
Service design consultancy
I want to refine my practice in service design to be more focused on relational design. I want to work alongside frontline staff and co-design with the people who use services. I want to do more detailed service design that really gets into the nuts and bolts of how things work. I want to work on real services and changes that will actually happen.
Goal: Refine my practice to focus more on the relational co-design of real services.
Writing
I love the momentum and success I’ve found with writing but it’s been very organic and accidental to date. If I want to grow an income stream from writing I need to develop a strategy around content creation. Ultimately I want to leverage my open and honest approach to build connection and community.
I also want to try out writing about things that are more personal than business. It feels like a fit with my style of writing. And as a total wild card - I want to do a travel writing course. Because deep down I just wish I was Michael Palin.
Goal: Develop writing as a reliable income stream.
Mentoring
I really enjoy helping people. Getting positive feedback from a human whose life you have affected feels so much more valuable to me than the regular feedback I’ve been getting in my consultancy work for years. I also know this work is hard and there are service designers out there who need support.
Goal: Help more people through a redesigned mentoring offer.
Shhh… I’ve already had a think about what this could look like but I haven’t really been shouting about it yet. If you have training budget left to use for this financial year, have a look.
Speaking
So this one took an interesting turn today by going back to my values. The traditional next step here would be to start pitching myself to bigger conferences and get more paid speaking gigs with bigger and bigger audiences.
But something someone said to me about my mentoring course popped into my head. They said “It was like having a cup of tea with a friend.” It’s my open and honest approach that people have connected with - which feels good because that’s me!
While I do believe I could bring this to a giant stage near you successfully - I don’t want to! So watch this space for a much more intimate, but scalable, approach to speaking. This one I’m excited about. Isn’t it wild how just being yourself and doing what you want to do feels like such a radical act sometimes. Society - sigh.
Goal: Launch a new event series.
That’s the four key areas covered off but there are two more things that are going to be important to me in 2024.
One is this idea of a collective. This is very linked with what the future of agencies might be and how we nurture new talent. I’m going to be reaching out for some help with this one. If you’re drawn to my vision drop me a line.
The last thing is personal to me. Anxiety has taken up too much of my headspace this year and I want to look into developing some practical approaches for managing this day-to-day.
So that’s almost a wrap folks. It feels so nice to be back in the same pub in Broadstairs writing this - that’s a tradition that’s now been fully cemented. This year I’ve upped my retreat to 3 nights with zero regrets. I’ve had a few requests to write about this mystery retreat I run off on every year so that’s in the pipeline for January too.
The Tartar Frigate in Broadstairs
It should also be said that next year will be the last full year of being in my thirties. I have no doubt that will start to hold some significance. I didn’t have a 30 crisis so a 40 crisis is, I’m afraid, inevitable. Hope you’re along for the ride!
There will be one more post from me next week which will be a roundup of lots of things I wrote and read this year as a little Christmas gift to get you through the days of watching Home Alone / The Grinch for the millionth time these next few weeks.
Wishing you all a restful and restorative break. Let’s hope 2024 is less shite eh!