profile

BrightonDynamic

How many times did you roll the dice last week?

Published about 1 year ago • 3 min read

Maybe you moved to Brighton to find more of your kind of career opportunities.

Chances are making as much profit as possible isn't what excites you. You don't crave having power over as many people and resources as possible. Doing deals and making sales isn't what you want to be best at. You want to work differently and do business differently.

That's how I felt when I started my first business in Brighton back in 2006 and most of the people I enjoy working with feel the same.

You want to be purpose driven. You want to apply progressive business practices that put people first, support the wider community and prioritise the planet. You want your products and services to be so good they sell themselves.

Sustainably making all that work isn't easy.

Some people and businesses have a steady source of high quality opportunities and leads.

Everything in business becomes easier when you have that. You can pick and choose who you work with. You can stick to working the way you want to work. You can decide what you'll do, when you do it and charge a premium.

For the rest of us good opportunities and leads come seemingly at random.

It's like someone rolled the dice and got a double six for you.

You bump into a neighbour and discover they have a problem at work that you can help with. An old colleague emails you out of the blue. A client you've not spoken to in years recommends you to someone.

What if you could significantly increase the number of times the dice got rolled for you... or you started rolling it more yourself?

Here are a few rolls of the dice that have resulted in (direct and indirect) double sixes for me over the years:

  • Deciding to live in Brighton.
  • Posting things I'm working on to Twitter & LinkedIn.
  • Sending regular email newsletters like this one.
  • Getting to know people in the real world by organising events such as Sussex Founders, BarCampBrighton, DevNest, BootCycle and LTV Conf.

They might not be the right things for you to do. But I highly recommend figuring out some ways to roll your dice a few more times each week.

This post was inspired by a conversation I had with Ali Najaf last week. He rolled the dice by emailing me out of the blue. We'd not spoken for around 5 years. He's one of the best senior developers/technologists I know and he's looking for some new projects to get his teeth into.

It would be remiss of me not to mention coworking at this point.

Working in the same place as other people every so often can work extraordinarily well as a roll of the dice.

In part 3 of our audio project a few members of The Skiff talk about the impact The Skiff has had on their careers:

twitter profile avatar
The Skiff
Twitter Logo
@theskiff
Could your workspace have an impact on your career? pic.twitter.com/RPJ8XGyoXU
Video or Gif
twitter profile avatar
The Skiff
@theskiff
Who did you have lunch with last week? pic.twitter.com/11pSxJEqkU
April 12th 2023
0
Retweets
0
Likes

Come and experience it for yourself. Book a tour and free trial.


That's all for this week,

Jon

--

Jonathan Markwell

Co-Founder, The Skiff, Brighton Dynamic, PlainScaling

If you liked this you might like to:

The Skiff, 30 Cheapside, Brighton, East Sussex BN1 4GD
Unsubscribe · Preferences

BrightonDynamic

Jon, Paul and Caroline from The Skiff

Get smarter about working in Brighton, Sussex, UK.

Read more from BrightonDynamic

Brighton Dynamic from The Skiff This week we're running a survey at The Skiff. We're gathering the views of as many members as possible on what's going well and what needs improvement. So far a third of members have participated including: 5 small business owners 10 remote working employees 14 freelancers/independent consultants 13 people working in software development 11 people working in digital, media and tech but not writing code 4 people working outside of digital, media and tech This...

9 months ago • 3 min read

Brighton Dynamic from The Skiff We made it to 25 editions of Brighton Dynamic! It would be great to hear what you'd like from the next 25. What should we do more of? What should we do less of? Is there anything you'd like us to do that's completely different? In this 25th edition of Brighton Dynamic: You'll hear how Dave Pereira Gurnell helps people gather data using his "survey monkey with maps" tool. You'll discover a content gathering SaaS, with Brighton based founders, that grew to 1,100...

9 months ago • 3 min read

Brighton Dynamic from The Skiff Yesterday was the 17th birthday of the company that became The Skiff Ltd's. It took ~2.5 years before the company opened a coworking space so we get to have two birthdays a year. By many measures, the last month has been the best we've had since before the pandemic. The space is buzzing with members new and old. The best thing this week was hearing a member, who joined less than a year ago, say this to a member who joined in 2016: "Yes we pay and have a...

10 months ago • 4 min read
Share this post