Two years ago this week I made the decision to leave Diageo after 14 years – I then proceeded to give 4 months notice! My initial plan was to do freelance social media consulting, an area that was just starting to gain wider traction across businesses. This was slightly scuppered by a chance meeting at SXSW, with someone who’d been part of the team at an agency for some Smirnoff work we did with them. They were looking for someone to help support on digital for a client they had, so I agreed to come across to New York for 10 weeks to do this. This eventually led to an offer of a full time role, with a visa. After a lot of thought, I decided to accept – New York was always somewhere I had wanted to work and had been trying to do so with Diageo for a while. My reservations were that this was advertising and my expertise was more in the marketing/social media space. I mentally gave myself a year.

That is what has now happened; due to a tightening of belts, my services are no longer required. Very little of my time was against clients, a lot of what I did was education and internal stuff and they could basically no longer support that. I’m not surprised, I’d been looking for more work internally for a while and not getting much luck. The result is I no longer have a job and am looking, most probably back in the UK as the visa I have won’t work at another company. Unless somewhere else takes my fancy (I’ve always liked Sydney 😉 ).

Next steps..a short period of misery (I’m allowed, this is the first time it’s happened to me), a take stock and then a push to get a new job (whilst moving countries again!) Meanwhile, enjoy the rest of my time here, enjoy the company of the many new friends I’ve made in the city