Why I write

This is an important piece for me to write. Mostly to help verbalise this for myself (this writing thing is incredibly cathartic you know?), and as a way to share with the kind people who are following my journey and encouraging me, about why I am doing “this”.

I guess I’d better start by introducing myself. I am Alice, my friends call me Al. I live in west London and work at the food tech company Deliveroo. It’s just about as crazy and crackers as I am — I am grateful every day to have found a place to work where I can truly be myself, and to be part of an exhilarating start-up success story. I am thirty, single and living alone (think Carrie Bradshaw meets Bridget Jones).

This story starts three years ago when I was working for Beefeater (the restaurant chain you find next to Premier Inns, not the gin (sadly)). I had a wonderful boss called Sarah who saw a spark in me. She encouraged me to apply for a leadership scholarship at The Marketing Academy. It’s MO? To find the “brightest and best minds and equip them with the values, beliefs, behaviours and skills to be outstanding” [Al blushes]. I worked my arse off to get on to the scholarship, but it wasn’t to be first time round. I was totally gutted. What I didn’t realise then was that not getting on was about to change the course of my life forever…

…It was the sheer process of applying for the scholarship that opened my eyes to what I now know to be my passion, my raison d’etre — personal development. In the months after my rejection I processed what I had learnt, was given the ultimate gift — a career coach, Debbie — and started to uncover the magic of self-discovery and self-actualization. It was during this period that I also met Sarah Ellis, and it was on her course that I realised that FTSE 100 life was not for me (Beefeater was part of the Whitbread group), and just at the same time I got the call up from Deliveroo.

I put my head down for the first year here, and two years after applying the first time, I reapplied for the scholarship. And, second time lucky, I got on. I learnt an important lesson; the famous ad-age of: “if at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.” And thank my lucky stars I did, because if I thought not getting on could change my life, I was about to see what actually getting on could do.

The Marketing Academy Scholarship is hands down the best thing I’ve ever done. It is a program which helps to show you how to be the best version of yourself, whoever that might be. It empowers you to see that there’s hidden magic to knowing your self — your motivations, your dreams, your fears — that has the transformative power to help you realise how to fulfil your potential and be happy. It was here that I found out my purpose, my mission: to connect with people to show them the inspirational power of personal development themselves.

Sharing openly and honestly about what I’m learning on this journey helps me to live it more wholly myself and is allowing me to connect with others as part of their own journey to knowing themselves. It is a privilege to be let in to their hearts and lives. I know that some people find what I’m doing to be “cringy” and maybe it is…I guess they aren’t as as “high” as I am on this stuff. Where it’s road leads I’m not sure, but I am excited. Dare I hope that I might be able to make my wildest dreams come true by finding my calling (and a way to make a living from it)….yikes, what a thought that would be.

Thank you for being part of this journey, or just coming to take a peak, to see what it’s all about.

My purpose