My First Newsletter

Hello 👋 

Thanks for signing up!

First of all…Why is the newsletter called Flexible AS?

In Northern Ireland (where I’m from), it’s a bit of a taster of how we speak. For an example, “the newsletter Andrew released today is cool as!” (I’ll leave that up to you to truly decide, of course!) - So yeah, we often don’t finish the sentence, we just throw the word “as” on the end of the sentence.

This newsletter will go worldwide, so I will show up as myself and bring the Northern Ireland way of talking to it (well, not all of it, I’ll use common sense with this).

And of course, AS happens to me my initials. So I thought, let’s call this newsletter “Flexible AS”

Genius, right?

Introduction

I’m Andrew. I’m Belfast-based. I’m 34 years young. Born and grew up in in a small place called Glengormley (North Belfast).

I am Dad to one, and Stepdad to six. There’s seven children in total at home (yes, 7!). I live with my partner Joanne, we’ve been together over three years now.

I’ve become known for speaking about flexible working on LinkedIn. I’ve some traumatic employment experiences in recent years and I’ve shared some of this on my LinkedIn posts. I’ll be sharing stories relating to these in future newsletters.

I couldn’t find flex working in employment, so now I work in a self-employed way so I can be present for my family when they need me.

I’m not against employment, it just doesn’t work for me (and many others!).

What do I do?

I do a lot of stuff. When I started self-employment, the truth was I wasn’t too sure what I truly wanted to do, so I decided to do a few things to see what I enjoyed the mpst.

Nowadays, I’m a freelance sales & business development consultant that supports freelancers, start-ups and small businesses.

I’m a brand ambassador for two tech companies, Reef & Flexa.

I also volunteer on the parent & carer advisory panel for the charity Working Families.

And lastly, I post a lot on LinkedIn (this often feels like another job!)

Why did I decided to start a newsletter?

I want to share my knowledge and help people. I want you to get to know me better too and share my thoughts & opinions in more depth on all things business, flex working, life as a working dad and more.

This newsletter will be very raw and honest, so buckle in for the journey!

My knowledge tip for Week #1 of my newsletter:

“Andrew, you seem to be doing well on LinkedIn”

This was recently said to me. Honestly, I’m not sure what “doing well” means on LinkedIn because being popular on LinkedIn doesn’t mean you’re being successful in business. I want to be successful in business, and LinkedIn is the social platform that helps me with that.

So here’s my tip for the week if you’re building your business and/or personal brand:

• Being interesting isn’t enough, you also need to be interested in people

It’s a two way street. You can’t expect people to like your posts, support your business and all that good stuff if you don’t support others.

So, support others and there’s a higher chance that they’ll support you too.

Do you agree?

Thank you

From following my journey on LinkedIn and now to my newsletter… thank you.

I’m going to be sharing a lot of my knowledge, tips, stories and more over the coming weeks and months.

This week was just a short intro to get started, so stay tuned!

Have an awesome week!!

Ps. I am going to post my newsletter each Monday at 5:30pm (UK time).