Reflecting on our journey

They say that only a third of businesses manage to make it to 10 years!  Well, we did it at Pro-Development!!  It’s hard to believe that it’s been a whole decade of doing what we love and loving what we do – it’s been a rollercoaster of a ride with some real highs and lows and big learnings but I wouldn’t change a thing.

So how did it all start?  I was working for a large global financial organisation and was undertaking a coaching qualification where I also experienced coaching and for me, it was life changing.  I recognised that my passion was developing people and culture and working locally with smaller businesses.  As a farmer’s daughter from the East Riding, I love Yorkshire and the Humber and made the decision, that this is where I wanted to work and use my talents to support local businesses.  It was a tough call to make, leaving an organisation with security, a big salary and bonuses but in the end, I knew it was something I had to do.  So, the seeds were set and Pro-Development (a name created with the help of my mum, a couple of friends and some fizz) was founded to work with local SMEs to help retain talent, engage and develop people, leaders and teams and ultimately to create a great place to work where people and the business could thrive.

I can still remember that first few weeks, sitting in the back of my garage, setting up a website with a friend, contacting everybody and anybody I knew and then waiting for the phone to ring!  Of course, that never happened, and very quickly I got out and about networking and met lots of amazing people.   This was one of my first big learning, the importance of networking and building strong and long-lasting relationships.

I knew when I set up that I didn’t want to work on my own and had a vision to grow a team (for some reason I had 10 people in my head!).  I created a vision board in those first few weeks and another big learning was the importance of knowing yourself, your values and what matters to you and creating a strong vision for the future – I truly believe these have been a big part of our success.

Over the next few years, the business grew, and I had that realisation one day that my vision had become a reality!  However, then came another big lesson (they are always there ready for us!).  We were offered the opportunity to work with the Cabinet Office on a significant change programme and we were definitely wooed by the bright lights of the big city!  An amazing experience but the work resulted in us being out of the business for nearly a year and we veered off course.  It was a hard learn but one that reminded us how important it is to stay true to your vision and before long, we got back on course.  On a positive note, it did result in a nomination for a national award!

It was at this point I realised that unless we made the decision to grow further, we would always be limited by the resource we had in the team and so in 2016, I decided to recruit a couple more people which meant also moving out of the back of the garage to get a proper office!  So that April, we moved to Forest Farm Business Park where we created a home for our new team.

This was probably one of my biggest learnings and another big test.  My role had always been to bring in the business and with the recruitment drive and the office move, my attention was placed elsewhere and then, about 6 months after we moved in, we felt the impact of not working on the pipeline.  Big lesson for us, was the importance of always having several marketing and sales activities that you keep working on no matter what else is going on in the business.

We continued to grow, building a strong reputation and became well known in the area.  Much of this (apart from being good at what we do of course) I still put down to how well we networked and got to know people in our region.  I often have moments where I think about all the incredible people we get to work with, who support us and partner with us and our clients and have now become friends and how grateful I am for Pro-Development bringing all of these people into our lives.  This also brought the opportunity to become Chair of York Professionals and all these played a big part in me winning Business Personality of the Year at the York Press Awards 2018!  One of many big highs!  To then go back the following year as a speaker and share my story was both amazing and terrifying in equal measures.

We then went on to have the best year we ever had in 2019/20 and were getting set up to have another amazing one when in March 2020, Covid-19 hit the world and our business.  And it hit it hard!  Most of our work was face to face and pretty much a week into the first lockdown, the diary had been wiped clean.  It was the single most difficult challenge I had ever faced in the business.  The team were amazing and all quickly furloughed and left me in the business juggling what we did have and looking at what we could do to support our clients.  We discussed how to keep in touch with each other and the team said they wanted an online call at 9.30am every morning which helped us all support each other through a very difficult time (and also kept me going too!)

I am very proud of how we handled ourselves through those coming months.  We knew our clients were suffering so we quickly moved online and offered lots of free support and training on how to lead remotely and through change to help them through this period.  We knew we could manage for a few months and our primary hope was to help people we knew so that we could all get through this together.  It worked and by July 2020 we were back on track and the team were all back in the business and not too soon either as the long days on my own had taken their toll – I’ve never been so pleased to see them all!

Slowly we started to recover and then towards the end of 2020, our business took off.  By March 2021, we’d had our best ever year and by August 2021 we went from a team of 5 to a team of 9 and had doubled our turnover.  It all felt timely as we launched into our 10^th birthday celebrations on the 1^st September and we all felt like we had a lot to celebrate.

This also probably leads me onto my final learn which is to enjoy the journey, live in faith not fear, take people with you and be open to wherever it takes you!  Leaving school, I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do.  I didn’t do A levels or go to University like many of my friends.  But I was always open to new ideas and always challenging myself. And the journey led me to where I am now and the opportunity to get to do what I love every day.

So, what comes next for Pro-Development?   We launched our new website this week and are moving to a slightly bigger office across the courtyard at Forest Farm Business Park.  We continue to grow and hope to help even more businesses in Yorkshire and the Humber.  We’ve got funding for businesses in York, North Yorkshire and the East Riding and look forward to supporting clients access this to ensure they can continue to engage and develop their people in the coming year.  And who knows what the next decade will bring but one thing is for sure, I can’t wait to see and am looking forward to more adventures with everyone in our Pro-Development world.

Michelle Mook, September 2021