The story.
Once upon a time Peter Cobley learned he was good at, and enjoyed helping people.
found us…
An idea, disenchantment with soul destroying jobs, personal mishap, luck, some help, courage, and hard work
Story of found us.
I’d graduated from Lancaster University with a good degree in Law in 1993 with no fixed plans, plus personal family issues that prevented me from ultimately pursuing a career in Law . In Macclesfield my home town, I’d worked at a local business publisher which I’d enjoyed as a student. Advertising had piqued my interest, without realising it was to become my career.
In 1994 I applied for a sales role at The Independent newspaper and its Sunday edition, and so began my career in commercial advertising and old style media; and for a young man in his 20’s, I now realise, it was to become a deep learning experience, rollercoaster ride, with many highs and lows, happiness, sadness, comedic, and a coming of age experience as I find myself at 52 years old as I type this paragraph.
If I wind the clock forward to where I am now, I have a few thoughts. I won’t harp on about my career since you can easily read about that via LinkedIn. And feel free to knock yourself out by reading it.
As a sort of precis for those who can’t be bothered with LinkedIn, I’ll provide a patchy elevator pitch explanation of the career to date. I got into sales which ultimately developed into pure commercial work. By 30 I’d become a Director at ITV working on things like Who wants to be a Millionaire, and had also passed my Legal Practice Course qualification - it’s the qualification for being a Solicitor. I stayed in business and learnt a heck of a lot about setting up, running, and making businesses profitable, managing people, and in this process made a number of mistake, some astronomical; and if I look into my heart also acted as an out of control, ambitious, people blind arsehole at times. And I do bitterly regret my behaviour at this time. Thankfully I am aware finally, and learnt from it.
Speaking of the time, it was the late 1990’s into the 2000’s and the arrival of digital, Web, and Search Engines to name but a few, including the Dot Com boom and bust. It was a fast period in my life and as mentioned I learnt a hell of a lot about business simply because I had brains, was in the right place at the right time, and being blunt was thrown in at the deep end as no other f**ker know what the hell was going on. My legal studying stood me in good stead as I worked on joint ventures across to sales across to setting businesses up. I met some absolute animals in my time in London, but also met some very clever and kind people who I learnt from and who mentored me. These would be people such as Bill Osmond, Mehdi Salam, Carol Dukes, Phil Rooke, Bruce Morris, across to Matthew Batstone. I cannot thank them enough as what I learnt from them did eventually rub off.
I was to learn that people work to live, and don’t live to work, that we are all equal and should be treated with kindness, that if you support, care, and grow people you bring out the best in them and see humanity at its best as people work together in mutual concert, and this is passed to others as a proverbial self fulfilling prophecy. Managing people by bullying achieves nothing. Give and you will receive and the world becomes a richer place.
So it is 2014 and I am the Commercial Director at what was to become IMA HOME, a rather huge advertising agency entity. I’d been successful up to a point, but this had faded due to self-inflicted mishap.
Very simply I’d got myself into a poor personal relationship and was very unhappy, another stressful job, a long commute/living away from home, a poorly father and so it goes on. But the ultimate killer was to become a dependency on alcohol, also fuelled by my suffering from OCD. It all coalesced into the beginning of 2014, where I was a broken and lost person with years under his belt in the business and just plain ready for a change, well the merry go round stopping. I’d had enough.
I left IMA HOME, with the kind help of Dave Sewards and Michael Ward to set up and run found us. The rest is history. It took a lot of hard work, help and luck to establish found us and fine tune the business and myself to what I wanted out of, and could give too life (yes me and not someone else).
This is some of what I learnt on my journey of self, including found us.
I have learnt I am well connected in the advertising, marketing, and media industry.
That I’ve been matching people up for years in order to facilitate business, but have taken pleasure from working with people and watching them grow.
That people respect and believe in me, and this commands a high level of trust, faith, and belief. I’ve helped people and delivered results.
I realise that I am honest, confidential, and can assist people in plotting and achieving their goals. I love this process.
I have a strong moral compass and have sought with age to do what’s right, and I ended up ditching my ambition, drive for success, and money. After all, what is success? That’s the conclusion I came to.
I’d had enough of senior roles where decision making clashed with core values within me, and this had gone on for years. I could not reconcile the manipulation and using of people, the fights, the selfishness, and the rest of the other crap in business life. I’d learnt it could never be me.
Giving back .
In retrospect, it does seem obvious now as to what I have learnt, but it did take years and the journey continues as I keep learning; and I really, really try to give back what I have learnt through found us.
The found us MAXIMS explain a lot about my ethos.
It is with found us I realised I could develop a vehicle in which I can help and grow people, in fact care for them; which is something that I have as a life goal and hold dear to my very being.
You see, my found us is about helping people in their career paths, or in their business, and thus their lives; with the upshot being that I can earn some money to fulfil a simple lifestyle.
found us allows me to give back, as was freely given to me in my journey that is life. I think I owe the Universe this, as in the grand plan I have received and continue to live a good life. Yes, I have met some right idiots and nasty people in the advertising game, but also have met some wonderfully caring and intelligent people, who believe in people’s humanity when in business.
And in experiencing the best and the worse of people I can see and deliver a better way for people, and help them on their way in their own life’s journey.
found us - to help you find them
Why not have a read of my blog to find out how I tick? To find out what I believe in.
