PAST PROJECTS
At the time of writing, I'm 42 and I've had a long a varied career across a number of industries. I'll write down and link to everything I can remember... Even the bits I'm not so proud of.
Endless Possibilities
I left school with no formal qualifications and still really have none to this day. But it hasn't really held me back. I did all kinds of silly menial jobs, selling double glazing, working in a call centre selling family friendly videos, I worked in a fruit and veg shop called silcocks for a little while. In all honesty, for the first 2 years after leaving school at 16 years old, I just mucked about. I played in a few bands, did a few boring jobs and mostly slept on friends floors and sofas during this time.
Just Cleaning?
The first place I actually enjoyed working was at ASDA as a Janitor. A guy called Tony - who was a very tolerant man - managed to put up with me long enough for me to actually learn the ropes in the industrial cleaning world and I soon became a star employee. I could drive all the machines, use all the high pressure steaming equipment... I was the superstar of the supermarket cleaners and I could make anything look like new. Polishing floors to mirror finishes, using crazy acids to strip floors before re-sealing them with numerous coats of polish. I was full of knowledge and power and wanted to use it!
The Regional Manager, a guy called Guy actually started pimping me out to other stores, then to other regions.
Before I knew it, I was getting on for 20 years old and working as a Trouble Shooter for the folks who ran the ASDA and Tesco cleaning contracts back in those days. I travelled around the country with my little crew, stayed in hotels and made shops cleaner or rather, i showed their cleaning staff how to clean the place up better... It wasn't that hard of a job really.
Amongst other jobs, I was a contract manager, shift supervisor, troubleshooter, janitor and a good few other rolls during my time at ASDA and Tesco.
Still Cleaning... But in a shirt and tie
I worked for about a year as a Regional Manager in the North-West of the UK. I oversaw all kinds of different cleaning operations. To be honest, I was probably in way over my head, but I could talk the talk and that seemed to be getting me though.
In the end, a falling out between me and the company owner meant I had to leave. Looking back, it was a storm in a teacup and my inexperience and immaturity cost me. We live and learn.
Even though I didn't part with this company on good terms, I still learned a lot about management, working with a large team and how a business runs. I value my time in this position and even though it didn't work out, I learned a lot of lessons at a young age which was a great benefit to me later.
So now I'm a DJ?
I moved to the city of Salford when I was around 24 and got involved with a radio station called Salford Community Radio in its very early days. They had a staff of 1, a guy called Paul, and probably 12 volunteers working as DJs from about 6am through to around 10pm.
I only found out about this project by accident after meeting a friend of a friend told me he was a DJ and invited me down to the studio.
When we arrived, he introduced me to the station manager, Paul, who's first question was "What's your favourite band?"
"Fairport Convention" I replied.
Paul smiled, welcomed me in and suddenly I was pals with Paul and these 2 guys from Yorkshire called Shack and Creedy who it turned out were everything technical and wonderful to do with radio!
Somehow, I'd found myself sat in a radio station, drinking a beer with the managers, being told how community radio works and the dreams for the station and I was hooked!
I never did complete the training they made volunteers do, it didn't seem necessary. They knew that I knew what I was doing.
One day after a random Phone call...
So there I was, sat round my friends place when suddenly my phone rang. It was Shack from the radio crew. He told me there was another broadcast scheduled for the Salford area and that they were looking for someone to come and manage the studio and take on the task of booking guests and creating the schedule.
I jumped at the chance and before I knew it, I was building radio studios, designing broadcast consoles, managing studios and building schedules for broadcasts. Admittedly, most of this work was voluntary. But I was gaining a lot of experience and making a bit of a name for myself amongst the people who worked in community media creation.