Celebrating four years of AndrewSMcNeil.com
Introduction
A personal post celebrating my four year anniversary of creating the website Andrew S McNeil.com and a thank you to the team that has made this milestone possible. And a special nod to my friends from the ‘Oarsome Foursome’ who helped motivate this project even though they didn’t realise it.
Background
During the COVID pandemic there was less time travelling and a lot more time to work on special projects from home. Once of my projects during this time was updating my personal website. The pandemic provided some additional contemplation time, outside of family and work commitments. This time of contemplation gave me the inspiration to revisit my personal website which was not much more than an internet placeholder at the time, and reflect on what I’d like to do with the site longer term.
Humility in my roots
Being raised in a country town, humility was a pretty good trait to learn early. Let’s say in 1970s regional Australia, being humble wasn’t optional! There was certainly no Tik Tok and the influencers of the day were the genuine leaders of the community.
Attempting to remain humble over my life journey is true to my ‘personal brand’ and values – even in the current days of shameless self-promotion via social media and people screaming at you for 30 seconds of online attention.
When I moved to Melbourne to pursue my love of rowing following secondary school, I ended up rowing at the great Mercantile Rowing Club and was suddenly surrounded by numerous world and Olympic champions - especially the iconic ‘Oarsome Foursome’, including the likes of James Tomkins, Michael McKay, Nick Green and my old teammate Drew Ginn.
Apart from being really, really good at what they did, the ‘Oarsomes’ remained truly humble, and stayed laser-like focussed on practicing what made them the best in their field – calm, authentic, had fun, persistent, were hard, always challenging each other and never settling on just being excellent. They transcended excellence to be the best on the planet in their field – at an Olympic Games – twice!
Relevance of the Oarsome Foursome to Andrew S McNeil.com
I was greatly influenced by the Oarsome Foursome and what they stood for, and now feel very privileged to have been able to train with them at close quarters in the prime of my rowing career.
During the pandemic and when I had more time to focus on this website project, I wanted to match my existing humility with the desire to continue to be excellent professionally – just like the Oarsome Foursome.
This is where Julia Palmer of Relatus comes into the story. I had met Julia during a Finsia virtual event about Positive Networks and Authentic Leadership. Julia has been absolutely brilliant in helping me navigate the challenge of staying humble and true to my country roots, being true to my personal brand and values, while also being able to communicate clearly my life achievements and what I can offer to potential clients.
Julia gave me confidence and helped me reach the point of opening up more about my background – both sports (particularly rowing), and corporate life.
We highlighted the Oarsome Foursome as an example of a group that I could use as a template of being both humble and excellent at the same time. So, thank you Julia for all your guidance with this project!
Helping others
The exercise of updating this website also made me realise that one of my key career drivers is to genuinely help others. I am seeking to use this website as an opportunity for me to connect with people that may need assistance with their corporate governance, compliance and the execution of growth business planning.
From life experience, I believe that change creates opportunity and I hope to create opportunities for those I connect with on this updated website and the associated blog posts and LinkedIn forums.
What’s next?
Over the next 12 months I will likely be mentioning projects close to my heart – the GWS Giants, Rowing Australia, Finsia, CISI and the work I am doing with the University of Melbourne. External clients including Rawlings Bolton and Truebell Capital will likely get a mention for the extremely interesting projects they are currently working on.
Work themes are likely to include updates to AML/CTF legislation in Australia, ethics, and also effective communication in the workplace. Of course, updates to relevant AFSL legislation and ASIC regulatory guides will also be highlighted.
Finally, I’d like to combine the following two themes – authentic personal stories and corporate governance experience to provide content on leadership. I understand that leadership means different things to different people, and I am going to attempt to draw on my experiences from both international sport and corporate work to explore leadership in greater detail.
Thank you
Finally some thank you’s to my team. Firstly, a shout out to my wingman, analyst and son Sean McNeil. What began as a gap year has turned into a fantastic year of collaboration, research and learning from you son. And what you have coming up with your own business is also very exciting - your new company might even get a promotion on Andrew S McNeil.com!
Thank you also to Adam Ruggero at Frank Lane for your continued guidance on this website and also the Yarmouth Group site. You are a pleasure to work with always Adam! Thanks also to my photographer Robin Sharrock who I have worked with for decades – thank you Rob!
Here’s to another 12 months of interesting work and thanks to all of you who have taken the time to engage with Andrew S Mcneil.com! I always appreciate your support.
https://www.yarmouthgroup.com/