The Advisory Board - Episode 4 - Vicki Gilman

That must have been a hard decision though given There was nothing of the kind around at the time.

It was very much in its infancy.

It must have been a tough decision to do that and to walk away from that, particularly when you'd blazed a trail.

I think it is and I think it probably nearly always is.

My view is that growing these small companies in one sense is a bit like having a child.

You birth this thing, you do everything for it in the early years and it grows and it ensures and you step back a bit and other people get involved.

you have to be respectful of that and sometimes things don't go the way you maybe think they should but this thing has a character and a life of its own and then and then if you sell you sell your baby yeah who sells their child so there is a there is an interesting feeling about that that I can say a little bit more about but it was also my belief that it's what it needed so as a parent I to continue the analogy, you do what is right for your child, don't you? And you put that first.

So my intention, however, was to stay.

That was what I was intending to do and get my own development as well within the group.

I could see the fit.

I could see that it could potentially offer what it did.

It was the first therapy service.

And I don't think they've bought other pure therapy services since.

I thought it could actually do things within the group and I could develop this thing.

I think as a group, I don't know, but I'm guessing they had other priorities to think about.

So their timing for doing that didn't match mine.

Right.

And I do remember ringing somebody there after they bought it a couple of weeks later and saying, are you coming up? And the answer was, yeah, I'll come up and take you to lunch, but just keep doing what you're doing.

We bought you because we like you.

and we like what you're doing keep doing that and that is incredibly flattering and very lovely but it definitely wasn't what I was looking for and I just think what I was looking for didn't quite align with what the group needed to do at that stage and so after a couple of years I realised that I wasn't developing, and so I needed to do something else.

And so I helped to find my successor, which I thought would also be someone else to bring more strength.

Again, the child analogy, you know, other people in your child's life, so it's not just one point of view.

And then I stepped out to do something else.

And I didn't know what that would be.

I've always thought that I was a bit like someone looking at a very large menu in a restaurant.