Life after LiveWIRE (or 5 months into my new role at Sage One)

Some of you may have noticed that I left Shell LiveWIRE at the end of November 2012 (after 4yrs) to start working in the Sage One team at Sage (UK) Limited (a FTSE-100 software company based in my hometown of Newcastle).

This is actually my 2nd time working for Sage - my first being over 12yrs ago when I had just left University and spent 2yrs (between 1998-2000) working in tech support for Sage Payroll software.

Since then, I’ve had a pretty varied career working for big companies like British Airways and BT Broadband, 12 months on the dole/in and out of work, a brief stint in the music industry as a DJ/producer while at music development agency Generator North East before joining local enterprise agency PNE Group (aka Project North East) in 2005.

For the next 7yrs I worked with some wonderful people on projects that supported individuals, businesses, charities and community groups to grow and succeed and was lucky enough to get the chance to join the Shell LiveWIRE team in January 2009.

Shell LiveWIRE - ‘The UK’s biggest online community for young entrepreneurs’ - was a fantastic opportunity for me. A place where I could grow and develop both personally and professionally, meet some incredibly inspiring people throughout the UK and work with a great team (thank you Stu, Erin, Alba and Anna)!

Under the expert guidance of Stu Anderson, I feel we achieved a lot in the 4yrs I was there and am proud of the work we did to support young entrepreneurs across the UK. LiveWIRE is also where I honed my skills in digital marketing/social media and fell in love with the world of UK start-ups and enterprise, making me realise what an incredible country we live in and how amazing the people are who are brave enough to start a business.

However, after Shell LiveWIRE’s 30th Anniversary year in 2012 I felt I’d done as much as I could for the programme and was looking for a new challenge, preferably a commercial technology role which was an area I had become more and more involved.

So, when the opportunity came for me to join Sage, a company that grew from a start-up with just 1 customer over 30yrs ago into a global enterprise supplying software to 6.3 million businesses around the world (830,000 here in the UK) - I jumped at the chance, particularly as the Sage One team is operating like a start-up within a corporate!

At Sage One, I’m able to combine all the things I love doing - digital marketing, social media, blogging and supporting start-ups and small businesses albeit through a commercial, paid-for service with clear and focused targets instead of one like Shell LiveWIRE which is less tangible and where ‘success’ is much harder to measure.

Get involved and help me out!

In my eyes, Sage is the closest thing we’ve got to a British-born Google or Facebook so I’d really appreciate it if you joined me on my latest adventure by checking out the Sage One blog at http://uk.sageone.com/blog where I’m not only writing about our software but also sharing lots of useful tips and advice for start-ups and small businesses.

You can also ‘Like’ our Facebook Page at www.facebook.com/SageOneUK, Follow what’s happening and share your thoughts with me on Twitter @lordlancaster or by including the #SageOne hashtag in your Tweets.

Many thanks!

Paul Lancaster
SEO & Inbound Marketing Specialist
Sage One UK
http://uk.sageone.com/blog
www.facebook.com/SageOneUK
Follow me on Twitter @lordlancaster

2 thoughts on “Life after LiveWIRE (or 5 months into my new role at Sage One)

  1. Good luck and congratulations on your new role Paul! When I visited you back in February, it sounded like you had made yourself right at home.

    Best wishes,
    Jonny

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