Burgess Consulting: The Beginning
Clients always ask what it is that I do and how I started my business so here’s the quick and dirty version of how Burgess Consulting was born. I started my own business back in 2016 doing little side jobs for different companies: creating training manuals, conducting research, designing menus etc. Prior to starting what was then Play With Your Food Marketing & Communications, I worked as an Operations & Marketing Coordinator for a restaurant chain at their corporate office. It was a great job and I worked with some amazing people, but my drive to find something meaningful in a career led me to search for something more. On a bit of a whim I quit my job and decided to go back to school.
Over the next few years, I completed a degree in Health & Community Services and a diploma in Digital Marketing. I took on the odd job here and there over the years while in school but my business evolved and became Burgess Consulting in 2019 when I began taking on more clients. There were a lot of conversations happening around substance use, homelessness, mental health and wet facilities. The way people were treating one another in our community was appalling. I found myself often talking to Kyle about what was going on around us and I was very emotional about how people were talking in these terms of “us” and “them”. There was tension and volatility everywhere I went, and it drove me to reflect on how I could use my skills to try and make positive changes.
Figuring out how I could help was constantly on my mind. I lay awake at night trying to think of ideas of how to spread kindness and get people to practice empathy. When I was working with my client on Not Evalyn I felt so great about the work that we were doing because it aligned with my values. I realized that doing work with people in the future that had the same goals was important to me. I wanted the work I was doing to be impactful and not just about profit. It hit me that I could help make positive changes by helping others share their brilliant ideas and stories.
I believe everyone has a story. My mission is to build a community and a safe space where people can tell their stories and experience human connection. By providing communications, digital marketing, project management and virtual assistance services to my clients, I help them tell their stories and build connections with their communities.