Old Rossallians team up to take on business

The Rossall experience lasts a life time. A decade after graduating, two Old Rossallians teamed up in the business world in London to create something successful.

Sam Ireland’s company https://goodwright.org/ designed and launched a website for Jessica Yang’s consulting company jyxborderconsulting.com at the start of 2020. Since the launch in March, the website has helped to promote Jessica’s business throughout the world, giving her the best start to running her own business.

This clearly shows that Rossall is one community, even after you leave. The connections and people you meet whilst studying at the school are connections for life and you should treasure those relationships.

Jessica’s story

I started my own company based in London in 2020. My mission is to help businesses achieve streamlined cross-border trade, especially through turbulent times such as now, with Brexit and trade wars happening. Ernst & Young had trained me over the last 5.5 years to be a professional business advisor specialising in trade, but I thought to myself, how do I establish my own brand? I knew needed a website, but who can help me?

Then I remembered something I saw on LinkedIn. A few months ago, Sam had posted on there, about how his business has successfully designed and launched several websites for university labs. I contact Sam. Although we were not close friends during our shared 6 years at Rossall, Sam remembered me and responded straight away.
We arranged to meet up in central London, and of course could not resist discussing the good old times at Rossall. Sam and his business partner Alex were so friendly and reassuring, they understood exactly what I wanted my website to tell the world.

I’m so happy with the end result, Sam and Alex even managed to include a photo of Rossall beach taken by my husband during the OR weekend in 2017! I received so many compliments from friends and potential clients based all over the world on how neat and professional the website is.

It has been 12 years since I left Rossall, yet it continues to look after me. I’m really grateful that I have this network of amazing ORs who are willing to help me out when I need it most.

Sam’s story

The Old Rossallian network is not something I had really given much thought to – certainly not when I was at Rossall, more than ten years ago now – and not much in the intervening decade. I had vague and slightly fantastical images of old boys lighting cigars in a smoke filled room, and never really placed myself in that image.

Fast forward ten years ago, to last year, when a friend and I started a business together called Goodwright. We make custom websites to precise specifications, primarily for scientific labs but by no means limited to that. As a largely client-based business, having the right contacts with people whose needs match what we can offer would prove to be vital. And as it would turn out, another Old Rossallian in a very similar position would show us just how useful such networks can be to very early stage ventures.

Jessica contacted me on LinkedIn, ten years since I last saw her, to discuss if we might create a website for her new company, and we arranged to meet up and discuss how our businesses could work together. After a meet-up that involved as much reminiscing about Rossall (which made the intervening ten years seem a lot shorter) as it did the business of website design, we came to an agreement and quickly got to work on what is now her company’s website – jyxborderconsulting.com. Complete with Jessica’s own photo of Rossall Beach as the primary website image.

Working with Jessica and her new company was a pleasure, not least because of our shared history and network. There are no doubt many such examples out there of small businesses and individuals, with mutually compatible needs who could be of great help to each other, and who are connected via this shared history and network – even if they don’t yet know it.