Please meet ZHS Orchards
ZHS Orchards is the business vehicle for myself and my wife Samantha to do our thing as freelancers. It is a not a joint endeavour in that we don’t plan to work on projects together (but it is possible, happy to do introductions to each other’s clients). And it is not in the plans to start growing this as an agency (plans are as ever subject to change). But we are both now available for freelance opportunities. Ten years after starting my own agency, going through a merger and then an acquisition, I left Ayima in mid 2020. This gave me the opportunity to take a career break with the very large bonus of getting to spend time with my new son. I have been uncertain on what to do next with freelance work appearing the best path forward for at least the short term. Some opportunities that have come along already and hopefully more soon.
My work will be to help companies grow, improving business performance with actions informed by data. That will include a component of Digital Analytics data, I strongly suspect I will be digging into GA4 a lot in the future still, but it goes beyond that. The point is to understand your product offering and the needs of your (potential) customers – aligning the two sides to drive business growth. Whatever data source will help provide the insights required, happy to work with. Whatever actions necessary to drive that business growth, I am going to recommend.
Samantha has been freelancing since the start of 2019, with this put on hold for the birth of our son. She was working under her own banner but it made sense to combine the paperwork, admin and forces to work together as ZHS Orchards. Samantha is a Social Media Strategist. She works with clients to understand their customer messaging and then converts this into a playbook for developing social media campaigns and communications, whether paid or organic approaches.
2020 was a different year for everyone. For us, beyond the pandemics and multiple lockdowns, life changed with the birth of our son in April Zachary. Taking a career break after the time put into L3 Analytics, LeapThree & Ayima (and MeasureCamp) was another big change for me. As that wasn’t enough change, after a combined 26 years in the UK, we made the move across to the Netherlands to stay in the EU and experience European life.
ZHS Orchards is the next change in our lives and
is now open for business. I am on the hunt for clients who want to change the way they view and use data. I also offer two short term projects, with a focus on either turning data into actions or on fixing your Google Analytics set-up issues. Samantha’s main offering is the creation of Social Media playbooks, also offering ongoing support or to help with a single social media campaign.
Please check out our website for more details on the nature of work we each do and for producticed services that we are offering. Get in touch if there is an opportunity you want to discuss (or if you just want a chat over a virtual coffee). As origin stories are always fun, the name ZHS Orchards was a quick & easy decision to make. Our son’s initials are ZHS and I grew up on a farm that was branded as O’Neill Orchards. Putting my past and our future together gave us ZHS Orchards.
