Meet The Team
Holistic Local is a privately owned business, based in the UK and currently run by two people. Here's a little bit about us and what makes us tick!
Andy Metcalfe - Ideas & Inspiration
I was 19 when I read my first spiritual book, a well known book called The Celestine Prophesy, which was to act as a major catalyst in my life and give me a new vision of how the world could be if only more people could expand their awareness and embrace holistic and spiritual ideals. In the ten years since then I've read and learnt a whole lot more and had some incredible adventures of my own. Some authors and books that have been a huge inspiration to my life, so far, include Richard Bach (Illusions), Deepak Chopra (Quantum Healing), Stuart Wilde (Infinite Self) and Thom Hartmann (The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight) and of course there are many many more.
At 21 I started my first proper job, creating 3D computer animations for a corporate events and production company. The company was small and friendly and it was great fun for a while but I soon realised I wasn't passionate about it and I was doing absolutely nothing to help bring about the positive changes I wanted to see in the world. I left that job after 5 years and went to work for myself as a freelancer, again doing 3D visualisation and also some web design and internet marketing for small businesses. I've been using the internet since 1994 and around the year 2000 I became extremely interested in internet marketing and promotion techniques, learning all I could on the subject (Somehow I knew the information would come in useful one day!).
Now, after a long time waiting, I'm happy and extremely grateful to finally be involved in a project that merges my passions with my professional expertise and also gives me an opportunity to hopefully make a small difference in the world.
My involvement with Holistic Local was initially born out of frustration - Frustration at the lack of user friendly and professional looking web sites that promoted holistic & conscious business services. I always thought I could do much better than anything I ever came across, and now I've finally gone and done it (I hope you agree!). However none of this would have been possible without the immense skills and genius of Jason the programmer, and also a man called Nick Sturgeon whose expertise is in working with small businesses seeking to grow.
Jason Osgerby - Programming & Technical Genius
As a college student back in 1996, I bought my first computer, plugged it into the telephone lines, and entered the online world for the first time. My life has never really been the same since then. I knew right from the start that this new electronic world was going to become a massively important tool in all of our lives, and I decided that I wanted to know as much about it as I could. I quickly became proficient with the Microsoft Windows operating system, and then started learning more about how the Internet itself was built, creating simple websites with a HTML editor.
I got my first computer job not long after leaving college in 1998, working near London for a company using Microsoft's web technologies to build an online database system. I learned the in's-and-out's of extending HTML with server-side scripting to build completely dynamic and interactive websites. After two years I realized that the better job opportunities were over in the USA, and quickly took up an offer to work for Microsoft in the Seattle area, providing customer support for their ASP scripting technology. Since that time, I've worked for a variety of companies, and have continually updated and refined my skillset.
Although I tend to be a typically left-brained, logical thinker, I've always held a complete fascination with the more esoteric side of existence. Even as a young child, conventional explanations of the nature of the cosmos -- whether it be scientific or religious -- had never felt instinctively right to me, so I'd always been searching for a deeper, more meaningful worldview. Having access to the plethora of information available on the Internet over the last few years has certainly broadened my horizons in that regard, but the real breakthrough came back in 2002 when I read Robert A. Monroe's classic works, Far Journeys and Ultimate Journey.
Around that time I started posting on an Internet forum, discussing various topics such as spirituality, ancient history, metaphysics, and alternative medicine. It was there that I met a clever young man, Andy Metcalfe, who seemed to know everything there was to know about Internet marketing. After I returned home to England at the beginning of 2005, we met up and started creating what is now known as Holistic Local.
