2020 - A review

In what has become a bit of a traditional annual company review (bizarrely I get emails around this time asking if I am planning on writing it!?) here’s my take on the things that stood out for us in the year of all years. 

Putting a metaphorical pen to paper trying to surmise 2020 is almost laughable. However, although Covid (this will be the only mention of it) affected everyone in different ways, it was far from all bad. 

The mass hysteria, negative press and the paranoia about sharing any personal views really did its best to squash any success. Yes, we all had to adapt, it was all new, there was no roadmap, it was testing, but 2020 was a once in a lifetime for business leaders to show what they were made of. 

For anyone leading a business, coping, reacting, adapting and improving, are the day to day of any given day. 2020 gave us a laser focus and immediate timeline to go back to the reason we started in the first place. It was paused window in time to improve all that we do for partners, our clients and our team. 

I’m going to say it, businesses should not feel bad for excelling and succeeding in such an uncertain time, that simply shows resilience.  Yes, is has been back against the wall, but this is when so many businesses do their best work. 

Whilst looking back it’s been a hugely positive year for us as a business, on a personal note I’ve never felt the weight of being an employer and the pressure of making decisions quite like I have this year.

We’ve been incredibly lucky and its thanks to the hard work of the entire business and the real support of all our lur clients who have not only pushed on through, but really doubled down on all things demand generation. A huge thanks to all our clients for trusting us during such an important time and uncertain time. 

2020 has been some year, but for us, it’s been the best.

Here’s what I learned and a snippet of what we did. 

1. Get started. Without action you have zero chance. Get a product out to market asap and learn from real clients.
2. Seriously work you’re a**e off. You can’t shortcut, get the hours in and be obsessed with what you what to achieve.
3. Make customers happy. Simple but so true.
4. Speed wins. Learn how to get stuff down on the fly, set short deadlines and then hustle!
5. Don’t be afraid to fail – you’ll get nothing done if you don’t. 
6. Find a way through – go round, go through, go over, go under. Solve problems and get past those barriers every day.
7. Ensure you are motivated (really motivated). Running a business is hard, during a pandemic, well… If you don’t have a burning motivator you will struggle to last the distance. 
8. Create a strong culture – hire on attitude, train for skills, empower people and treat people as you would want to be treated. Make your company the one that people want to work for or remember for the rest of their career.
9. Never get complacent – Too many companies stop innovating, get caught in the headlights and slow in the market - their competitors or their team get disappear. Stay hungry, keep pushing and keep innovating.
10. Remember brand is everywhere – the product, your emails, website, your invoices. Use every opportunity to promote all that you do and shout loudly!

And here's some of the things we got up-to:

We rebranded thanks to our friends at Make Agency. A huge team effort and one that we are really happy with. Yes, we were apprehensive, but it’s not in our company mantra to not take risks.

Not happy with one brand launch, we went with two - Techoctopus.com soon followed.

We had an office refurb – new media suite will allow us to permanently use the office as a hub but be fully inclusive with those working in other locations

We hired a brilliant US advisor to help shape our offering stateside. Paul Spyksma, thank you.

We trebled the growth of our US business

Out with our old email platform, in with Force24 

We worked with some really cool partners across some global projects. Special mention to Sean Flynn and Scott Vaughan at Integrate.

Fintan won our person of the year and was presented with a £1000 travel voucher. Even more impressive was he manged to get away and use it!

He then got promoted to Senior Marketing Executive

We hired Rosie, our first Head of Marketing and she’s ace

We hired Katie, our first email marketing executive and she’s also ace

We spoke at 6 events, partnering with Raoul and Richard at Flume for two fireside chats. big shout also to Scott at the team at Zephr

We created bespoke facemasks thanks to Tom and his business Merumask

We then made bespoke ONF women’s leggings

We have plans for ONF brand that we would never have thought of….

We sent bespoke bottles of tequila to all of our team, They know why...

We had a financial year end Zoom party. Lets just say its the most hungover I've personally ever been..

Our company summer party happened. The sun shone, the beers flowed and for a brief moment in July, all felt normal in the world

Our agency relationships grew in line with triple revenue growth - all lead by Kevin, who in 12 months has built a high performing sales department to be proud of

The partners we worked with continued to grow and were brilliant. New partners joined our network from Costa Rica, Philippines, South Africa, Mexico, USA and Netherlands

We built a system, database and process that allows us to track real-time 1st party interactions. This has totally undersold the work gone in and just how excited we are as to what we think we have 'got'. Massive kudos to our CTO John for the tireless work

Julie joined us in our first ever senior global sales remit. Feels we've come along way when you hire a Global VP of sales..

Five other brilliant unsung heroes joined the oneninefive journey; Dave, Steph, Lauren, Lauren & Louise. All who ran through walls to improve all that we do and stand for

We planned a charity industry golf day

You know what put pave to that

We have rescheduled to 2nd July, 2021. It's going to be bloody ace

We raised over £8,000 for our charity of choice PKD (Polycystic Kidney Disease)

Tim, Emma, Lauren, Suzy and Rosie walked 21 miles (the length of London) to contribute to that total

Tim got promoted to Head of Ops

Emma got promoted to Business Development Manager and lead our US sales

My former PA and one of the original oneninefivers made a massive career hop from super PA to account manager. That move has been vindicated, she hit her 6 month target a month early!

We spent far too much time on Zoom

And even more on teams

But it was bloody good fun and we all saw each others houses (and children, dogs, cats and other halves)

So that's it, another year over. A year that is unlikely to ever be repeated. To our clients, partners and most importantly our team, thank you. It certainly was one to remember.