Reflecting on a Transformative Year: Growth, Change, and New Horizons

A Year of Relocation and Expansion

Nine months ago, I embarked on a significant journey, relocating to the USA along with my family to support our company's continuous growth. This time last year, we spent three months in Australia, operating from our HQ in Sydney, preparing for this monumental shift. Embracing change is never easy, but the US team welcomed and fully supported our strategy, leading to remarkable progress.

Building a Strong US Presence

The past nine months have seen our US team grow by 300%. We now have representation in the North East, Upper Mid West, TOLAC, Mid Atlantic, South East (split into two regions), and California. This phenomenal team, led by Anne Cynamon, has been instrumental in our success. In tandem with our sales growth, we expanded our customer success team, led by Carleigh Smith, ensuring we continue to deliver exceptional service.

Continuing to Invest in Australia and the United Kingdom

To maintain our focus on core markets, we've further invested in our finance function with a new CFO and Finance Controller, helping us structure our finances to support growth. Additionally, we've invested in our customer success teams to ensure our customers continue to enjoy high levels of service.

Product Development and Innovation

Alongside our investment in people, we’ve also invested heavily in our SafeZone platform. This includes a range of new features supporting expanded safety and security use cases in higher education and healthcare, significant enhancements in our emergency management capabilities, and strengthened permissions, allowing more departments to leverage SafeZone while maintaining segregation. Our customers continue to provide excellent feedback and ideas, which are constantly being added to our roadmap!

Scaling Systems and Processes

Scaling up our systems, processes, and training has been a significant focus. While there is still work to be done, the progress made so far is commendable. This effort has enabled us to meet our financial goals for the year, a testament to the hard work and dedication of our teams in the USA, UK, and Australia. Considering that 50% of our sales team was hired in the second half of the financial year, achieving these goals is a tremendous accomplishment.

Expanding the SafeZone Community

We welcomed many new customers to the SafeZone Community in the past 12 months. Notable customers from each region include:

UK: Oxford University, University of Liverpool, Leicester Royal Infirmary NHS

USA: College Station, TX, UTSA, LoneStar College Group, Alamo College, CSU Fullerton, University of Kentucky, Western University, plus a number of UNC Schools

Australia: AGL Power (Utilities), UniNSW (Higher Education), Central West (Healthcare), Gemco (Mining)

Looking Ahead: Doubling Down on Growth

Our success has given us the confidence to aim higher. We plan to double our sales team in the next 12-18 months, capitalizing on opportunities in Higher Education and Healthcare. With the board's support, we are investing in all departments and functions to sustain this growth while maintaining high levels of support for our existing SafeZone users.

Over the next few weeks, I will be supporting the US sales team with customer and prospective customer visits. This will be followed by a visit to the UK for customer meetings and our UK Sales Kickoff, and then heading straight to Australia to help onboard our newest Sales and CSM team members. While in Australia, I’ll be visiting customers, partners, and our team. It's going to be a busy few weeks ahead!

Personal Milestones and Family Life

On a personal note, it's been a year of significant milestones for my family. My daughter is thriving in school, has an American boyfriend, and is learning to drive at 15, with me as her instructor. My middle son loves the US school system, enjoys classes two years ahead of his age group, and has taken up ice hockey. My youngest son is excelling in gymnastics, making the team, and enjoying his independence and friendships.

My wife has settled extremely well, making friendships and supporting the children with their integration into US life. After ten years, she has decided to step away from her role at CriticalArc. Over that decade, she has taken on many roles, culminating in running HR, H&S, and Finance in the UK and USA. I have mixed emotions—excitement for her next professional step and sadness at not working with someone I value dearly.

We've been blessed with many visits from family and friends over the past nine months, keeping us connected to the UK. The children are currently enjoying their ten-week summer holiday, having spent four weeks in the USA, which culminated in a memorable 3300-mile road trip (two weeks ago). This trip allowed us to visit Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, and New Mexico, providing cherished family time and adventures which included horse riding in Canyon, TX (picture above). My wife and children have now returned to the UK for the remainder of their summer holidays to spend time with friends and family before returning to the US for a new school year in August!.

Fitness and Health

This year, my health took a backseat, but I'm back on track now. After another epidural to support my back injury recovery, I've returned to the gym, prioritizing my well-being.

Professional Reflections and Future Focus

Professionally, this year marks my tenth with the company, a milestone that fills me with pride. Our mission-focused business continues to inspire me. I've had the privilege of meeting and working with amazing people who I consider as transformative leaders, all driving change and enhancing safety, security, wellbeing and emergency management capabilities for their communities at Universities across the world. Looking ahead, my focus will be more targeted on sales, customer success, and marketing. We plan to invest in our people, technology, and processes, particularly in customer success and marketing. A new website and enhanced digital presence are also on the horizon.

Conclusion: Embracing the Future

This weekend, I’m in Providence, RI, ahead of a week on the road with some of our East Coast team. I’ve had a few hours of sightseeing and now I'm working on budgets focused on growth for the next three years as we chart a path for continuous growth and investment in our existing customers. I'm excited about the year ahead, filled with conferences, events, and time spent with our customers, partners, and team. Here's to another year of growth, connection, and shared success.

Many thanks for being part of this journey.