5 Years In... My Leadership Lessons

Today marks 5 years since Hydrogen first opened its doors for business. That day where 3 of us sat in my house hoping the idea and single client would develop into something.

We’ve gone from a dining room office to a position where we now earn more in a month than we did in our entire first year and I’m pleased to say that the client we were working with on that first day is still a major client for us today.

Every year since I started Hydrogen, I have written a quick blog on lessons learned this year. The first ones were all about the survival part of starting a new business. Those points where you have spent all your investment funds and you only have ￡200 in the account with wages to pay a week later…?This quickly (and thankfully) moved onto growth lessons, growing up as a business, stopping acting like a start-up and starting to talk about ourselves in real terms representing the business we were at that point.?Along the way we’ve hit a number of milestones that we could only have dreamed of on day one and we continue to push onwards and upwards.

But I think in this years reflections, I’m not going to focus on the business lessons learned.?Hydrogen is solid, it has an amazing team, our client portfolio surprises me every day with the brands we work on, the management team led by Nicky Logue delivers above and beyond week in, week out and our new business pipeline is stronger than it’s ever been. I’d rather reflect on lessons as a leader as these have been the most powerful points for me this year.

I once heard the phrase, “Your parents weren’t perfect parents because while you were growing up they were learning to be parents in real time”. It’s a phrase that really resonated. In todays world, there’s so many expectations to be perfect, whether that’s an impossible body image, as a parent or business leader. You need to portray an image of success, while deep down you are learning in real-time.

So, with that phrase ringing in my ears, there’s some lessons/thoughts that I would like to put out there:

Be comfortable with being wrong: When you find yourself in a position where there’s nobody above you (except from my wife) the buck technically stops with you. Some people love the supposed power that comes with that, while others freeze when they have to make the big decisions. I’m fortunate in that I am quite a decisive person, but that doesn’t make me infallible.?Some things work out great, others don’t and being comfortable with the fact that you’ll get things wrong from time to time is something I’ve learned to live with. My view is people would much rather have a decisive person to work with who can hold their hands up when they are wrong than someone who procrastinates and nothing moves as a result.

Surround yourself with opinions: I have a great management team around me and a fantastic network that I can call on when I need advice. I’m not one for reading books, despite getting a recommendation on a weekly basis of something I should take a look at. That said, it’s very easy to become quite insular in your own opinions and thoughts when you are running the place. It’s all too easy to default to what you know rather than adopt a new way of thinking and that can easily lead to the famous line of ‘we’ve always done it that way so why change’. In my experience, your personal knowledge will only carry you so far and it’s important to look externally for advice or a different way of thinking. Over the past year I have done this a lot more and I think the impact that it’s made on Hydrogen has been incredible.

Celebrate the successes: In the past 2 months we have won 6 new major clients, many of them household names. In each case, we have maybe poured a wine, cracked open a beer and gave ourselves a little pat on the back before getting cracking on their strategy. Over the years I can point to so many others where this similar pattern played out. Last week I had an away day with the management team here at Hydrogen where we reflected on what we had achieved and set out plans for the coming years and it’s only when you look back you realise what you should have been celebrating all along and you never gave yourself the time to do. Covid may have been the excuse in recent years but we’ve all made the point in future to take time, celebrate the small things and not simply march onwards.

Not all business ideas fly (initially): I was told by a consultant that I was speaking to a few months back that a lot of business owners think that every idea they come up with will fly solely based on the fact that their first idea (usually a successful business) has flown. I’ll admit this year has been a massive knock to my ego and something I have had to deal with.?At one point this year, 2 of my 3 businesses weren’t exactly soaring high and for somebody who is used to making things happen, this was hard to deal with. But it’s how you deal with this that changes everything. I’ve had to take my own advice above, admit I was wrong, listen to others opinions, evaluate the approaches we have taken and make changes for the better. Hopefully we’ll soon be toasting the successes for those businesses too at some point in the not so distant future.

Quite a lot of the above might seem pretty negative, it’s not, it’s just symptomatic of the situation we find ourselves in today. Things change in an instant, deadlines move, things expand and reduce without your control and pandemics rumble on. That is why I think the key is remaining malleable, your ability to morph and adapt to the situation and to learn on the spot, just like our parents had to do, is ultimately what will get you through.?My management team and I have had to make rapid changes to the business and adapt to new situations and as a result Hydrogen has remained on track throughout it all growing by over 50% YoY. I therefore have to be grateful, we're doing extremely well in the current circumstances.

If you have made it this far through my ramblings, you need a medal.?But in all seriousness, I hope you found it useful. I’d love to hear your thoughts and any other tips worth sharing from your 2020??