Has it really been 4 years?

4 years? It feels like a lifetime going by the lines on my face and thinning hairline... But, a quick check on Companies House and it’s true, we’ve just turned 4. This year’s birthday affair is unfortunately going to be a little bit more of subdued - company BBQs, trips to the races and Berlin weekends have all been put on hold, for now.

I’ve written one of these articles every year since I started the business to look back on what I have learned in the last year. The aim being to provide some advice to anybody who finds themselves on the same trajectory as us. Just look back through my previous articles if you are just starting up for some of the early years lessons.

This year is different though. Very different. How the hell do you sum up COVID and the impact that it’s had on the world?

All I can say is that we’ve been lucky, we’ve not just survived, we’ve grown. I personally know a lot of great agencies that find themselves in less fortunate situations, not because of bad planning, not because of a bad client set, but just that on one day all their business simply disappeared and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about that. Like I said, we’ve been lucky.

So, in a year of absolute madness, where I achieved a personal goal of doing a TEDx talk (check it out https://www.ted.com/talks/mike_scott_fake_it_until_you_make_it)

and we hit that magical ￡1 million mark (see the coverage https://www.scotsman.com/business/glasgow-social-media-agency-hydrogen-sees-turnover-exceed-ps1m-2940285), what lessons can I take away?

1. Plan for the worst – True, I never saw this coming, nobody can really say they did. But, I have always been one for planning for the worst case scenario and from day 1, I’ve made it my mission to have enough in the bank to keep Hydrogen afloat for a few months even if all the payments from clients suddenly stopped. The reason for this is not that you ever expect to use it, but should there be a downturn as we all saw earlier this year, you have time. Time to plan, make the right decisions for the team and a cushion to absorb some losses. Those in tighter financial situations will need to make decisions overnight, we were able to absorb a few months losses and get ourselves back up and running. If possible (and I know it’s a big if) put cash into reserve, build a rainy day fund.
2. Communicate – We’ve been very candid with clients, we’ve been open to negotiations where original contracts were thrown out of the window and new ones redrafted and we’ve spoken to the team on a weekly basis about the situation that we have found ourselves in, and more importantly what we’re doing to get out of it. When you, your clients and your team have found themselves thrust into the unknown, keeping up those lines of communications has been key.
3. Be honest – I say it all the time, there’s far too much bull in this industry. I couldn’t say for certain at the start that I would get the team through things intact, I had no idea whether that would be possible. But what I could say is that I would do everything in my power to make that happen.
4. Be bold – It’s been said that we punch above our weight. We’ve found ourselves in some very competitive pitch situations this year, up against some agencies that we would only have dreamed of competing against a couple of years ago. We’ve pretty much won them all. We’re not doing anything wildly disruptive, we’re just confident in our position and happy to stand by that. In the early days I would have found myself trying to morph Hydrogen into what we thought the client was looking for rather than standing by the position of who we are. 
5. Innovate – Not that the old way wasn’t working before, but I bet it isn’t now. We’ve all had to change the way we work, whether that’s moving your business to remote working or moving a f2f retail model to online, something will have needed to change. We’ve all had to learn on our feet this year, sometimes we’ve got it right, other times it’s gone wrong but the need to innovate and do things differently still stands. We’ve decided to take that innovation a step further, learn from the needs this year has thrown up and we’re launching some new offerings later this year which I’m really excited about. This will hopefully allow us to compete in an increasingly competitive space and face the new post-COVID world a stronger agency.

And, one final note that I would like to give special recognition to…

Build a team you can truly rely on – While sometimes the top position in a business can feel really lonely, in times of adversity you need to rely on the team around you, you can’t do it all yourself. If you look around your team, can you truly say you can rely on them all? I think the real reason that Hydrogen has made it through this period is actually very little to do with me. To use a metaphor, I’ve been steering a ship through a storm but without the engine driving us forward we would have certainly sunk. The Hydrogen team is undoubtedly one of the best agency units I’ve ever worked with. To a person, they have all got stuck into the challenges we have faced this year, and it is them that I must thank for my ability to write this article.

And with that, I’ll leave it there. Hopefully you’ve found this useful. As ever, get in touch if there’s any advice I can provide.