Looking Back and Looking Forward

I’m generally not much of a traditionalist, but the New Year seems an appropriate time for a post like this.

As you probably know, after 27 years I sold EQ Systems in September 2021, and I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the journey which got me to that point.

As a quick disclaimer, I’ll be making lots of lists of people in this article, but I guarantee I will have missed out some along the way. Please don’t be offended, it’s nothing personal, just me being human and fallible (something I can admit to now that I’m no longer in charge!)

Along with my then business partner and still life-long friend, Gerald McKenzie, I started EQ Systems (under a different name at the time) back in August 1994. Our goals were simple: our employer at the time, the now-defunct Technomatic, was only doing hardware & software sales and had basically no service or ongoing support offering. More importantly, I hated wearing a suit and tie.

Out of those humble beginnings we grew a successful business by offering a personal and personable support service to clients who wanted a little bit more than just buying a product and being left to their own devices. We very quickly added hardware & software sales and internet services to our portfolio, to offer a complete and comprehensive solution.

That growth was fuelled almost exclusively by word of mouth, and my first round of thanks goes to all our friends from Technomatic who helped get us there, including Mohamed Amr Mansour, Bert Rodrigues, Dave Rintoul, Felix da Sousa, Lyndon Creighton, Tom Keane, Erica Knipe, Sharon McGuinness, and many more.

Another factor in our success was something I’ve been banging on about for years: relationships.

We absolutely benefitted from building on the relationships we’d established with contacts we made whilst at Technomatic, and we maintained that success by forging strong, close relationships with new customers and suppliers. I hadn’t discovered BNI yet, so wouldn’t formalise our relationship marketing strategy for a couple of years, but with hindsight I can see it was there right from the start.

My goal and benchmark for succesful customer (and supplier) relationships was simple: I wanted to be able to call them and only have to introduce myself as "Phil", nothing more ... no surname, no company name, just my first name. If that was enough for them to know who I was, a strong, positive relationship had been built. (This was before the days of ubiquitous Caller ID on every device!)

Gerald left the business in 1995 to pursue his own projects; in 1996 I rebranded to EQ Systems and, in November of that year, I was invited to join the UK’s very first BNI chapter in Pinner, still in its pre-launch phase at that time. The chapter launched in December, and I remain a member to this day … although I’ve sold EQ, I’m still representing the company in the BNI Business First chapter, and still looking to generate referrals.

I could write a whole separate article about BNI and how it’s benefitted both me and the business over the years, but that’s another story. Suffice to say I’m still there 25 years later, so I should thank the person who invited me along in the first place, Alan Solomons, and of course the people who brought BNI to the UK, Gilly Lawson and her late husband, Martin. They were responsible not only for helping me grow my business, but also for gaining me some life-long friends in the process.

In 1999 I was able to move the business out of the spare room in my house and into dedicated premises, putting us in a much better position geographically to serve our existing and future customer base more effectively. (Bear in mind that this was in the days when remote support and fast, always-on internet connections were non-existent, so being able to get to people quickly really mattered.)

Another milestone came in 2003, when I realised that I could no longer do everything myself, and employed the first of several people who would form part of the EQ team over the years. Good people are the lifeblood of a successful business, and I can honestly say that every single person who was ever part of the EQ team over the years added some value and taught me something. I’m grateful to everyone, so thanks to Leigh Cohen, Mike Dixon, Richard Tanswell, Robert Michell, Kaushik Patel, Matt Thorpe, Dan Kennedy, Bimal Patel, Karim Jina, Kevin Stiff, Greg Medrala, Joseph Rapley, Montazar Chberei, Steve Brown, Chris Radette, Adam Carnihan, George Zaroubi, Kieran Pierre, Thady Reilly, Dan Reed, Simeon Thompson, Juliusz Januszkiewicz, Olly Jones, and Frank Hickey.

However, one thing you might notice about that list is that it’s exclusively male, and that’s a real disappointment. Out of well over 400 CVs which came my way during many rounds of recruitment over the years, fewer than 10 of them were from women. We’ve had pretty diverse teams in terms of ethnicity and sexuality over the years, but I wish we’d done better with gender diversity, and I hope that’s something which our industry as a whole can improve on, as it’s still very male-dominated to this day.

I’m not going to turn this already-lengthy article into a timeline of every moment in the history of EQ Systems, but a special one which stands out is our fabulous 20th birthday party, held on the 6th floor of the Royal Festival Hall, against the stunning backdrop of the night-time London skyline. (See the photo at the top of this article, one of many brilliant shots taken on the night be the amazing Mem Hanson of Mem Photography).

As well as being thankful to everyone who came and helped celebrate, I was also so grateful to some brilliantly supportive customers and suppliers who contributed to making the event a success, particularly Company of Cooks, Hattingley Valley Wines, Heriot Catering, and F-Secure UK.

Great service has always been one element of our success, but another has been some great products, backed up by great supplier relationships.

To that end, I want to single out some people at our ISP partner, originally Frontier Internet, who were then bought by Mistral, who were in turn bought by KCOM, who were just recently acquired by Nasstar! (Acquistion and consolidation is something I've seen a lot of in this industry over the years.) People have come and gone in that time, but many have left a lasting impression.

So, big thanks to Nick Gordon, John Gomez, Alex Kells, Laura Young, James Calvert-Jones, James Berg, Helen Kent, Martin Page, Jacob Ringer, Joel Watson, and Jon Lucas.

A couple of other suppliers I really want to highlight as having been brilliant over the years are:

Zen Software – a brilliant distributor who we’ve always loved dealing with and who I can’t recommend highly enough … big thanks to Ross McWilliam, Mark McGuire, Neil Perry, and James Steel.

F-Secure UK – thanks to everyone we’ve dealt with there over the years, who always kept things personal despite being part of a large, global organisation. In no particular order, thanks go to Mark Conway, Nicola Rix, Becky Kiely, Steve Windsor, Gavin Whittaker, Nicki Wells, Vanessa Thompson, James Thompson, Andrew Tiscoe, Rob Morgan, Allan Monteiro, Russ Holden, Richard Cue, and Kieron Bains.

Finally, far and away the most important people in getting EQ to this point and ensuring we continue to thrive are of course our amazing customers, many of whom I also now count as personal friends. We’re obviously nothing without their loyalty and support.

I can’t name-check everyone, but just some of the people I’d like to thank who have made a really special contribution in one way or another, in alphabetical order, are: Danny Eastman, Dean Ayling, Dominik Hesse, Ian Stephenson, Ileana von Hirsch, Jay Gosrani, Jeremy Freeman, Jo Burns, Kate Horn, Marina Gratsos, Mike Lucy, Neil Marshall, Paul Owens, Rachel Montague, Raj Gosrani, Robert Loomes, Robert Shine, Russell Cox, Steve Liddle, Thomas Hsu, and Vicky Cahill.

Not included on that list are the people who are unfortunately no longer with us. When you establish great customer relationships which last for many years, sadly the inevitable sometimes happens. Attending funerals of customers is hardly a fun thing to do, but it’s a testament to the strength of our relationships, and is always an absolute privilege and honour.

?There have been quite a few over the years, but in particular I’d like to mention:

-?????????David Montague, our first ever customer

-?????????Juliet Gibbes, our long-time contact at The Institute of Psychoanalysis

-?????????Bill Blackburn, the retired lawyer with amazing connections and brilliant, captivating stories to tell (he was in the room when IBM turned down some guy called Bill Gates, for example!)

They and everyone else are very much missed.

Looking forward, first and foremost I’m totally confident that EQ is in safe hands.

Dan Dibley and all of the RJ Cortel team have been working incredibly hard to make this a success, and will continue to do so. I’ve talked before about how this acquisition was a really good fit for both brands, and that’s already been borne out several times by the new cross-brand business we’re already doing with both existing and new customers.

This is all driven by a focus on improving on our existing services, because no matter how good your business is, you can always do better. To that end, significant resources have already been invested in streamlining some of our processes, making life easier for both customers and staff, and that will continue.

As for me, what does the future hold? Good question. I’ll be sure to let you know when I’ve figured it out!

My original plan was to get really good at doing nothing, but now that I’m not working full-time, I’m discovering all those personal and household things which I’ve been trying to get round to for ages, not to mention the day-to-day “life admin” which crops up.

It’s serving as a practical reminder that lots of us haven’t quite got our work/life balance right these days, particularly with always-on communications and notifications on our devices, and the massive rise in home-working making it harder to switch off and separate work life from home life.

If I can give you one piece of advice in this regard, it’s this: switch off notifications!

Not having that “ping” demanding your immediate attention and diverting your brain from what it was just doing makes a massive difference to your productivity and wellbeing.

I said I’d give you one piece of advice, but you all know me, I can’t stop there, so here are a couple more … I’m not on commission for either of these, by the way!

-?????????If you’re in business, focus on the health and wellness of your teams; I can’t recommend Adam Greenfield and Oli Henry of WorkLifeWell highly enough for this.

-?????????Get yourself a copy of "My Brain Has Too Many Tabs Open" by Tanya Goodin. It’s a brilliant book about managing your relationship with tech, and a very easy read.

Getting back to my future plans, right now there aren’t any specific ones. Travelling would be the traditional choice at this point, but all the Covid-related rules and restrictions still in place just make that look really complicated at the moment.

I’m optimistic that things will improve on that front before too long, however, and that despite the climate emergency, the world isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. (As long as we all do our bit, of course; get solar panels, change your lights to LED, insulate your house, leave the car at home, and so on … you know the drill!)

I do have one or two vague ideas about what my next venture might be if I – inevitably, according to some people – get bored, but that’s a way off yet, and I’m sure I’ll be posting about them in due course.

Right now, I’m grateful for the past, happy in the present, and excited for the future.

In closing, rather than just hoping that 2022 brings you what you want, I’d encourage you to go out there and make it happen, and I wish you every success in that.

Meanwhile, I’m not disappearing anywhere, so I’d love to hear from you if you’d like to catch up or even reconnect … you know where to find me!

Phil

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