It's 16 years since I started PURE.
I worked out I have probably spent over 30,000 hours working on PURE. If it takes 10,000 hours to master something, I must be a super-expert by now!
At this special milestone, I have reflected on 16 things I have learned about business, life and myself through the journey so far, some good, some not so good, but on the whole I have absolutely loved the journey, the people who have been there with me, past and present, and I am excited to see what the next 16 years will shape up to be.
1. The amazing feedback we get left by our lovely clients on a daily basis is how I know we have created a service that means a lot to a lot of people. You will always have a successful business if you have created something that fills a need. Our clients sustain us and I am very grateful for their loyalty.
2. The PURE team amaze me with their dedication to their jobs. It takes hard work, team effort and dedication to serve 100,000 clients every year and make every one of them feel amazing! Their willingness to go above and beyond every single day is what makes PURE the company it is today.
3. I love the feeling of creating something new. One of the favourite parts of my job is to go into any space and be able to visualise the possibilities and opportunities we could generate.
4. Employing people is the best thing I have ever done. I love the people I work with, their enthusiasm and ideas are essential to sustaining and growing our business. I want everyone in PURE to be successful and proud of where they work.
5. You can never stand still. To sustain you have to grow and innovate and create new opportunities. We have never stood still at PURE in 16 years and much of the creativity and innovation has been in perfecting our services, our culture, our processes, so that we can continue to grow.
6. Having a set of values that you exist by as a company is incredibly important. You can't sustainably create a business without them and the CEO is the gatekeeper of the values. My role in keeping and sustaining a great company culture I regard it as one of my greatest achievements at PURE. It is the foundation that holds it all together.
7. Cash is king in business, ignore it at your peril! I feel lucky that as a trained accountant, the figures come easy to me, but even now the thing I pay most attention to on a daily basis is cash. Second is net profit. Third is net working capital. These three elements are essential to grow sustainably.
8. Business is hard, its easy to make mistakes. All you can do is try your best, live by your values and do what you think is right at the time. And try not to beat yourself up when you get it wrong!
9. I am very careful about who we do business with and who we partner with. I still believe in the saying 'treat people how you would like to be treated' and I like to believe that if you stay true to your values it's the best way to be.
10. My duty as a Director is to always act in the best interests of the company. This means you take a side and you bat for your team, there is no sitting on the fence.
11. The buck stops with you. You need to be resilient and adaptable and throw yourself into every challenge and give it your best shot.
12. I used to do everything myself and I have now learned to be very mindful what I spend my time on because it's very limited. I constantly ask myself – is what I am doing adding value to PURE or is there a better way?
13. It's vital to have a vision and detailed strategy for the business, it helps to focus the whole company and it's amazing what you can achieve with a good strategy. Don't underestimate how long it takes to develop a good strategy. It takes months and months of focused work.
14. I have come to learn my own limitations, to know what I am good at and not so good at. I now focus on recruiting people who are better at the skills I am not so good at and give them great autonomy to do what they do best.
15. It helps to have people you can go to, to have a good old moan. I call it 'having a hippo moment'. It really helps to let all the negativity and emotions come out, once it's out you can put it in perspective and move on.
16. I have learned to enjoy the journey! The journey is the best bit. I am really looking forward to the next 16 years and all the exciting things still to come!