First post:
I am, frankly, nervous but at the same time quite excited. I'm about to take on a completely new job at a time in my life that a lot of the people I know appear to be retiring, and good for them. Not only that, but it's a big job, Global Sales Manager for a flow instrumentation company. I'll have to travel, I'll have staff and distributors in the UK and around the world, be responsible for business growth and look after marketing communications too. I've got a great opportunity with a really nice bunch of people making good products. Katronic Technologies - check them out!I'm sort of hoping that this blog will end up being a bit of a business travelogue, once we're allowed back into the wild, and anyone reading it will be heartily fed up of my boasting about where I've been and what I've seen, but at this point I really don't know.
It must also be admitted that it's a bloody strange time to be taking on a job with 'Global' in the title.
I'm 60 in October 2020. It's really great that a good company would want to take on someone my age, but I'll come to that.
So, a bit of background. Or, why it's been great so far
I've been running my own business, freelance marketing communications with a focus on 'industrial' businesses, for coming up to eighteen years. You could argue that I dropped off the greasy corporate pole at 42 once it became clear that marketing manager for a medium sized packaging company was about as far as the world of work was going to take me, but it was a bit more personal than that.I live in Nottingham, married with three children. I had a commute of around an hour and 45 minutes in the morning, a bit less with less traffic in the evenings. Company car, company petrol, cost wasn't the issue, and I'm sure that most people who work in London would be rolling their eyes and going 'so what'? The kids, daughter and two sons, were fairly young and, like most dads, I saw them not at all or very briefly in the morning and for an hour or two in the evenings. They were, and generally are, sporty, the weekends were taken up with trips to various badminton training sessions and swimming galas, rugby on Sundays, so life was hectic. The plan was to move nearer to the factory at some point.
Won't lie, I didn't enjoy the job much. The people were fine, with a couple of exceptions, same as anywhere, and I made some good friends. The company was owner-managed, which is fine, but it seemed to pull off the interesting trick of being quite laid back and incredibly pressurised at the same time. Very odd atmosphere. Anyway, long story short - mum died, dad had a stroke, and it was no longer feasible to move down, leaving me with the big commute for ever, if I stayed.
I approached the company with a suggestion that I go freelance and carry on working for them, and I will always remain grateful for their response. They took me at my word, gave me an on-going deal , a five-figure sum to get me started, and plenty of encouragement. I had also been talking to a company run by people I had worked with some years previously. They also gave me a couple of days work a month and, for the first year, an extra few quid a month, also to help me to get started. Really great of them, and it meant that I was starting out with a turnover of around £30,000, plus the 'get you started' money. Not a fortune, but not too bad, and MHA Marketing Communications was born.
There are clearly decisions to be made when you start out on a new business. What is the end objective? Do I want to grow, develop, employ people and build an empire? How big is the right size? Who do I want to work with? Eventually, and in consultation with my wife Julie, we came to the conclusion that the most important thing was, genuinely, the family. So I have quite deliberately stayed as a one-man band, with my wife taking more and more of a role as time has gone on. No, that's not quite right - it makes it sound as though that's a simple choice. I don't know whether growth would have been possible, whether I would have run a bigger business well, whether it would have fallen around my ears. Small, is the path that I have followed.
Financially, it's been pretty good, thanks. More customers have come on board, I've been busy, never in seventeen years have I twiddled my thumbs and wondered what to do next. It hasn't made me rich, obviously, but it has paid the bills, sent us on some good holidays, and funded our life, so no complaints here.
Apart from that, the business has given us some great opportunities, simply by being free to choose what I do with my time. We've been able to be thoroughly involved with the children. Haven't missed a sports day, school play, musical event or university invite (apart from one, which I still regret). I chaired the East Midlands Packaging Society (no less) for three years. Helped out with the junior rugby set-up at Nottingham, where both Number One son and I made some great friends. I was chair of the PTA at the local secondary school for three years, learnt to fly-fish and tie flies, got infected by golf, got down to a single figure handicap and served on the committee and as Junior Organiser for several years at our local club, where our youngest son was Junior Captain. Julie plays too, and was Lady Captain last year. I've learnt to play the guitar (OK, I knew a few chords before, and many would still dispute 'play'), joined a band, played gigs and made a racket. Terrafish, we're brilliant, check us out here. I've been to a LOT of gigs. Look, this is my blog, I'm going to bloody well show off if I want. I've been busy, the family has been busy, we've done loads of stuff and enjoyed it, mostly.
The children are now no longer children at all. They've all been through university and are making their impressive way through life. The eldest is a successful banking lawyer in The City, getting married next year, middle one is, at 30, a senior engineer, youngest is a medical writer. They all live in London. Life moves on.
So, why the change?
Why, indeed? It must be admitted, especially since the children have left home, seventeen years in the same room staring at a screen eventually does pale a little. I've been thinking about a second string to the bow for a while.After a couple or three very good years, I unexpectedly lost three customers towards the end of 2019. None of them my fault, but that doesn't help the bank balance. About 40% of turnover gone over the course of three or four weeks and it unnerved me, a bit. As I may have mentioned, I'm nearly 60. Sadly, I still need the money.
I started worrying that while I might well be able to get that business back now, and I have at the time of writing replaced about half of what was lost (there's always room for someone who can talk 'water'), what if this happened again in three or four years time? It would be much more difficult to replace the business when I'm only a couple of years away from retirement. My fear was that I would end up wearing an orange apron in B&Q, with no disrespect intended to that fine business or the people working there, or taking some bullshit commission-only double glazing sales job. Again, that's fine if that's what you enjoy, but it's not really me.
It was an idle chat with one of Katronic's sales guys that got me thinking. It's a young company, lots of the staff have young families. Andy the MD, in the way of most MDs of SME businesses, spends his life up to his neck in tasks. The chat went: Me: Y'know, if there was room for a sales director to come in and cover the time until someone else was ready to step up in four or five years time without being a blocker, now would be a great time to ask me'. Him: (after a pause), That's actually not the most stupid idea I've heard this year, let's talk about it.
They're obviously ambitious, nobody wants someone in their way forever, so it was a great opportunity for me to come in for the last five or six years of my working life, work hard and do my best to help them grow and share my experience, and then drop gently back to writing a few case studies and press releases to give me a bit of pin money and pay for my golf. That's the plan, anyway, let's see how it all pans out...
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