Actually no, luck had very little to do with it.

There are many interesting conversations you have in business. In the digital age, there is a focus upon lead generation – what are the best channels for which audience and for what budget? How do we ‘nurture’ our audience through their journey to become a customer. Often whilst discussing this we’ll be asked how do we get our leads. I’ll reply “we get all of our new business from referrals / word-of-mouth”. More often than not the response to this is – “wow, you’re lucky.”

I used to think nothing of it, in fact I’d often nod and agree with them, but recently, I’ve started to think a little more deeply on it. And upon reflection, actually no, luck had very little to do with it.

Everyone starts a business for a reason. Ours was that we wanted to do things differently to the agencies in which we had worked previously. We wanted to create a place where we all really wanted to be each day. To do the kind of work that we actually wanted to do, and most importantly, for the kind of people we actually wanted to work with.

We built our business on what might seem pretty simple principles.

Openness, transparency and where and when required, brutal honesty. Good old fashioned integrity underpins all of our actions and importantly, we expect the same from our clients and suppliers in return. We choose to not work with clients or industries we feel operate in, or offer questionable / unethical products or services. After all, branding is all about perception; we would much rather use our powers for good – yes we need to make a profit, but we also need to be able to sleep at night too.

We built a culture that fosters independence, autonomy and accountability, but above all we believe in authenticity. This informs not only our work but also how we do business; if we make a mistake (after all, we are human), we own it and importantly we fix it.

We believe passionately that to be successful one must work hard, but you must also have fun. We do not believe in heroes; we know it is all about teamwork. We could not do it without each other and we certainly couldn’t do it without our marvellous clients who entrust us with their business.

We put the effort in right from the outset and spend time to get to know each and every customer. We never settle for average, we strive to always deliver our best work. We always do what we say, and always do what is best for our client.

We continually evolve our business to stay relevant — we continually educate and up-skill and add complementary services, we change as the business landscape changes.

We knew who we were and what we wanted to be from the outset. We’ve been in business now for over a quarter of a century — that’s definitely not just luck — it is a good measure of bloody hard work, taking the risk, sweating the small stuff, having some actual design chops and also just doing the right thing by clients, staff and suppliers (otherwise known as loyalty).

Our hard work has paid off. The way we do things has resonated with both clients and suppliers alike. They are as loyal to us as we are to them, they are our advocates and we are very fortunate to work with them each day and certainly don’t take for granted the fact that they are happy to recommend us.