By
Dave Nutter
Happy New Year to everyone and I hope people are back in to the swing of things without too many issues (excluding lockdowns and home-schooling of course!).
Well, 2021 has started with a bang for us and although we’re now 15 days in, I would be remiss if I/we didn’t pay respects to 2020. For all it’s relentless challenges, not least for our industry, for PS it’s been yet another amazing year under our belt. Our best yet in fact with more than 65% growth in revenue and profits year on year. I say that knowing full well that we are extremely fortunate too.
So ‘cheers’ to our talented and tenacious team who are now managing a big surge of new work from client wins and client growth in the last quarter. It’s a testament to how hard the team have worked over the year that we’re now able to accelerate our agency growth plans, which is amazing news for all concerned. We’re also thankful to our Perfect Storm Partners – our freelance brethren – we’ve added many more to our flock this year, kick started by the pandemic, but I’m happy to see that almost all are making a real fist of it having embraced change – well done to you all!
So moving on to 2021 – hopefully the year to be thankful for, for everyone.
It’s exciting times ahead for us now. We’re way ahead of our stretch forecast with new clients in strong sectors, which we’re all over the moon about as you can imagine. We’re a pragmatic bunch though, and we know it’s really important we don’t rest on our laurels. So, we’re all determined as ever to keep pushing, enjoying what we’re doing and try to improve each month, whether that’s in our delivery, internal operations, how we support our freelance partners etc. If we do that, we won’t go far wrong! 
Having Tom Downes (Delivery Director) and more recently Jon Angel on board as Strategy Director, this additional strength to the senior team has meant we’re in a great place to plan more accurately and stand a great chance to hit our future goals.
Next up, I want to say a huge ‘welcome aboard!’ to Everita Gardner who joins us from Jaywing (formerly Epiphany Leeds). We’re thrilled to have her on board and she joins to compliment the incredibly bright and experienced team of digital producers. Lot’s to do Ev, I know you’re ready for it!
Just a slight side note on recruitment, because people do frequently ask us how we’re not bigger by headcount based on the scale of our output. Our core team is small by design due to the nature of our operating model. So we make sure that each addition is right in terms of cultural fit, attitude, skillsets and experience. It’s meant our team is growing with us to the next level, but not just for the sake of it. After all, headcount is an outdated success measure and, pre 2020, often banded around in vanity by agencies along with the number of global offices they covet. We much prefer to focus on our output and ability to provide our clients exactly what they need, as opposed to what we need to push to pay for our 100s of staff. I predict big movements to our way of working in 2021 and it’s about time.
Another box to tick this year is the completion of our very own ‘PS Eye’ system (working title only ) which means we become less reliant on multiple off-the-shelf software to operate the business and means the supposedly ‘simple’ things in the agency such as resource planning, project set up, project management and commercial trackers become even more simple and tailored uniquely to us. So 2021 is also about a huge step up in efficiency for us too. We’re hoping to roll this latest development out by April 1st.
Getting back together again in our beautiful office is something we all long for and I, for one, miss my Americanos from IF Cafe!!
Finally, its our work that excites us most of all in 2021 with some big launch moments in the planning which we hope to share in due course. On the subject of our split of sectors we are now operating in, the spectrum has widened a fair bit, so whether it’s for global sporting events, nationwide property brands, B2B sectors, local authorities or even a wholesale bakery from Hackney, there’s a ton of variety there, which is only going to enhance our case studies and experience as we grow as a team.
So wrapping up, we want to wish clients, partners, agencies and peers a great 2021 in which will obviously be another year of challenges, but hopefully with positive outcomes for everyone. The key will be in how everyone embraces change, being as agile as possible to roll with whatever it has to throw at us. For us, there’s lots to feel positive about, thankful for and now… much more to get on with.
We’d better crack on then.
All the best!
Dave