PEOPLE POWER

Firstly, a belated happy New Year to everyone out there! Let’s hope 2023 is good to you all.

In this latest article for unLTD, I wanted to talk you through my last few weeks of 2022, explaining why I would like to forget December but can’t.

I will start at the back-end of November. Everything from a Simoda point of view was looking good, the forecast was on point and the challenges we were facing were more bumps in the road than scaling Everest. However, from a personal point of view, it was a stressful time for me and my wife as my father in law Malcolm was in hospital undergoing stem cell treatment. We needed some time away but struggled to find it, and with Malcolm in hospital we couldn’t do it. However, he insisted we take a break, he wouldn’t take no for an answer, so for the fist time since starting the business, me and my wife booked a week away in sunny Tenerife –somewhere we have been lots of times and really enjoy.

During our time away, Malcolm took a turn for the worse and was moved onto the ICU at the Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield. We came home early, but unfortunately we lost Malcolm on the 4th December. He was a great bloke and will be sadly missed by everyone who knew him. I spent the next five days comforting the family after this awful news, until Friday 9th when we had our Simoda Christmas party. We didn’t have a full complement of staff because a few were off with the winter flu, but it was a great night.

After the hangover had cleared, I started to feel ill with what I will describe as some of the worst pain I’ve ever felt. It turns out I had started with an abscess in my mouth which affected my right eye – I looked like I have been 10 rounds with Mike Tyson. I started to feel a little better before I got hit with the winter flu. This hit me hard, really hard. I couldn’t pick my head off the pillow and every part of my skin was hurting. At one point I even watched This Morning and Loose Women because I didn’t have the energy to get the remote control two metres away.

During all of this, the Simoda team were falling like flies and we were operating with 25% of our staff. Of course, with only one out four staff operational you would expect that we would achieve 25% of our forecast. On the contrary, December has been our best month ever – and I couldn’t be more proud.

Everyone has dug in, everyone has gone the extra mile and customers were our priority. The main lesson I have learned during this awful time is that everyone in our fantastic business is brilliant and I can fully rely on them. As a business leader, it is very hard to switch off and know that everything will be ok without you. Yes, I have come back to a monumental amount of emails and actions but – wow! Words really can’t describe how proud I am of our team and how they stepped up.

I know that I am biased, but if you are looking for an IT partner who demonstrate the right values and have a team of committed people, then you can’t go far wrong talking to us.