This month we celebrate nine years in business… probably the most interesting years our industry will see, or anyone who is running a business will see. I started Oracle in a recession, as entrepreneurs often do and enjoyed rapid growth… twins, Brexit and a pandemic later, I feel I could write a thesis on PR / Staff / Crisis Comms / Clients / Industry and most importantly how brands have succeeded and failed during this time.  However, as I sit and write this birthday update, I realised that in fact, the reasons we are still going remain the same as they did from year one, here are a few:

Listen to your team

It is fair to say that in the past I have struggled with listening.  Over the years I have realised the best way to move forward is to surround yourself with a team who have different skillsets and will challenge your decisions.  Opening decisions up to the senior team for discussion has really helped Oracle to grow.  One person inparticular taught me this – thank you Nicola Borrow.

Read, read and read again

It is so, so important to understand your industry and be aware of changes, how they might affect clients and their customers.  With this in mind, I decided to set up ‘Oracle Property Briefing’ a few years ago which is a daily snapshot of property news emailed to our clients by 8am each morning.

Keep learning

I’ve always been keen to know how to do every aspect of the job myself, doesn’t matter if someone else is hired to do it, but for me, I need to know how to do it.  In fact, during lockdown I learnt how to draft and distribute a staff survey through Google Forms, manage a TrustPilot account for one of our clients, complete some of the courses on Digital Garage about Digital marketing and set up a TikTok account.

What else?

What else?  We are doing our job but what else can we do?  Do not just stop at what you have agreed you would do for your clients.  Always bring your client a ‘gift’…something which they were not expecting, a snippet of information, a report which has just been released, an idea of how they can take a campaign further.  Anything which will show you are thinking of them between the time you have finished your work for the current month and the next month.

Be kind

This industry is so small, try and be kind and always keep in touch with people.  I would say most of our work comes through recommendation or clients moving to another company and taking us with them.