End of an Era
Today marks the final day of the most disruptive business year of my 6 years journey as a business owner.
As I reflect on the last 12 months, it’s hard to imagine that in the space of 1 week;
- I learned that our largest revenue client was leaving
- 3 team members resigned and
- my business partner and company Founder shared he was exiting
All unconnected, with no party being aware of the others decision at the time.
I’m proud to say before our largest revenue client officially resigned we had replaced and grown past that point, @Adam’s exit from the company was 100% amicable and we were able to retain one of our superstar team, who was crucial to the transition.
So what happened in this last 12 months!?
We celebrated the agency’s 10th Birthday in 2021, Adam (Founder) made the call to take his long service leave, amidst a lockdown state in July 2021 to get some time out of the business, to evaluate whether he saw himself leading for another 10 years!
And so as his long service leave wrapped up, we took a walk (a very long 3 hour loop walk, that missed the Melbourne earthquake!) Adam shared his thought process, while I shared the company news, all of which lead to his punchline that he wanted to exit.
Showcasing his unbelievable humility, he presented Amanda & I with a Godfather offer (too good to refuse) to buy his remaining 50% stake, and become the sole owner of Intentional which we signed off in October 2021.
We talk a lot at Intentional that we want Leaders; that we define Leadership not on position or title but on influence. As I reflect on my personal growth during my time in the trenches with Adam, I can look back at my growth and belief in myself as a direct reaction to his trust and encouragement to slowly be handing the reins of the company to me. In many ways, we had been heading to this point for a longer time than I saw.
The values that Adam lives around Mastery, Generosity, Leadership, Original Thinking and Curiosity have been embedded in our agency ethos and myself. Our ability to succeed against the odds, to punch above our weight, to do so with humility and class, a quiet confidence in our ability.
I want to say thankyou to Adam, while words cannot express my gratitude. The measure of his class, is probably most of you are only finding out now about his exit last year! He recommended not making a big deal of his exit. To go quietly as not to disrupt things, always thinking of his impact on others before himself.
The company would not exist without you, and it would not have had it’s best year yet without your belief and trust in me for all these years. Thankyou.
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This was not the only era to come to an end, for as long as I’ve worked at Intentional we have been privileged to scale alongside the Kleenheat team.
Our stories of growth have mirrored each other, a large part of why we have punched above our weight, is your influence. From the moment that Chris Chapman put his trust in a bootstrapped agency with an "office" in Melbourne, it gave us the belief that we’re on the right path.
It's a great moment to look back on the wins we had as agency and client partners, the most satisfying that in our final 6 months we had our best performance yet. A hallmark to the quality of people between both teams.
There’s a lot of talk about agencies working as extensions of marketing teams, it’s a lovely slide to include in a pitch deck. I’m so grateful to have a lived experience of this with Chris, Eva, Sasha, Blake, Prasanna and Deb. It will always be one of my proudest work achievements to see the growth we achieved together, fighting some much larger budgets & teams to succeed.
Thankyou for your trust and respect in Adam & I, and the agency, I wish more marketers showed bravery like you all did to put the needs of the company ahead of the pressures to bend to do what every one else did. Thankyou for the questions you asked, the pressure you applied, showing us the importance to stop & celebrate; working with you made us a better place to work.
I will be always grateful for your grace in breaking the news. I can’t imagine how many times you fought for us in conversations we had no idea about, I hope our paths cross professionally again, but know the friendships developed will continue.
I also want to recognise Carolyn, who I'm assuming constantly thought who is this dude calling from his bedroom! The respect you extended to our team, to hear our ideas and trust us on creative strategies that employed our agency approach, again I can only imagine the looks you received and the pushback you fought through to truly embrace a collaborative agency plan.
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And so to my team, in a time that could have been full of turmoil, of looking back, you all stepped up and helped deliver our best year yet, with all signs pointing to we’ve only just begun the journey.
I can't wait to see what we do over this next 12 months together, hopefully less intense changes!
Beth, Chantel, Cy, David, Duncan, Eli, Ian, Amanda