Five not 10 is five

Which feels both quite grown up and slightly ridiculous, because I can still remember Pat and me starting the business like it was about five minutes ago.

A lot has happened since then. Brilliant clients, brilliant people, big highs, a few lows, plenty of change and some things we’d do differently.

I’m not going to pretend we had some grand five-year masterplan when we started. We knew the kind of agency we wanted to build and the kind of work we wanted to do, but a lot of the rest we’ve worked out along the way.

And I think that’s probably what five years has taught me most. Businesses change. Industries change. Plans definitely change. But some things become more important, not less.

Relationships are a big one.

“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” sounds horribly old school, but there’s a lot of truth in it. Not because you need a bulging contacts book, but because good relationships make almost everything work better.

Clients who trust you enough to tell you what’s really going on. Journalists who know you won’t waste their time. Colleagues who can be straight with each other. People who recommend you when you’re not in the room.

PR has changed a lot since 2021. That hasn’t.

And quite honestly, I couldn’t have picked a better person to do all of this with. There have been moments when Pat and I have absolutely smashed it. There have also been moments when one of us has needed to tell the other that their brilliant idea really isn’t that brilliant.

Celebrating five years of Five not 10! Photo by Emily Packman photography

That’s why it works.

You need people around you who think differently, challenge you and tell you the truth. That applies whether it’s your co-founder, your team, your agency or the people you work with internally. You don’t need people who agree with you. You need people you trust.

I’ve also got much better at making the bloody decision! Running a business gives you plenty of opportunities to practise that one. Waiting for the perfect moment, another piece of information or hoping a problem somehow sorts itself out rarely improves things. More often, you make the same decision three months later and wish you’d done it sooner.

That doesn’t mean being rash. It means trusting your judgement, making the call and dealing with what comes next.

And while so much of the conversation in our industry at the moment is about technology, AI, and doing things faster, five years of Five not 10 has actually made me value good people more.

People who care. Who are curious. Who ask the extra question. Who understand the business behind the brief. Who spot when something doesn’t feel right and say so.

Technology will change how we work. It already has. But I don’t think those qualities are going out of fashion any time soon.

The other thing about reaching five is that it makes you look up for a minute.

We’re not particularly good at that. There’s always something next: the next pitch, the next target, the next client challenge, the next problem to solve. You can achieve something you’ve been working towards for months, feel pleased about it for approximately seven minutes, then move straight onto the next thing.

And suddenly, five years have gone by.

So I’m trying to get a bit better at noticing the good bits while they’re actually happening.

We’ve built a business we’re proud of. We work with people we genuinely like. We get to do work we enjoy. And five years later, Pat and I still want to keep building it together.

There will be plenty of time to think about what Five not 10 looks like at six, seven and 10.

For now, I think five is worth stopping for.

Happy birthday, Five not 10