Firstly happy new year to you all, lets hope 2023 is good to you all.
In this latest blog post I wanted to talk you through my last few weeks of 2022 and tell you why I would like to forget December but just can't and the lessons learned along the way.
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 family 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 my struggled to find the time and with Malcolm in hospital we couldn’t do it, however he insisted we take a break for some time away, he wouldn’t take no for an answer so for the 1st 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 he was moved onto the ICU at the Hallamshire hospital in Sheffield, we came home early however unfortunately we were devastated and we lost Malcolm on the 4th of December, he was a great bloke and will be sadly missed by everyone who knew him.
I spent the next 5 days comforting the family from this awful news until Friday the 9th when we had our Simoda Christmas party, we didn’t have a full compliment because we had a few off with the winter flu, however 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, a course of antibiotics later and I started to feel a little better however from nowhere I got hit with the winter flu.
Now I'm not the greatest patient at the best of times but Jesus 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 & loose women on the TV because I didn’t have the energy to get the remote control which was about 2 metres away from me.
This lasted for a couple of weeks, I only started to feel better on the 28th of December.
During all of this time the Simoda team were falling like flies, we were operating with 25% of our staff, this is where the reason I have decided to write this blog, with 25% of our staff operational you would expect that we would achieve 25% of our forecast, on the contrary December has been our best month ever.
Everyone has dug in, everyone has gone the extra mile, customers were our priority.
The main lesson I have learnt during this awful time for me was that everyone in our fantastic business are brilliant, 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 cant describe how proud I am of our team.
Now in a new year we are pushing on with our plans, we have 3 new starters already in January and more to come.
I know that I am biased but if you are looking for an IT partner who demonstrate the right values & have a team of fantastic people then you cant go far wrong talking to us.
Here's to a fantastic 2023
Daniel Bumby
A proud MD of a fantastic company
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