There must be a better way… How to find your own path in business

 

Vicki Hughes, MD & founder of Fugu PR, tells us her tips on how to forge a fairer, more diverse, business path after speaking at our January Chamber Breakfast.

 

Sometimes, this is clearly manifested in a product that provides a solution to an existing problem (such as Crunch Accounting) but often, it’s less obvious, and may be purely about the working practices and methodology of the business.

 

For me, I wanted to create a company based on fairness, that strips out the basic assumption that you can only motivate people with a bit of posturing and a firm grasp of the stick. I also want to embrace diversity, working with people that had exciting ideas, whatever their background or sector, both in terms of staff and clients. 

 

It’s probably not up to me to say if we are meeting these goals at Fugu, but they are certainly our reason to be. So if you to feel that you need to try and do things differently, here are just a few of the mantras that have helped guide me along the way…

 

People love boxes. ‘Oh that’s X. She’s this or that.’ Right from being told in the late 1980’s that the career paths open to me were either hairdresser or secretary (both of which I firmly ignored), I have always felt compelled to step outside of external definitions and look for other possibilities.

 

It may not seem part of any grand plan, but making sure you are always doing stuff will open unexpected doors. A secretarial course after I left school left me with the invaluable skill (in the days of the electronic typewriter) of being able to type at 100 words per minute. This was my introduction to the world of big business, temping my way across the city and funding my way through university. 

 

I have been lucky enough to have worked with, and for, many inspiring and fantastic people, from my first boss to many of our current clients. It’s from watching these people that I have realised that you can achieve your goals, be yourself and still treat everyone with respect.

 

Treat everyone with respect (see above).

 

There is no right way, but there might just be a better one. Take recruitment for example. We want to be working with talented, enthusiastic people, regardless of their background or experience. This is why, when I set up Fugu, I wanted to challenge the accepted industry norm that internships were unpaid. 

 

Initially, with our first employee, I did this with government support through the Wired Sussex Internship scheme. But when this scheme was withdrawn, it felt important to find other ways of providing paid opportunities to enable people from all backgrounds to gain experience. This led to us setting up the Brighton Digital Festival internship scheme, which provides a paid intern to deliver the BDF media campaign, with management, support and mentoring from Fugu.

 

Diversity is an over used word. One of the things that I have always loved about working in the agency world is the breadth of clients. Over the past twenty years I have worked with rappers, Klingons, Daleks, American animations, motor and telecom corporations, tech millionaires… and I don’t want it to stop! Fugu has made a conscious decision not to specialise in any one sector. We are a team of communication specialists and working across a wide range of different industries and campaigns - this enables us to cross-pollinate approaches and ideas.

 

The more you do, whatever it is, the more experience you will have, the more you’ll learn and the more connections you will make. If you have an idea, run with it, try it out, play, not everything will be an unmitigated success but you will learn something from everything you do.