Kicking up success: the 2024 Sherbz year in review

Notable events

We kicked off the year with a win at the Signature Awards for Enterprise of the Year, which was a step up from the SME of the year we won in 2023. Nine of our team went to an evening of entertainment and great food – and winning the award made the event one to remember.

The summer saw us celebrate our third company anniversary with a party at the Queen’s Head, and we’ve enjoyed a few team days out throughout the year, too. In August, we went up to Birmingham for bowling, darts, pool, and beer pong, as well as a great meal out. In October, many headed to Thorpe Park for rides and the Halloween scare event, and this coming week, we’re heading back to Digbeth in Brum for our Christmas party.

Charity and food fun

We celebrated pancake day with our usual tasty fun, thanks to Loz! With just about any imaginable topping available, the combinations some members of the Dev team chose are probably best forgotten! We had a bake sale for the Rainbow Trust, with many of our keen bakers showing off their cooking skills and a LOT of cake to eat in the office for a few days, raising money for children with life-limiting conditions or those needing palliative care.

At the end of this year, several of us participated in the shoebox appeal as we did last year, seeing several boxes packed and sent off to children who would otherwise be without presents this Christmas.

Staff and office dog updates

Things never stand still long at Sherbz and our staffing level has grown again in 2024 with nearly twenty new team members joining through the year – almost half of those in the last few months!

With seven new starters in SEO, including Elliot as assistant head to support Katie with our new remote team, the plan is to boost our SEO provision and hopefully surpass the £250K per month target at the start of the new year.

“2024 has been a big year for the SEO department, a strong recruitment drive has seen us double the team in size with more senior specialists joining to cope with our ongoing success and wins.
I’m looking forward to next year – we are in a strong position and the team are all motivated to continue getting results we can all be proud of for new and existing clients, in the ever-changing world of SEO.” Katie (Head of SEO)

Kelly is firmly in the saddle as project manager and we hope to see the projects side of the company grow – with more efficient ways of working, whilst delivering top-notch websites on time and within budget.

The Dev team have gained some new team members as have the Content team, Account Management and Sales: the company has grown across the board! Loki has stopped saying that we won’t be hiring anyone else…

We’ve seen several babies joining the Sherbz family, with Loz and Charlie O off on maternity leave and Brad becoming a dad shortly after. Josh got married and now has the excitement of becoming a dad in 2025 – so he and Brad can share sleepless night stories soon!

Sadly, Baxter went to doggy heaven earlier this year, and he is missed by all. However, his brother, Reggie, has stepped up to fill the gap. If you throw a ball for him, you’ll have a friend for life! He and Walter both came in dressed up for Halloween, getting into the spirit of fun.

New working systems

The spring of 2024 saw us moving to a hybrid working system with most staff working from home (WFH) two days per week, which helped relieve the parking situation, but didn’t help with interdepartmental collaboration or the general office ‘vibe’. So, in July, several of the team began trialling a longer four-day working week with Fridays off – with the rest of the team just WFH on a Friday.

By the end of the month, the experiment was being raved about so much by all taking part that it was then rolled out to most of the rest of the company in August, and then finally the decision was taken that from the start of September the entire company would move to a four-day week, with everyone finding a much better work/life balance and just working super hard on Monday to Thursdays to keep the results rolling in.

New office layouts

With the growing teams needing more space to work in the upstairs offices, we’ve had some remodelling within the building to allow for even more growth. The upstairs meeting room has now been joined to Loki and Loz’s office making more admin space and room for Mia and Alan (when he’s in) to have a hub for general business operations.

Downstairs the big open office was remodelled into two new meeting rooms and a much larger boardroom to meet clients and hold team training sessions. The building is currently coping with all the growth and changes, but it might not be too far in the future when we have to look at finding larger premises. So, watch this space…

Galloping into 2025

With a very healthy turnover of £2.8 million this year, we’re setting our sights on bigger, better and greater things for next year; greater successes for our clients and through them, for Sherbz too.

The management team has plans to improve many of our implementations and systems to make our operations more efficient across the different departments – propelling us to new heights.

So as we’re winding down to our stockings, turkey and stuffing, here’s a final word from Loki:

“This year has been fucking mental and with any luck, next year will be the same!” Loki (MD)

If you’d like our marketing magicians to give your business a bit of the magic and sparkle that our current clients enjoy, then why not get in touch to see whether you can become part of the Sherbz success story in the new year? Whether your website is looking tired and dated, or just isn’t attracting the traffic you’d like to see, our team is more than capable of helping you with new branding, a new website, an effective PPC campaign or more organic traffic and boosted sales.

Get in touch today to see how you could make 2025 your business’s year to shine!