my business credo

  I've worked with a lot of clients. From rock-solid blue chips, to white-hot technology outfits, to struggling startups with their credit cards maxed out. But there's only one thing I really need to know about people to be sure I can work with them.

  Do they have honour?

  That's my basic credo: do business with honourable people.

  With honourable people, you always know where you stand. They'll never let you down; their word is their bond; it doesn't even matter if they hit the rocks, because honourable people always settle their debts, no matter what trouble they're in.

  I'd rather take a brief from an honourable startup CEO a hundred grand in the red with his bankers calling daily, than a Fortune 500 C-level guy with a $1m budget but a hint of sneakiness about him.

  Needless to say, you can expect the same of me. If I don't deliver, or haven't 'got' your brief, or have missed the point somewhere, I take full responsibility and go back and fix it. And if the work's genuinely bad, for whatever reason, it gets scrubbed and redone, no hassle.

  That's what I believe. And thanks to it, the 'pump has a bad debt write-off rate of under 1% a year.