My First 100 Days as CEO – Chris Fletcher

By Chris Fletcher, newly appointed CEO of full service eCommerce agency Visualsoft

When you’ve worked somewhere for almost a decade, becoming CEO doesn’t feel like stepping into a brand new world. It’s more like flipping the lights on and seeing the place from a new angle. You know the people, the systems, the strengths and the flaws. And that gives you a running start.

Over the Christmas break, I took time to reflect and made a list of the things I wanted to change straight away. My top priority was something deceptively simple. I wanted everyone, internally and externally, to be able to answer a basic question: who is Visualsoft? Up until then, if you asked ten people, you’d get ten different answers.

Now we have a clear response. We are the tech powered commerce agency you can trust. Those words matter. Tech powered shows how we work, commerce agency reflects what we do, and trust is at the heart of how we do it. Our clients trust us with their websites, their marketing budgets, their growth. That trust has to be earned and protected every day.

To back that up, we refreshed our values. Strategy. Focus. Tempo. Quality. These are the four things I want to run through everything we do. Strategy means having a clear plan. Focus is about avoiding distractions. Tempo pushes us to move at speed and with purpose. And quality means we hold ourselves to the highest standards. These values are simple, but they make a difference.

One early decision that set the tone was my plan to bring Shopify into the business. It gave us more choice to offer our clients, and helped us open the door to new ones. In February, we launched a Shopify site for a major client. It proved that we can compete for and win big projects. And it marked a turning point in our strategy.

We’ve backed that up by investing in people. We’ve welcomed specialist Shopify talent, and brought in our new Chief Revenue Officer, Andrea Porter-Keel – who is the first woman in the C-suite –  to help shape our next phase of growth. We’re also working with leading technology partners. Our new collaboration with Attentive means we can help clients personalise their marketing and boost performance. And there’s more to come.

Culture matters too. We want to build a business that people are proud to work in, not just one that performs well. That’s why we launched volunteer days. We gave our team four options and they chose Daisy Chain, a charity supporting autistic and nuerodivergent people. Ten of us spent a day out at the charity’s farm painting fences and helping with general upkeep. It’s a small way of giving back, and a powerful way of connecting with each other.

We’ve also improved our parental leave policies. One team member has already used the extended time to be with his new baby, and I expect more people to take it up in the coming months. We’ve introduced a return to work bonus for mothers too. It’s the right thing to do, and something I believe will have a big long-term impact.

Back in the office, we’ve made a few changes to the space. Some of it is cosmetic, but it was important to me that when people returned after our away day, they felt the difference. We’ve changed the seating layout to encourage more communication and we’re now planning to add more meeting rooms and quiet spaces. We want to support hybrid working while also making the office a great place to be.

Another big focus has been AI. Through our AI Accelerator, we’ve trained the whole team to understand how AI can support their work. Each team now has an AI specialist and we’ve appointed a business-wide AI lead to connect the dots. Our internal development team is already working on tools that will improve our services and help us deliver faster and better for our clients.

That away day in March was a real highlight. It gave us a chance to step back, reflect on what we’ve achieved and talk honestly about where we’re heading. These days are a reset for people. They come back energised, full of ideas and connected to the wider purpose. We’ll do another later in the year and keep building that rhythm.

Beyond the day-to-day, we’ve been thinking about our role in the wider world. We’ve chosen Power of Women as our charity partner for 2025. It’s an organisation doing brilliant work in the Tees Valley to lift the aspirations of young women. We’re proud to support them through sponsorship, fundraising and mentoring. This is something close to our hearts.

Looking ahead, we’ve got some exciting Shopify stores launching soon, along with new AI tools to help retailers improve results. We’ll also be bringing in more senior hires across our marketing and tech teams. The next 100 days are all about delivery and momentum.

I’d love to be talking in a few months about client success stories, award wins and measurable impact. We’re heading into ecommerce award season, and I want to see us recognised for brilliant design and performance. But more than anything, I want our clients to keep seeing us as the agency they can trust to help them grow.

The first 100 days were about setting the direction. Now it’s time to move.