Instead, and with tears in the eyes of my parents, I ceremoniously burnt my theodolite and ran away to join the rock ’n’ roll circus.

In the 90s, that meant swapping brick counting for smoky venues, endless motorway miles and the slightly unhinged business of managing Mogwai - at the time, a largely unknown instrumental rock band from Glasgow. I was in my twenties, enthusiastic, underqualified in the traditional sense, and just reckless enough to think it might all work out.

And somehow, it did.

The popular version of that period is the colourful one. The NME once painted me as a swaggering, sportswear-clad (Kappa sponsorship of the band was one of my crowning achievements) Glaswegian with a Walther PPK lighter and a taste for cigarettes and alcohol at questionable times of day. There was some truth in the caricature, but only some.

The reality was less glamorous and far more useful.

It was long drives to London. It was awkward negotiations. It was trying to protect a band’s creative instincts while also making sure everyone could afford to keep going. It was handling strong personalities, impossible timings, fragile confidence, financial pressure, and the occasional moment where the whole thing felt like it might fall apart.

In other words, it was a very good education.

I learned how to stay calm when things got tense. I learned that clear communication matters most when nobody has time for a long explanation. I learned that trust is earned slowly and lost quickly. I learned that creative people do their best work when they feel properly supported, not constantly managed.

Those lessons have followed me into every role since, including my time at Factory73.

I appreciate that managing a band and working in a web development agency may not seem especially similar, but it wouldn’t be a blog post if I didn’t find some sort of comparison. One involves tour vans, amplifiers and lost passports. The other involves CMS platforms, integrations, support tickets and project plans.

But when you think about it, both worlds depend on the same things: good people, clear roles, shared trust, honest conversations and the ability to keep moving when the pressure rises.

That is one of the reasons Factory73 made sense to me when I joined. It was not trying to be the loudest agency in the room. It was not built around bluster or empty theatre. It was a group of people who cared about doing the job properly, working well with clients and building things that lasted.

There is creativity in that, even if it does not always look like the obvious kind.

Because a good website project, like a good record or a good live show, depends on more than what appears on screen. It depends on the people behind it. The planning. The judgement. The conversations that avoid problems before they happen. The technical decisions nobody notices when everything works as it should.

Factory73 has now been doing that for 15 years.

The work may involve fewer tour buses these days, and thankfully I stopped smoking ages ago and drink far less lager for breakfast these days, but the principles still feel familiar: stay true to the work, look after the people, communicate clearly, and deliver something worth making a bit of noise about.