Growth, Part 2: Remember Your Roots
Getting back to basics by remembering where you began — and how far you’ve come.
One of the things our team frequently hears from me is that I love providing “lanes” to stay within while guiding choices, organization — really any work where strategy is involved. It’s an effort to simplify, simplify, simplify in a world full of overwrought thinking.
If you are anything like me, working in a world where the best way to describe what we do is “startup” employee, then you’ve likely heard about mission, vision, and value statements. These are ways to both externally and internally guide decision-making through periods of intense growth. In short: It makes it all super simple. With each choice, you can ask yourself, “does this align with our mission and values?” Admittedly, I am prone to overthinking, and using our company's statements helps me stay down a path of cohesion instead of becoming a victim to my own monkey brain.
Kelsey and I often reflect on what it was that led us to rework the way we were building websites. We knew that transparency, communication and efficiency were at the core of how we built our process. As we work towards building new processes for new types of clients, we are always running it back to the starting line. Does the client have total visibility into what we are working on? Do they understand our process and are we being clear in our communication about expectations? How can we build in workflows to expedite the process without losing the human-centeredness of how we operate?
Here’s the thing though: We talk about how to scale and grow operationally, but it is sometimes more important to remember the personal reasons that got you doing the biz in the first place. We knew we wanted to build a company that would be about it rather than just talk about it. We had both worked in toxic work environments. Work would be fulfilling, and we would lead with encouragement, empathy, and knowledge sharing.
But life is what we are here for, and at the end of the day, it’s the time away from our screens that we remember best — and also what keeps us charged. In all honesty though, you’ll have to ask our contractors and employees if we live up to this task. It’s not really for me to say if it’s truly working.
— Mallory Ulaszek, Co-Founder
