Best Laid Plans
HUB rolled into 2022 fast and exhausted with a year's worth of billings secured. You heard that right, ONE YEAR SECURED. We have never had a full pipeline at the beginning of the year, but I was tired, and concerned about how tired the team was. The pandemic’s impact had taken a toll. At the insistence of a friend, I talked about my bedraggled state with another agency owner who first asked, “What is your exit strategy?” She then shared the most incredible story about her agency's growth and ultimate acquisition, which was invigorating.
She challenged me to put together a 5-year plan. When I daydreamed about a BHAG (big, hairy, audacious goal), I lit up thinking about the connection I had with the team and our clients. How amazing would it be if that connection could scale and have a bigger impact? If we doubled every year for the next five years we would be an agency of over 250 people focused on work that makes the world a better place, leading with human connection. I daydreamed that Brené Brown would catch wind of our work and buy the company as a conceptual experiment. I would reach nirvana and die a happy human.
My team is everything. They are my ride-or-die. Often when I hear about business leaders prepping for an exit, plans are hushed and secret. I get it. Humans are tricky. We make up stories, we filter things through our limited lenses, and communication is just plain challenging. However, deciding to grow at the daydream-rate did not feel okay without sharing my thinking with the team, listening to their reflections and concerns. Over the course of the pandemic, we started to talk one-on-one every two weeks, and I asked each person about it. Most were excited, curious, and a little hesitant about things changing, but no major roadblocks came up. I had the buy-in. That was a huge first step.
One of my biggest fears about growth was finding the right people. So I went to a trusted source, a university professor who had recommended talented students to us over the years. When I asked her if she had any new recommendations, she said she would be interested. Having watched what we were doing over the last decade, she liked what she saw. Here was a person with the skills to help me find more people, identifying their strengths and weaknesses and training them if needed. I took this as a clear sign that we were bound for growth.
We were finding the right people to hire, but they were not able to start working with us until after much of our secured work was complete. The reality of getting a year's worth of work done in six months hit. Our sales slumped, and we found ourselves more tired and stretched. At the same time, I was having some of the best conversations and breakthroughs with my teammates–the kind that made me feel like I was where I needed to be, doing what I was supposed to be doing.
When I shared my frustration of not growing like I thought we would and the incredible conversations I was having with my team, a friend said to me, “You know, it reminds me of a trip I took to France a million years ago. They did things so differently there. They took care of people generously; the small population let them do that. In the States it would never work–too many people. And for you, taking time with people is everything—always has been. What if you focus on creating the ideal environment for your team, instead of scaling to something huge? What if you reject the American way of bigger-is-better? What if you’re more like France, being the best, most delicious place to work?”
These words brought me right back to my core mission: to help create happy people on the planet, to treat every encounter like it’s with a long-lost friend. My mission is not to be the best or have the biggest impact. This was not the first time that I have had the idea of growth and come to the exact same realization. It probably won’t be the last. We are staying small. We are focused on doing things differently in the workplace. We are focused on having difficult conversations in a new way. We are focused on doing our best work for our clients and with each other. We are focused on what lights us up as humans and how to support each other on the journey. That is my why. That is what lights me up. And that’s what drives me daily.