A Repentance of Thinking of Scarcity
/Our company values have been clearly defined for over a decade:
Stay Safe
Make Raving Fans
Create Value
Every Tuesday, I write a one-pager for our all-hands meeting with a fresh idea to help us live those out and an re-cap of how well we did the previous week. For instance, this week we encouraged artisans to tape a little package of ear-plugs to the cord of their angle grinders, hand-held polishers, and saws so they would be reminded at the right time to protect their hearing. We celebrated at the 12 new “raving fans” we made, and we shared the 4 things we plan to do better next time. We celebrated Q1, 2019 being the best quarter we’ve had in 2 years. We talked about how the ultimate skill in business is empathy: really feeling how the other person feels about our words, actions, and the intersection of their expectations and our service.
I’ve kept these papers to ourselves and written here maybe once/1-3 months out of scarcity. That is I let myself get annoyed by the bunch of competitors I created whose brand/marketing story is “I used to work for element7concrete”. I hated the idea of them still getting value from my thoughts without the accountability of doing the work well. Humans can operate with mentalities of abundance or or scarcity, and I’m not proud to say I was in the latter when choosing to not write here.
So I repent of all that. If I have an idea that may make the world better - even if our artisans ignore it and our competitors run with it, I will share it. I will write here at least weekly, and if you really want to know the soul of our company, you can dig in and find it here. It seems likely that few people will dig this. If you are one of those few, reach out: I’d love to meet you and maybe make something with you. Thank you.
