Build a great company on a powerful foundation!
OLD TOWN MEDIA has developed an amazing reputation in northern Colorado. They’re a creative and thorough marketing agency based in Fort Collins. With a love for office dogs!
Every time I hear someone mention this business, the same words keep popping up:
When I had the chance to chat with CEO and Founder Miles Kailburn recently. We talked about the phases they’ve gone through since starting the company in 2007.
WHEN I GOT my first professional job out of college, I was impressed with the array of employee benefits that companies would provide. Time off. Savings programs. Paid travel.
As I moved into management, and saw what it was like to work in a different country, I realized that a lot of these were supported or mandated by government programs and tax code.
Which is totally fine, even necessary. But those programs aren’t as compelling as we’d like to think, because they’re pretty much standard everywhere.
WE SEEM TO HAVE a whole lot of things going on right now. Clients. Projects. Presentations. Prospects.
And, for whatever reason, I’m hearing similar things from a lot of other people as well.
This happens. But how do we keep from getting stressed out when things are super busy?
HERE’S AN INTERESTING THOUGHT: In the mountains, the haze lies in the valley. To see further, you have to hike up.
It’s a wonderful metaphor for business.
Yes, you have to get down in the details; that’s where the progress is made. But it’s quite possible that you’re going in circles down there, so you have to pull yourself out occasionally to look at the big picture.
SOME THINGS ARE really hard to nail down.
One of the biggest examples is how complicated business decisions are made, like taking on a partner or promoting an employee. There’s this amorphous mix of logic, feelings, history, and unique factors you never would have planned for.
When this happens, there’s a good chance you’ve gotten too immersed in the details, and need to go up a level.
THE WORLD SEEMS like it’s sliding all over the place. Things we assumed were solid and unchanging are being constantly questioned.
Even my kids have noticed.
The honest truth, though, is that your business foundation is as solid as you want it to be.
WE WOULD LIKE TO THINK that following the guidebook will make choices nice and neat and clean. So you might be discouraged at how, well, it’s a bit of a mess.
I just wanted to say this: you’re OK.
If it was nice and clean and orderly, everybody else could do it. The fact that choices ARE hard to make means that you have to put some work into creating order out of chaos.
And the universe is always going towards chaos.
RUNNING A BUSINESS sure seems like a lot of work. I don’t want to disregard that.
But if that’s ALL it is, why bother? Go out and get a real job that’s less stress!
Let’s be honest: We do this because we find joy in the mission, the problem-solving, the control. There’s a lot of things which are a pain in the ***, but on the whole there’s a balance toward making the business work.
THERE WAS AN INTERESTING QUESTION on Quora recently, posed by an entrepreneur who is feeling the pressure of competition from large multi-national corporations. It’s very worrisome for him, and he’s struggling to figure out how to compete against those with more resources and shady tactics.
But every advantage has a weakness built in.
When I worked for a huge Fortune 50 company, I saw this exact situation – but from the inside. I was working for a team that was chartered to find new products and services to invest in.
But it was an almost impossible situation.
WE’RE ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT at finding problems. Humans are hard-wired for it.
And people get rewarded for solving problems. So we get really good at it.
The problem is that this tendency means we’re not paying attention to what’s going right, what’s working. And your employees who aren’t creating problems tend to get ignored as well.
The Values-Based Business 