There is the old story that the shoemaker’s children go barefoot. The same can be said for a writing company that never has time to write for themselves. But it's time for us to tell our own story, so we are committing to publishing two blogs each month. We want to share what we do and who we are with our clients and our community. Better late than never, one could say.
Our story started 10 years ago. On January 5, 2009 Pamela Scott and I incorporated our fledgling business. We had a goal of building a team of writers. We wanted to focus writing technical and business documentation that mattered. Over time, instructional design and teaching have become a growing part of our work. We had a fuzzy idea of what we thought we could build 10 years ago, but that journey has given us successes and challenges beyond what we expected.
Recently at an Alberta Women Entrepreneurs event, one of the speakers said that growth is a series of leaps not a gradual climb. You jump to a new level and hope that it works, because the other option is to stay in the same place. This really resonated. Steady, predictable growth would be so nice, so safe. But running a business never works that way. It seems that I waffle between despair and overconfidence—never a middle ground.
Last year we took another important leap and added a new permanent member to our team. Something magical happened—in part because we chose carefully and waited for that right fit in Jaclyn Lawrence. Bringing in an experienced, well-connected writer brought so many benefits. We’ve grown in the last year and we are poised to do it again this year. We’ve learned to re-balance our team with a new person. We took a leap, and we’ve stuck the landing.
A year to reflect on who we are
When the three of us sat down at the beginning of January for a celebratory strategy session, we decided that we wanted to choose a single word theme for 2019. Reflecting back, we thought “Growth” summarized 2018. We grew not only in size, but our team has also developed trust and learned to collaborate as a growing team. We wanted to celebrate and build on that growth. We wanted to take another leap forward this year. This is why choosing “Brave” for 2019 felt right.
This year, we are finding our new groove as a trio. We are using this new dynamic to re-examine who we are as a company and what we want to do. Our success as a team makes us feel bold. So, we are going to continue to leap this year. Our goal is to evaluate, strategize, and try to be brave together.
We are telling our own story
Part of being brave is committing to the blog we’ve long avoided. You will find us here twice a month. We have several goals for our new blog.
Share our expertise. We believe that every one of us could use reminders in best practices for writing, grammar, and communication. We hope that we can share some of the lessons we’ve learned as writers and teachers to help you build your business too.
Build a portfolio. Since most of our projects are internal documents, we can’t share a more traditional portfolio to our potential clients. Instead, we hope to feature some of our clients and the work we’ve done with them through blog articles. Our readers will learn more about who we work with
Be personal. We are going to share our stories, let you know what we are up to, and answer questions, both personally and professionally so you get to know our team. We are going to tell you how we’ve been brave (or not so brave) throughout the year.
If you are interested in getting to know more about us and our work, sign up for our monthly newsletter or find us on social media. We’d love to connect with you, too.