Man, what a year. Honestly, if you told me I’d be on my own for 2+ years, I would have said, how exactly?

As I take a moment to reflect, I have to admit - I’ve been lucky. I don’t consider anything I’ve done to be 100% intentional - and sometimes that has to be O.K. But as I head into a third year of business on my own, I really want to focus on creating a more intentional, thoughtful business that is better at self-sustainable growth. You know, growth that isn’t just dependent on me knocking on doors and making calls myself. I think we’re getting there.

If I’ve learned anything, it’s that collaboration and partnering is fun. Deal-making is fun. Helping others grow is fun. At the small web co. we are building some amazing tech with our clients and you guessed it…it’s REALLY fun. Taking business requirements and creating viable point solutions for our clients is satisfying. Creating something from the minds of smart people is a curious thing. It requires complete understanding of their needs, in an out. It requires patience from our clients and it requires problem-solving on both sides. I hope to share some of these stories over time, as well as lessons learned.

At any rate, I try and set up some high-level goals each year, and I thought I’d share them all with you here. Partially to memorialize, and partially to keep you up to date on what our goals are here. Here they are, in no particular order:

  • Land a larger dev project
  • Build a good IC team, hire a FTE
  • Stronger support for existing applications (although we’re pretty advanced here)
  • Sell Staff Mapper 2x
  • Work on the business model
    • What do we do better than anyone else / why should someone hire us?
    • What exactly is our model?
      • Traditional agencies build and run, but that doesn’t work for most clients. How can we support them during growth?
  • Effectively manage technical debt
    • This is code leakage, and integral issues with code because it was written quickly - how can we limit production errors for our clients?
  • Build better continuous integration services
    • As code bases mature, and we quickly optimize and add new code, how can we ensure that old code doesn’t break
  • Complete Staff Mapper as a pure SAAS play
    • Right now it requires some touch to get a client set up. How can we streamline the on-boarding process?
  • Bring on a partner
  • More thoughtful approaches on how to work with direct customers (vs. consultancies)
  • Work less, smarter (ha!)
  • Diversify client base / types of projects
  • Become a specialist in a subject matter
  • Find more meaningful ways to give back
  • Find foothold in a community (tech or otherwise) and grow an audience
  • Write more

That’s it. Good luck to you all in 2019.