One year ago, our executive team was altogether sharing a call to discuss our next business moves. Despite having the whole team together, the call was silent. The sounds of silence weighed heavily in the air.
Jon, Mike and I (Pat), all sat deeply thinking about the future of SherpaDesk, the sprouting seed out of our previous venture, bigWebApps HelpDesk. Any founder, business owner or team manager is familiar with this feeling. For two years now we had been betting big on our new service, SherpaDesk, but growth was lackluster.
"We could try a partnership with Salesforce," Mike said with uncertainty.
Our team was unsure. We have always believed in the most expert of service and quality in what we deliver, but we were struggling to move the needle despite our resources being at an all time high.
We were profitable, but we had no time and no growth.
Despite working harder and harder, nothing was changing.
What are We Doing Wrong?
Business is difficult.
Since that day, we have made a few moves that have put us in a phenomenal place to achieve our goal of serving you all better than ever. It sounds corny, but stick with me here. We exited the meeting with a long-term plan to re-calibrate. Based out of Atlanta, Georgia, we decided we didn't know enough. Not enough people, not enough about growing a business.
20 years of entrepreneurship helped us believed we had it figured out. We do some things right, but it was time to become students again. Our goal for 2016 was to learn as much as we possible could from hundreds of business experts across the country and to build a winning gameplan.
In 2016 we completed two amazing business accelerator programs across the country. One in Silicon Valley working with world-class software professionals and one in Boston, MA working with prestigious strategizers and customer success champions. This doesn't do our learning justice, but it gives you an idea. We were literally going coast to coast on our quest to equip ourselves with the right tools to approach our business.
After months of learning with top professionals, we exited the programs energized and relocated parts of our team to Silicon Valley where we soon onboarded a new hire, our first marketer, a content storyteller in October. Since then, many of you have received phone calls, emails and famous yeti hats in the mail as we sought to narrow in on your most critical pains to deliver on something useful.
Focused. Hopeful. Determined.
The time we spent with our customers was incredible. It felt like the dog days of entrepreneurship all over again. Just digging in deep and hitting the white-board. Here is a shot of our marketer, Andrew, captured mid-phone call!
We are so thankful for the time so many of you shared with us. Your feedback helped us narrow in on who you are, what you believe in and what your business pains are. With everything we have learned, our business is moving with great momentum allowing us to deliver on something big in 2017 starting today.
The month of April marks big changes. Our difficulties have led us to this point where we see ourselves growing into the best business we can be because of the explicit knowledge we gained on our journey.
