It is so easy to get caught up in the day to day of work life.  You wake up, you work out (or stop by Chick-Fil-A), head to the office, leave the office, go home, work a little more and then sleep.  For five days, you repeat the same cycle over and over with a few variables changing each day.  

In 2017, I’ve challenged myself  and our team to read more books about business so that not only we can have a better work-life balance down the road, but also take the time to build the company up to where we want it to be!  So, I’d like to take some time, to share with you excerpts and valuable tips we’re learning from a book called Good to Great by Jim Collins. It talks about what companies did to get to the next level; to increase their bottom line, outwit competitors and take their companies from ‘good’ to ‘great.’

We are only in the beginning of Good to Great but I am already obsessed. Chapter one talks about how “Good to Great” companies focus on what not to do and what to stop doing.  But my favorite part of this chapter is the emphasis it puts on getting the wrong people off of the bus, the right people on and in the right seats. That way you can collectively figure out where to drive it.  This was a bit of a shock to me.  I always thought I needed to know exactly where we were going before I started to pile people on the bus whether they were right or wrong.  I figured I needed to know EXACTLY what I was doing before I started to build this team so we already knew where we were headed.  But in the book, the companies don’t always know the strategy or the steps they are going to take to get there.  They just know they can’t do it alone and that they have to have the right team in the right spaces to create a great company.   

It’s interesting the release of control this takes. As a self proclaimed Type A, I feel that often times I need to know exactly what is happening, how it’s happening, when it’s happening and to whom it’s happening to.  But having the right people takes the necessity of knowing all of those things away.  You can’t possibly know everything.  And if you do, you're not going to listen to the talented people around you that are knowledgeable and excited to help you drive this bus to its next destination.   

Our team is small but we are growing and we are excited about the next steps we are taking.  In Q2, our inspiration is coming from Jim Collins and his first chapter in Good To Great that emphasizes getting the right people in the right seats!

Our team doesn’t just want to be good.  We want to be great.  And we want to figure out how to continue to reach this goal in 2017!   We hope you will read along with us and share your tips about how you are growing your company with us below!