In March 2022, at the top of the pandemic, I had been in business for almost 3 years. From August 2017 – June 2020, I was a solopreneur and I loved what I was doing. When I left corporate America I thought, “I’ll find gigs doing what I enjoyed the most over the past 20 years.” For a good portion of those 3 years, I had the pleasure of either coaching teams on how to improve processes or being embedded in a team to lead their projects.
I spent a lot of that time thinking about whether or not I wanted to grow my company and lead teams. I kept envisioning what my team should look like:
- My first addition at the end of 2020 was a marketing partner…
- Then a project manager that I added to a project that I was working on…
- Then I hired a bookkeeping service (thank God for bookkeepers!)…
- Then I brought on 2 more contractors for my new business…
- Then a virtual assistant…
- Then an Online Business Manager…
- Then I brought on several Lean project coaches…
- And then and then…
• • •
Because my team formed during this season of online working, I haven’t been as focused on where people are; I’ve been more focused on who they are.
Now my company has team members in Mountain, Central, and Eastern time zones. Although we are spread across 6 different states, I still want to build a strong sense of community. I want to build a culture where people are kind and thoughtful and have fun taking care of the customer.
There are not a lot of opportunities for us to engage as a team; we spend more time interfacing with customers.
So what do I do? I have to be intentional about making sure we come together, and I do something to foster connections every quarter. I want it to be something light and not too intrusive. I want my team to see other team members and know that they are not alone and can call on others if they’d like. The office world fostered that – you had light banter in the halls and in the break room. Before you knew it, you had a work/life confidant in the woman down the hall.
So this quarter, we started with a pizza party. Everyone shared their favorite local pizza place and pizza order, and I had it delivered in time for us to all sit down together in front of screens with our families and laugh and eat pizza.
We started with simple introductions where each team member shared their location and hometown. I learned that I had the most boring trajectory living about 23 miles from my place of birth.
We also played a quick quiz game using Kahoot to see who was the smartest when it came to good news going on in the world.
One couple took first and second place. Too many smarts in one house! One person followed up with me and said, “I like these people. They are my kind of people.” I thought, “Yes!”
So what are we going to do next quarter? I want to keep it fresh. I’m sensitive to the fact that we all spend a lot of time in front of computer screens all day, every day, but I’m excited for the challenge. If you have any ideas, shoot me a note: yholloway@hollowaycg.com.
