Happy birthday to Tribe! And thanks to all the amazing employees we've had over the past 23 years. One of the best things about this business is seeing former employees go off and build their careers and lives. Proud of all y'all!
🎂 Today marks 23 years since I started Tribe in a sunroom off our kitchen. In the beginning, I assumed Tribe would just be my freelance writing business. But before I knew it, we had high-rise office space and a full staff of talented people. Over a few decades, there are inevitably both high times and low points. The photo above was when we downscaled from our big office space on the seventh floor to one hot and stuffy room on the ground level. It took us about a year to reset, rebuild and move back upstairs. For the many good years, I owe a lot to the many people who’ve helped us succeed— and I’ll tag a few of you from the early days at the end of this post. But first, I want to highlight some of the things I enjoy most about this business, and a few things I’ve learned along the way: ✳️ I still love the work: I still feel excited coming into the office in the morning. I love working with other writers and designers and digital editors to create communications that will get employees’ attention. The joy of the creative process never gets old. ✳️ Being able to help feels great: When clients or prospects describe a challenge—from change management to employer branding to reaching difficult audiences like frontline workers—it’s nice to know we actually can help them solve that problem. We’ve almost always faced similar challenges for other clients, and our work there can be a shortcut to this new issue. ✳️ There’s no substitute for talent: We can teach a lot of things, but talent is not one of them. Over the years, we’ve hired a lot of young people right out of college with little to no job experience and trained them in internal communications. It’s amazing what smart, creative young people who are curious and confident can achieve. Especially if you get out of their way. ✳️ There’s also no substitute for kindness: One of our values is Be Kind, and our guideline for hiring is that we look for talented people who are also nice people. (In addition to our four values, we also have six maxims. They aren’t on our website, but one of them is Don’t Be an Asshole. It’s important.) ✳️ Entrepreneurship can be a spiritual path: I just googled myself (weird experiment. I don’t recommend it) because I couldn’t remember how I used to phrase this thought. Found it in a Style Blueprint article* from 2015: “The way you run your business is a demonstration of your values out in the world.” I still find that to be true, and oddly, I still agree with most of what I said in that article ten years ago. Except the part about Gucci pumps. I don’t wear those anymore. Finally, thank you to those clients who helped us grow so quickly in the first year or two: Karen Henry at Porsche, Tom Pizzuti at UPS, Cheryl Galway at Whole Foods Market and Ellen Madill at Mannington Floors. And to the many wonderful clients we've had the privilege to work with in the past few 23 years! *https://lnkd.in/eTkgMT8q #internalcommunications