Building A Strong 2025 At CTE
We are so excited for the New Year here at CTE! 2024 was a solid year and we felt it was important to harness that energy into 2025. CTE is producing awesome results. 100% inventory audits, on-time deliveries, maintaining excellent communication with our clients. For Todd and me, growing or scaling at CTE has never been simply about a bigger revenue number, or wider margins, or hiring more people. It has always been about moving the whole existence of CTE to a more whole complete version of what it is destined to become. We knew our plan for 2025 had to be unique. It had to be for the whole Team.
For the longest time I had a screensaver that said – “Build a Team so strong – You don’t know who the BOSS is”. This resonated with me on so many levels. For starters – Todd and I never wanted to be anybody’s Boss. We like to work independently. We grew up as outside sales reps, we like our independence. When we started CTE, our main driver was always to create a business that supported the lifestyle we wanted to live. Work hard to get the work done, then knock off to enjoy the rest of our day…whether that was watching our kids play soccer, walking the dogs, or just enjoying a slow morning over coffee in respite of all the craziness.
The last 5 years have challenged that vision in a thousand ways. We could no longer be the ones “calling the shots” we could no longer make every decision that needed to be made, our energy was depleted. We were overwhelmed. Something had to change.
We were a team of doers who had to learn how to manage. We had to find a way to learn the things we did not know we needed to learn. We had to grow through this overwhelming problem. All of us. We had to level ourselves up, so that we could keep up with where this company was taking us…We had to learn new skills.
Adversity forced us to learn how to let go, to delegate, to bring others into the shared vision of what we had created. It was no longer just Todd and I growing and creating this business. It was every human who showed up here every day to do the hard work and then head home to spend their free time doing what fills their souls!
We spent a lot of time the last two years learning and growing, which brings us to our goals for 2025. Build a Team so Strong – You Don’t know who the Boss is. This year we focus on building trust. Creating new positions within our company so our team can grow. Strengthening our communication skills and methods so every team member feels like they were in the “meeting”. Paying for education, whatever that looks like… Getting crystal clear what our processes are and how they support our standards and beliefs. Leaning into who we are, the CTE way.
During our rapid growth we had a consultant tell us that the team that got us here – would not be the same team that took us to the next level. He was wrong. At least for us, because as I said before, CTE is not interested in scaling for revenue purposes – we are interested in scaling humans for all of us to live the lifestyle we dream about. Come along with and witness the growth – 2025 is going to be a stellar year!