With many new clients, I take the time to visit the business from the outset. In fact, I generally bake the idea directly into the initial proposal. I'm eager to meet the crew and start to understand not only the business workflow we aim to support with marketing and technology projects, but also the people and passion they bring to their work. To be really present and fully engaged in so many of our projects at 3VERB, it takes an understanding of the tools of the trade and the people behind them. Almost without exception these visits renew my belief in some of our best shared ideals: the entrepreneurial spirit, a commitment to creating useful, quality products, and a ground-level confirmation that people still work best in a collegial and cooperative environment.
Seen here, a few snapshots from my visit with the incredibly hard-working and ingenious crew at Escape Climbing outside St. Paul, Minnesota. They're a case in point: Great products, an enterprise geared to profit in an emerging category, but quite clearly book-ended by people-power.
Nowadays, in so many regards, I'm convinced it serves us well to not allow rapid-exchange email and social media chatter and screen-share-conference-calling to act as our proxy or define key relationships. We can do better than that. We can dare to show up in person.
– Jon
Jon is the CEO of GimmeAnother and founder of 3VERB.
