Last year was the longest, shortest year of my life. We have been working to unify our team into a single location. Our teams were split for 5 years. The creative team was in San Francisco. The sales team was in New York.
As you grow you add complexity to the business. Communication got really difficult. There was a lot friction around communication. How have you made this additional complexity less overwhelming? We do team level OKR’s [Objectives and key results] every quarter. It has been hugely important for helping everyone prioritize and work toward the same goal.
A helpful tool for company communication: We are a die hard Asana company. We’ve used it for 7 years. It is incredible.
Book recommendation: The Great CEO Within: How to build a category-killing company from the ground up. [You can read the book for free here]
More book recommendations: Radical Candor: Be A Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity, Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs, The One Minute Manager, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity.
You can’t make good stuff if you don’t believe in what you are making.
A lesson Emily learned from Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio. The difference between skills and attributes. Attributes are things that are kind of fixed in you. For example, being detailed oriented. You can get a little better with training, but if you don’t have that internal wiring you won’t be great at it.
How they use this idea at Baggu: When we are hiring we try to figure out the intrinsic traits that need to already exist. And then figure out what are the skills we can teach after they are hired.
Our theme for this year is mastery. Last year was figuring out new things. This year we are focused on getting really good at all the things we do.
We are seeing the most growth in our direct channel: Baggu.com.
We are focusing on our direct business and worrying less about what a few large wholesale accounts think. The results of this shifting focus: We had more creative freedom. Our designs got weirder. And better. We connected more with our customers.
If we don’t think something is cool we shouldn’t make it. There was stuff we’ve made that we didn’t love but thought people would buy. That was always a mistake.
We have some products that we have been selling for 13 years. [The holy grail of entrepreneurship: longevity.]
The North Star of long-term thinking: When we think about our goals we think about how to add long-term equity to the brand. Not just focus on monthly sales goals.
