Businesses exist for one reason: to make money. Sure, you have your noble intentions for that money; charities, giving back to your community, making the world a better place. But at the end of the day, you’re in business to make money, and chances are, you would like to make more money.
You don’t have enough until you can do this
The big question when it comes to this is how?
I have a few ideas, and I want to find even more. This is the start of a series in which I will share what I’ve already learned, and catalog the process of learning and applying more. Most of you will probably be amazed by my ignorance, but hopefully at least a few of you will learn along with me. If all goes well, this series will end with me swimming in a vault of gold coins.
Some things to look for in this series:
- Reviews of books I’m reading. Currently our management team is reading How Google Works by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg.
- Sources of inspiration, like the Startup podcast or The Men Who Built America.
- Stories of success (and probably failure) as I try to implement things I’ve learned.
- Discussion of how your business can grow (like online marketing).
- No divulging of company secrets. Nice try corporate spies!
- More surprises that I don’t even know about yet!
Now let me tell you why I decided to do this.
I mentioned we have been reading How Google Works. Well, we’ve had this “book club” thing going on for almost a year now. We did Leadership and Self Deception, The Goal, and How to Win Friends and Influence People. Somewhere in there we decided that each of us would be in charge of choosing a book and leading the discussions. This one is my turn.
This week we read the introduction. It talks a lot about “smart creatives” and having the best product out there. I realized that we have the best team in the world here at Gravitate, and thought there was probably a lot of potential we were missing out on. So, with the help and encouragement of the team, I restarted a program I conceived last year that just never went anywhere: The Growvitate Initiative. Basically, we want to encourage everyone in the company to help grow. We’ll discuss ideas and set goals each Wednesday at our company lunch. Everyone here has the opportunity to improve their own realm of responsibility, and potentially even start something completely new.
So I want to keep track of all that. I want to tell the story of how this amazing team takes an already great company and makes it even greater. I want to see other companies grow. And I really want to swim in a vault of gold coins.