September 2024 update.
New season begins.
I had a dilemma recently.
I was struggling with the pros and cons of a new business we were considering taking in. When navigating through it with people around me, I often heard "you already have the answer" — which is nice to listen to, but doesn't make any decisions that cost money any simpler. I may write more about this particular issue somewhere in the future, for now I want to focus on what motivates the answers I've heard.
It took me a while to define who I am today, and I'm proud of the core values that guide my life. Like a compass, while I've never owned one, they help me navigate and stay aligned towards my destination.
While watching "The Bear"* recently, I started wondering what are awebrie's standards of operation. I know they exist, but I've never put them in writing. Watching Carmy's jot down his "non negotiables list", pushed me to try write ours. Since I'm already breaking down all boxes, I'll focus on the other driving points — I promise this was the only spoiler 😇
These principles reflect the standards we hold ourselves accountable to. They push us to be and do better. They are our commitment to our customers.
So, what are awebrie's non negotiable?
Prioritise long term relationships
It’s never about one project, foster lasting partnerships. Be reliable, and consistent.
Deliver on time
Plan ahead, communicate setbacks, and manage volume. Deliver on schedule, every time.
Client’s goals come first
We are in the business of making client’s vision a reality, not in the business of showing off.
Honest communication
No lies, no second guessing. Keep everyone in the loop. Lean towards transparency, and address matters promptly.
Details make the difference
Every interaction, meeting, message, pixel, line of code matters. Stay focused, don’t do things halfway.
Own your mistakes**
How you respond to mistakes matters more than the mistake that happened.
Collaboration over ego
There’s no solo efforts. The best results comes from collaboration, and ideas come from anywhere. Listen, share openly, and work together to find the best solution.
Don’t chase the last dollar***
Profit, yes. There's room for everyone to benefit from.
Trust your gut
Experience and intuition are powerful. Allow them to guide you when the right path isn’t obvious.
Keep trying
The first draft is just a draft, don’t get too attached to it. Refine, test, improve, until it’s at the best it can be.
Today, we stay tuned to the rhythm of this list, through our relationship with client's and their needs. Over time, this list should evolve with us. As we learn, our experiences will shape these principles.
* If you haven’t go watch "The Bear", go, it’s good.
** Changed a word here, had a Mark Manson touch to it.
*** Charlie Munger influenced this one.
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Thank you for following our journey, you can subscribe for next updates. If you have any feedback, tips or ideas to share, email me at j@awebrie.com
Just a journal where we share the behind the scenes of growing awebrie. Follow our journey, we will share our learnings every other week.
September 2024 update.
New season begins.
José Rodrigues (@umzuuh)
You liked, we liked it, so we continue.
August's public update was a success. No, it didn't get thousands of views. No, it didn't 10x our leads. No, it didn't get increase our revenue significantly. However, it brought us closer to you. A few folks reached out, sharing ideas, similar struggles, and showing support. We call it a success.
We were testing the waters, so our expectations with public sharing were low. In one hand that helped hit publish, on the other we are now accountable to show progress on the points we shared.
September marks the end of another quarter, as we now walk into the last trimester of the year. I'm expecting December to be a slow month and we want to make the most of the remaining months. November will be special, I'm spending some weeks traveling in Asia visiting some partners and attending Devcon in Bangkok — but, enough with future plans.
Through September, we collaborated with one new talented person on a front-engineering project. We felt the need to increase capacity to hit a milestone, and we couldn't have relied in a better human.
Win — Launched Motion Ventures
We partnered with Motion Ventures, a venture capital fund based in Singapore, to launch their new brand and website. They came to us after a few exhausting experiences, and we created an environment where they felt confortable iterating and launching their updated visual identity.
Win — Motion's network partner
We extended our partnership offering to Motion Venture's network. Effectively allowing startups innovating maritime supply chain industry access to exclusive deals with awebrie.
Win — Goodbye fixed budget projects
Getting a Scope of Work document done has been one of our biggest headaches the past year. The never ending feedback loop and the time invested for deals that don't go through, or end up in ghosting. Meh. We are saying goodbye to the effort without the reward. We will write a dedicated post on this.
Win — We reviewed our offering
This took a while, specially juggling between design, sales, management, and admin work. I finalised our new pricing structure and started applying it to customers. Our new packaging is fair and transparent. It allows space for ideas to change, and objectives to evolve. We may share more about this in the future.
Struggle — Milestones
We hit the mark, we just failed to guess how much effort it would be required. It's not by chance I wrote above that we decided to stop doing fixed budget projects.
The complexity of scoping well digital product work is hard to grasp, specially when diving into new domains. We guesstimated wrong, that's why it's a guess. We did our best to scope the project to the tinniest detail, writing every letter on the Scope of Work, and still…
I believe internal struggles like this shouldn't impact customer experience, and are amazing learning opportunities. We owned the loss, and delivered the work accordingly to plan.
Metrics snapshot
3
Active projects
1
New project
1
Wrapped project
4
Leads
Next
Publish a few posts about recent changes;
If you are in Bangkok, or Singapore in November, email me;
Experiment new marketing strategies;
Experiment how to bring the "wow moment" earlier into our sales process;
Continue establishing new partnerships to expand our network;
Continue to invest in improving service quality;
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Thank you for following our journey, you can subscribe for next updates. If you have any feedback, tips or ideas to share, email me at j@awebrie.com