It’s September again, one of my favorite months of the year. Fall is on its way (or summer, if you’re in San Francisco), kids are headed back to school, and we get to celebrate another anniversary for Brilliant Ink. This year it’s birthday #6, and while there’s nothing particularly special about that number, it’s been a momentous year for us. We hired two new employees, opened a New York office, awarded our first college scholarship and hosted the first employee engagement hackathon – all good stuff. As always, I feel a little amazed and gratified at how much we’ve been able to accomplish as a team. 

Each year, we move farther away from the dreaded small business failure statistics – the ones that proclaim most businesses will falter within the first 18 months. In fact, perhaps it’s because we’ve established some solid distance between ourselves and those statistics that I feel comfortable making a confession. More than anything, this year has been about reflection and reassessment for me.

Growing a business is challenging. Each milestone we reach is a place we haven’t been before, and I’ve learned the hard way that what got us over the last hurdle probably won’t get us over the next one. There’s never a comfort zone, never a point when we get to coast. It’s exhilarating, yes, but sometimes it can be exhausting. If we buy into the traditional business wisdom that the only way to define success is through “more” – more money, more clients, more widespread recognition – then it can be downright grueling, not just for me but for everyone who works here.

There’s something else, too. When you’re in the business of creating meaningful employee experiences, there’s a lot of pressure to practice what we preach. I welcome the pressure – in fact, it’s probably me that’s exerting most of it, but I couldn’t look our clients in the eye and tell them to care about the well-being of their employees if I didn’t believe in it myself. But you know that old saying, “do as I say, not as I do?” There’s an element of truth to it. And here’s where the reflection and reassessment comes in: After five years of obsessing over “more,” I’ve realized I’m not interested in running a business that doesn’t lead by example.

So, what does this mean for the coming years? It means I’m doing my best to think about “more,” but in a different way:

• More ways to integrate our authentic selves with our work – this includes not only asking all of us to think about how our personal values can be reflected more deeply in our work, but also creating opportunities to share our personal interests with each other. We don’t need to be best buddies, and we don’t need to spend all our time together, but no one should feel like they have to be someone other than who they really are when they walk in the door here each day.
• More emphasis on relationships versus accomplishments – do we have meaningful client relationships? Do we value and enjoy our time spent working together? If so, I believe our clients can only benefit from it, and we will, too.
• More value of people over profits – of course we’re in business to make money, but how much is enough? If there’s anything I’ve learned in six years, it’s this: having a business that’s financially successful but drives us all into the ground is not a measure of success that I find particularly motivational or rewarding. I want everyone here – myself included – to leave work at a decent hour, enjoy meals with family and friends, and feel free to log off on the weekends. We’ll be better people because of it, and I believe we’ll do better work on behalf of our clients.

As I write this, we’re headed into the busiest month we’ve had all year. I’m also six weeks away from the birth of my second child, which means I’m doubling down on getting work done so that I can take a stress-free maternity leave. In other words, right at this moment we’re still in the realm of “do as I say, not as I do.” We have a long way to go before I can say that we’re all embracing this definition of “more” 100 percent of the time, and maybe we’ll never achieve that state of perfection. But it’s this pursuit of a different kind “more” that I hope will keep us feeling alive and inspired by our work for the next six years, and many more years to come.