I have spent the past week reflecting on my first year working at Simple Pixels and what a journey it has been.
Firstly, accepting Pete’s proposal took a little convincing. I was content and settled in an administration/bookkeeping role for a logistics company so at the time, moving on wasn’t on the cards. I’d already planned my future (bad habit of mine), having had my two children whilst employed there, we had regular discussions on how ideal my job was for when the kids would commence school, not to mention I worked 4 minutes from home and the kid’s daycare was only 4 minutes from work. It ticked a lot of boxes for me.
What you may not know… is Pete (known as Swanny to me) has been a close friend of mine since we worked together in real estate. Over our 14 years of friendship we have witnessed each other wed the love of our lives, and been there to watch each other’s kids grow into the caring souls they are. A regular conversation between us both was the dream to one day work together again but as more than colleges, we dreamt of running a business together.
However, I’m the girl who plans her future and in my plan, my ambition to own or run a business was in later life when the kids were more independent. I had to adjust my plan and I can confidently say it was worth adjusting! Swanny’s trust and confidence in my ability to help grow his (already successful) business has been astonishing. I can’t thank him enough for believing in me.
So how far have we come in 1 year working web design in Wagga Wagga…
Growth
Up until 1 year ago, Pete Swan was ‘Simple Pixels’. He was still working in real estate (as the IT guru) and juggling website designs in between his busy life raising 6 kids. Over the past year, Pete has said goodbye to his real estate role and become full time with Simple Pixels. On top of this, Simple Pixels has become a team of 4. Yes that’s a 400% staff growth in a year. We would love more but we’re being wisely cautious.
Change
With growth comes a lot of change. And I mean ‘a lot’.
Four people working in a 2 x 2 metre square home office is a little tight for comfort so we had to take the scary leap to relocate into a commercial office. So we did. But let’s be honest, it’s actually a kitchen in our mates office. Hey, we’re not complaining though.
We have stepped up in the world, now owning an office phone number for us all to answer numerous incoming calls instead of shuffling around Pete’s personal mobile (which was our contact number).
One of many other changes was implementing a CRM system. It was no longer solely Pete dealing with our clients, website development and IT support. A centralised database and record system was mandatory.
The biggest change? Pete having to put up with me nagging him lol. I’m sure some days he wishes it was solely him again. Someone has to keep him on his toes at work, right?
Our culture
This is one area we’re not changing! As a team we will forever grow and as a human, we will have bad days where we will need to regroup and revisit our culture values. Lucky for us, our team has been handpicked by Pete based on our values and outlook on life. All four of us share the strong passion to work in a caring, compassionate environment where we all have each other’s backs and everyone is treated equal, including our clients and business associates. We are a team. We are humans. We all have feelings. We treat others how we’d like to be treated.
Conclusion
So did I make the right decision to jump ship? Hell yeah!
My previous bosses won’t mind me saying it. They still love me and we keep in contact regularly. They supported my decision. We only get one shot at life!
As quoted by Walt Disney ‘If you can dream it, you can do it’. Swanny, we’ve dreamt it….and now we’re doing it!!!
