We’re Celebrating One Year at The Anti!

When you start something new. You have a vision of what it’s going to look like. My first word of advice. Write it down. Clearly. I have been using Mark Benioff’s, V2MOM strategy plan. You don’t have to use that one...but use something. Define what your vision is. What is the WHY of what you want to do. I can tell you now. It can’t be just to get rich. If it is, it certainly will fail. YouTube some Simon Sinek stuff. He will more than cover what I’m talking about here.

Next, write down the values you are going to follow. Values sounds like fluff, but I promise you, if you make decisions based on values it takes (most) of the emotion out of it.

The 3-5 things that you will need to do to get there. If you have the luxury, assign them out...and hold everyone very accountable.

I mentioned speedbumps. Define what you expect those to be. Talk to people that have done it before. There are some that are unavoidable. Most you can mitigate. If you can’t avoid or mitigate, you either better have a ton of cash or my opinion is you wait for times to change a bit.

Finally, measuring success. What are the 2-4 things that you will measure to check how you are doing? They should be easy to track...as you are going to be too busy to measure something complicated. Once you’ve written this all down, and you’re 100% confident that the time is now to get started, GO! Don’t waver from making it work..regardless of the speedbumps that are awaiting you.

So how have we done? We have been able to attract a great team. Not easy. You are new. You are risky. You ARE NOT desperate though. They must fit your values and culture...and don’t be flexible on these two things. Most people can learn a competency. It’s nearly impossible to change someone's values or help them fit into an unnatural culture. A bad hire or two can set you way back. More than that, it can sink you.

We have gotten noticed by our partner-ServiceNow. Not easy when you are new and trying to get the attention of a billion dollar company. We decided to focus on a few things instead of everything and that proved to save our company. HCM. CSM. Managed Services. It’s in our DNA. Had we said we did everything, we would have been lost and never reached our first birthday.

We are starting to get noticed by people needing our services. We are in some ways outpunting our coverage as we are being invited to some big opportunities...where in some cases the big guys haven’t been willing to take a chance. With that said, some very big ones have taken the chance...and have been impressed.

This is certainly a marathon and not a sprint. We are just exiting the crawl stage and we are just now beginning to walk. We all have our running shoes on, as we expect to need those very soon.

So thanks to all of you that have helped in these first 365 days. You know who you are. We are simply just a group of smart yet humble individuals, who love innovation, and love working together as a team. All to make everyone's workday just a little easier.

-Wayne Chattaway