Red Squirrel’s 2021 Evolution
I know many businesses have had a wild ride since the hopeful beginnings of 2020. Red Squirrel is no exception. If you want the simplest possible story: we survived 2020, and we thrived in 2021. Below, I share the details of this thriving, to bring you, dear reader, up to date on Red Squirrel’s current status.
2020’s Silver Linings
There are many things to say about 2020, but looking back, there is one clear highlight: our apprentices. In the midst of financial uncertainty, I am proud that we still had the wherewithal to invest in new talent. Two of those investments paid off in Jeremy Schuurmans and Marissa Biesecker. Their official mentors, Jake Myers and Kevin Solorio, respectively, gave them a great foundation last year. As we entered 2021, their mentoring shifted toward Kevin Solorio and Josh Cheek, respectively. I am proud of how much our senior engineers authentically care about the junior folks in our company. Jeremy and Marissa’s progress is a testament to their own hard work and courageous curiosity, as well as many hours of coaching and mentoring from our senior squirrels.
Journey through 2021
With Jeremy and Marissa successfully graduated from their apprenticeships, we started this year with 8 squirrels spread from the midwestern United States to Colombia to Portugal to Nigeria.
Our business had stalled throughout most of 2020, but once we hit November 2020, things started picking up steadily. That trend has continued throughout this year, and we are still seeing a consistent acceleration in demand for our services. And so, as we kicked off the year, we were already growing.
MLK Day as Catalyst
We crossed the 10 squirrel threshold in January. For the first time in our history, I could stop billing and focus on Red Squirrel more than our clients. My focus on our culture and our business rather than simply working inside of it created space for some key moments.
As a company that exists to unleash latent human potential, we naturally celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As this US holiday approached, Jeremy offered this fantastic thought:
I think making Martin Luther King, Jr. Day a paid holiday is a good idea as long as we also have discussions about more ways to promote the growth and development of an inclusive culture at Red Squirrel. I’m all for commemorating Dr. King, but I wonder to what degree taking the day off will help foster an inclusive culture in the long run.
I took this to heart and so instead of simply taking the day off, we spent some time together, considering how we might become a more inclusive company. Heather Corallo expertly facilitated our MLK Day workshop on inclusivity, and I was left with some very strong themes to consider based on our discussions.
One month later, inspired by what I heard on MLK day, I published our initial “vision” into our internal handbook. This vision included our purpose and our values. I previously blogged about this moment, so I won’t repeat it here, other than to list our purpose and our values.
Purpose: We exist to unleash latent human potential.
Values: Trust, Empathy, Flexibility, Vulnerability, Whole Self, and Journey
With our initial vision in place, we set up a workshop in March with Heather to discuss our purpose as a group. By this point, we had grown to 13 squirrels, expanding our geographical footprint to Colorado in the process. A couple things happened as a result of this second workshop:
- Our squirrels spent some time sitting with our reason for being, giving me more insight into what it meant to them, and for them to learn more about it from me.
- Heather dove deeper into Red Squirrel, and ultimately, she became our 14th squirrel as she stepped into a Partner role. (Full disclosure: I’m a Partner in her company.) (Also: we’re married 💞!)
One month later, I added a third dimension to our vision: our Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal (BHAG). Our BHAG brings our purpose to life, constrains how we operate, and gives us something concrete to accomplish as a team:
By 2025, Red Squirrel will work exclusively on projects or with clients that unleash latent human potential.
Purpose-aligned Benefits and Policies
Starting in April and continuing through September, we added a series of benefits and policies that we felt were congruent with who we are. We added a 401k plan that we automatically contribute to at an amount equal to 3% of the employee’s salary, regardless of whether they contribute. We added an Immigration Policy that will allow qualifying squirrels to be sponsored for H-1B visas and, if they win the visa lottery, move to the USA in 2022. (Yes, small companies are fully capable of handling this sort of thing. Who knew?) Finally, we added a Parental Leave policy that provides 12 weeks of fully paid leave for employees, with an additional 4 weeks at half pay, if desired. We are proud to be able to provide this benefit to employees who are welcoming a new child into their home.
Sustainable Growth through Two Thresholds
By July 1, we were 16 squirrels, and our geography stretched from Southern California to Cyprus. Crossing through the 15-squirrel threshold was meaningful to me, since that was the number I felt was the limit of my ability to manage all of the squirrels and all of our clients and all of our operations. As I became overwhelmed with work, Heather and I started focusing on how we could make my role at Red Squirrel sustainable as we continued to grow.
The first move toward sustainable leadership was to define our Support Squirrel role. Up until this moment, I had been playing this role with all of our squirrels to help them improve their work at Red Squirrel, further themselves in their careers, and unleash their potential in their chosen growth area. By defining the role explicitly, we could spread the load across more squirrels, and now we have four people in this role.
The second move toward sustainable leadership was hiring a part-time Operations Manager. Astrid Silalahi stepped into this role in September and immediately started taking back-office work off my plate, as well as finding opportunities to improve our culture and squirrel experience.
We continued growing through the 20-squirrel threshold, and are finishing the year at 21 squirrels, adding new geographies from Los Angeles to Berkeley to Pennsylvania. We do not anticipate this same kind of growth in 2022, but we still feel like there are some significant organizational moves we need to make to ensure my leadership role is sustainable, as well as improve our internal processes to ensure we’re living up to our vision.
Stepping up to 2022
First, as we enter the new year, I am thrilled to announce the promotion of Kevin Solorio into our newly-defined Director of Delivery role! 🎉 As he steps into this role in 2022, Kevin will grow into the center of our company. Kevin and I are entering the ninth year since we started working together at Dev Bootcamp in Chicago. Back in those days, Kevin quickly became one of Dev Bootcamp’s most beloved teachers, eventually growing into our Curriculum Director, and finishing his tenure there as the Director of our San Diego campus. He is clearly on a similar trajectory at Red Squirrel and I’m excited to see where he leads us! (Kevin is also the lead author of Hands-On Smart Contract Development with Solidity and Ethereum.)
Second, Astrid Silalahi is leaning further into her role as Operations Manager by increasing her hours from half-time to full-time. 🎉 Astrid has been a godsend since she joined us this year, and we anticipate that doubling her time focused on Red Squirrel will pay off exponentially in cultural impact and even smoother operations.
After a year of not bringing any new apprentices on board, we are anticipating graduating at least two apprentices in 2022. We now have sufficient seniority to once again onboard more junior talent, living up to our purpose of unleashing latent human potential. Our next apprentice recently accepted our offer and will be starting with us in January. We expect the subsequent apprentice opportunity will be quite competitive!
Finally, we plan to take some important steps toward our BHAG in 2022, signaling to the market the sort of clients that we aspire to work with, and revamping our sales process to proactively target these aspirational clients rather than taking them as they come.
What a fabulous bunch of squirrels. ❤️
If you’d like to subscribe to my Software Therapy newsletter, sign up here.
