I just want to take a moment to thank you for this year…

I know that for many of you, 2020 hasn’t been the greatest year of all time. Lockdowns and restrictions have made our daily life much harder. Unexpected disasters happened all around the globe and many businesses including DotYeti had to adapt quickly and navigate through the crisis. This and many other factors had taken a toll on both the physical and mental state of many people.

As co-founder(Roy Selbach) of a company that started amidst the pandemic, I can say that staying positive and embracing the challenge has led to the company’s success in this new environment. We feel grateful that DotYeti.com managed to grow almost every month by at least 30%, despite the pandemic! From starting with only a handful of employees this year, we are closing this year with nearly 45+ talented people, who are supporting clients coming from every part of the world. This is an amazing feeling, especially considering that most start-ups struggle to get their feet on the ground in the first few years.

As the pandemic continues to produce uncertainties, I would like to share a few of my learnings and philosophies that I hope can help everyone strive and excel in 2021!

“There’s no “I” in team”

One of the main ingredients for success is our enthusiastic and devoted team. We strive together for one ultimate goal, becoming the best in the industry; while keeping work as fun as it could be! As a former employee of multiple large-scale companies, I worked with dozens of talented people in any kind of job role. Some were excellent coaches and others were pretty good in execution. The main lesson that I learned from this is that everyone has their own expertise and that you can’t be the best at everything. From then on, I always try to gather the most talented people around me to reach the finish line together on a higher level and at a faster pace.

Building out a culture starts from the core of your organization and its leaders should push the cart in the right direction. This is the reason why we take extra care of our employees and really do our best to understand them. For example, before a new Yeti starts his adventure, we will always ask him to fill in the 16 personalities test from Briggs Myers. In this way, we really get to know and understand the person who is joining. We adjust our tone-of-voice, language, and even the way we approach this person, for example by providing feedback.

Also, we try to add that special Yeti sauce anywhere we can, to make sure everyone in our organization is having the Yeti’s blue blood. You can see internally and externally that every chance we get, we try to make a reference with the blue mystical creature. This turns out to have amazing effects, and our employees even call themselves Yetis.

We believe in the power of positive work culture and the energy it creates. One of the many ways we strengthen our community feeling and foster positive energy is by replacing words with negative connotations to positive words. For example, we stopped calling the creative production team, ” production team”, and replaced it with “creation team”. Building a team is a two-way street and we want our Yetis to feel empowered and truly enjoy the designing experiences, rather than just producing the required output.

Automations, workflows & documentation

DotYeti.com literally started off as a 100% remote business. As the business was growing rapidly and more employees were coming on board, there arose some new challenging organizational obstacles, that we had to overcome. But instead of seeing it as obstacles, we quickly learned that this could work to our advantage. Managing a large team of around 45+ obligates you to think about structure and workflows that are ready for scaling.

Come to think of that, we live in a digitally enhanced world, everything that we do can be captured and duplicated with the ease of just a few clicks. So why not use that to your advantage? Everyone encounters some repetitive tasks in their daily activities, whether it’s making payments, doing presentations, or sending emails. The trick is to identify these specific recurring points and shift your mindset into a more systematic approach. Ask yourself the following question: How can I build something that will replace my activities and will flow automatically, even when I am not there? You can do this literally with almost everything! Here are some initiatives that we’ve worked on this 2020.

• We started to record all of our presentations, in this case, we don’t have to do the same presentations time after time again.
• We utilize dozens of tools to take away small tasks; such as daily stand-ups, recurring salary payouts, employee registrations, and much more.
• We created tons of automated nurture streams, which automatically sends out the right emails at the right time to the right people.
• We created YetiPortal, an internal portal with all the documentation for any kind of job role. Here our Yetis can find everything they need to know, from onboarding clients to delivering designs, writing compelling stories, and much more.

It seems like a huge task to do. However, what if I told you it only takes around 20% additional time? Not only that, but you’ll be looking at multiplying the impact of your input, by 5x, 50x, or even 100x.

Can you now see how much time you are actually saving rather than wasting? Start implementing this directly in your organization, you won’t regret it.

Think pragmatically and focus

These are by far for me and the DotYeti team the most impactful keywords and have been major game-changers in every decision-making process. As a young company, we are constantly juggling what we should focus on. Should we increase our sales efforts? Does our creative team need a motivational boost? Should we focus on revamping the website or should we throw out a big marketing campaign? There are so many points that can be improved, and all of them at the same time. It’s nearly impossible to work within your budget and still manage to complete all these activities while still paying attention to the fine details. Especially working in the service industry, I noticed that many companies are spending too much time and energy on small things that will have a minimum to none impact on their business.

What always really works out perfectly for us is to take 3 steps backward and to take another look at that specific so-called “urgent” activity. If it can survive the following questions, then it has great business value and you can proceed.

• Does this have a positive impact on the growth of my company?
• Do we really need this at this time?
• How much time or money will it take to complete this and how fast can I benefit from it?
• Should we do it ourselves, or can other people do it better?

So… did reading this article helped contribute to your mindset to reach that so-wanted next level?
Either way, I hope you can use my learnings for the greater good. Follow these and I’m most confident that you will achieve your goals for next year.

Thank you for believing in DotYeti and I wish you, your family, and your colleagues the best.
Hopefully, we will see you live on our platform soon! Until then, happy holidays, and have an amazing 2021!

With creative greets,

Roy Selbach – CEO of DotYeti.com