I'm a designer who turned into a writer who turned into a startup CEO. My mission is to help creators earn a living. Subscribe for essays on building an audience and earning a living as a creator.
The gift no one expects
|
Hey Reader, It's the holidays and at most companies, everyone gets the same thing. A gift card, a bonus, maybe some company swag. At Kit, we do something a little different. Your holiday gift scales with how long you've been here. Year one might be AirPods. By year ten and beyond, it's a $1,000 gift card or other custom gifts. The longer you stay, the more we invest in celebrating that you're still here. At Kit, we give team members birthday gifts and holiday gifts. And we've also celebrated special milestones by rewarding team members or giving them an unexpected day off. People who've joined recently are consistently blown away. But the holiday gifts tied to tenure are the ones that surprise people. You show up for the holidays expecting the usual company gesture, and instead you get something that reflects how long you've chosen to stay. Most companies celebrate what you accomplish. Hit a big goal, ship a major project, close a deal. Those are good things, but how many celebrate the decision to keep showing up? Getting something that reflects your tenure creates a different kind of memory. When someone sticks around for years, they build something that can't easily be replicated with new hires. They know the history. They've seen what worked and what didn't. They can teach the next person. That context accumulates over time, and it's worth investing to keep the people who have it. At 10 team members, you might be able to remember everyone's tenure. At 100+, you need systems to make sure no one gets missed. We built those systems. There's also what this signals to new people. When you join Kit and see someone in their 5th year, their 7th, their 10th, it tells you people want to stay here. That's not something you can fake or put in a job description. Think about what you celebrate in your business. You probably recognize launches, revenue milestones, or successful campaigns. But what about the decision to keep showing up? To come back year after year? When you celebrate tenure, people feel seen. They feel like their decision to stay was noticed. When you get a gift that reflects how long you've been there, it creates a moment you remember. It feels like someone was paying attention. People stay when they feel seen. And when people stick around, they build things that last. PODCASTHow I Built a 50M/Year Company: Frameworks & ReflectionsIn this episode, I sit down with Dan Putt, my coach for the last six years. We look back at Kit’s growth over the years and the personal shifts he's witnessed in me. It's definitely the most emotional I've gotten on a podcast. Here’s some of what we get into:
Watch or listen to episode » KIT FEATUREVersion history for email broadcastsThis is a nice quality-of-life update in Kit. After we launched collaborative editing, many of you asked for a way to track changes and protect your work. Now, version history is here. Your drafts are now fully protected, so you can jump back to any version, see what changed, and collaborate with confidence. You can now:
Available on Creator and Creator Pro plans. EVENTCreator holiday party at Kit Studios BoiseLast year, we hosted a holiday party at Kit Studios in Boise and it was a lot of fun! This year, we're doing it again. It's a great time to check out the studio (feel free to record some content) and meet other creators in Boise. Even if you're not in Boise, this hopefully gives you a sense of what we're building with Kit Studios and the type of events we want to host more of as we expand to other cities. Have a great week! —Nathan P.S. I just uploaded a vlog of my recent Austin trip to YouTube this morning—my first vlog in years! Leave a comment on the video and let me know what you think. |
Nathan Barry
I'm a designer who turned into a writer who turned into a startup CEO. My mission is to help creators earn a living. Subscribe for essays on building an audience and earning a living as a creator.
Hey Reader, If I could solve only one thing in my business, that would have the biggest impact, what would that be? This is the question every great entrepreneur obsesses over. Rather than trying to do everything at once, you look for the bottleneck and focus on solving that. There’s a book called The Goal by an Israeli physicist named Eliyahu Goldratt. It’s a 1984 business novel that business systems nerds love. However if you’re not a business systems nerd you probably… won’t love it. It’s...
Hey Reader, Have you ever spent money on something and immediately felt guilty afterward? Will Guidara spends his money foolishly on purpose. And he thinks you should too. He once bought an entire barrel of whiskey and put it in his basement. He also put a skee-ball machine in the office. Is he going to get a monetary return on either of these things? No. But that’s kind of the point. He calls it the 95/5 rule: Manage your money and time like a maniac 95% of the time (no expense is too...
Hey Reader, Have you ever spent a whole day on something almost nobody saw? It's painful when the whole reason you worked hard was because you wanted to reach people. If you teach a workshop in person, you reach the 20 people in that room. But if you record that same workshop once, you can keep teaching for years on autopilot. This is the concept of leverage, and it's something I talk about in my upcoming book, The Ladders of Wealth (you can pre-order it now). A lot of people will look back...