My team and I are focused on growing and getting better day after day. It’s also good to take time now and then to reflect on how far we’ve come and use this reflection to inform our goals for the future.
To mark the middle of the year (or so), I asked each team member to think back on the half of the year that’s behind us and call out one achievement that they are particularly proud of. And we each set a goal for the remainder of 2018.
This is the type of thorough, deliberate professionalism that we bring to the office day-to-day as well as to each of our client projects. Meet each of my team members and learn a bit more about them below.
Amy VanElsacker
Accomplishment
This year has been a busy one for me both professionally and personally. As a team we worked hard on several major marketing initiatives over the first half of the year. Amongst several other major “life events” in 2018, I am getting married in August! Being able to balance a busy work life and a busier-than-usual personal life and turning out solid marketing that I am proud of is an accomplishment for me.
Goal
The “day-to-day” in our office is endlessly busy. It’s hard to find time to dedicate to the extra stuff. I have a long “to-do” list of marketing/design/client relationship initiatives I am excited to get moving on. My goal is to cross off as many of those as I can in the second half of 2018.
Michael Carey
Accomplishment
We are always looking for new opportunities for our clients. This spring, we found some great projects in Chatham and Calumet Heights that we will help bring to market this fall. These rehabs of 4- to 5-bedroom brick single family homes will feature contemporary floor plans and quality finishes, at price points below (sometimes well below) $250,000. Getting to know new-to-us neighborhoods, seeing a high volume of homes, and, soon, offering beautiful homes at very accessible prices has been challenging, labor intensive, and, frankly, really fun.
Goal
When our team works in concert, we amplify each other’s talents. Excellent work from each of us creates space for all of us to be better in our respective roles. For the second half of 2018, I’m focusing on strengthening my intra-team communication to continue making our output more efficient and creative.
Hannah Clark
Accomplishment
My big accomplishment for 2018 so far would be passing my broker exam and becoming more efficient in my role of office administrator/executive assistant to Jason.
Goal
I’m only 9 months into this role and this industry, so I’m still learning a ton. My goal for the rest of the year is to keep soaking in everything I can about, and to grow into my “quarterback” position, as Jason likes to call it.
Sarah Aldrich
Accomplishment
After putting a ton of time and effort into redesigning our website and launching it around the beginning of 2018, we were really proud of our work and wanted more people to know about it. I researched digital marketing awards and decided to submit our site to the Awwwards. We were awarded an honorable mention in March and not only did we get a cool certificate, we also gained a bunch of web traffic from our submission. It inspired me to think of unconventional ways to market — sometimes by marketing the marketing itself!
Goal
Launch a program that synthesizes our disparate marketing efforts to leverage each of our different channels in concert — so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A major goal of this program is to improve on quantifying the ROI of our marketing efforts.
