Five years ago I moved house, had a baby, and started a business. All in the same month.
It wasn’t planned that way (baby surprised us 6 weeks early). It was stressful and scary.
It was also exciting.
I sent an email to a few hundred friends announcing this new recruiting firm, and my then business partner and I set our attention to the obvious micro-tasks: what would we call it? What would be our unique angle? What type of entity did we need? Who would do our taxes?
Then a deposit came in from adidas, and the busywork became irrelevant. There was work to do; a promise to keep.
Then two more came in. Three clients, and I had barely set up my desk. That didn’t matter though, because my daughter was born 6 weeks early — now I wasn’t at my desk, I was performing talent searches from the NICU, where we lived for a month.
My first 3 clients didn’t even know who to make their checks out to, because the business didn’t have a name or a bank account.
My daughter got healthy enough to come home, we celebrated, and the next year was beautiful chaos.
At home (which eventually did have furniture) we were experiencing all the joys of new parenthood. At work I was making big promises to my clients and doing whatever it took to keep them.
Things evolved. My business partner I parted ways, and I was on my own. Clients kept referring new clients. “Can you find us a Design Director?” Yes. “Can you find us a CFO?” OK. I started building my own team, we became Intro Limited.
We grew more professional, more methodical, more specialized. Expanded from LA into NYC, and beyond. But ultimately we kept doing the same thing: Making big promises, and then keeping them.
I’m normally the forward-thinking type, but every year around this time, this origin story reoccurs to me and overwhelms me with gratitude.
I’m grateful for my wife, who not only tolerated this whole endeavor, but got in the trenches with me.
I’m grateful for my healthy daughter. When she was a tiny baby hooked up to a mass of tubes in that glass box, friends reached out with encouraging stories: “My kid was in the NICU too, and now she’s the tallest in her class. You’ll see!” (They were right.)
I’m grateful to all the businesses who prioritize people and trust us to recruit and build their teams.
I’m grateful to the friends who trust us enough to recommend us to those businesses.
I’m grateful to my international team, Alyssa, Bastien and Cosima, who do incredibly hard work with integrity and style.
And I’m grateful for this exceptional community that keeps snowballing as a result of this work we do. The whole objective, after all, was to surround ourselves with those who inspire us.
Happy Thanksgiving.
