Grow the Tree. Share the Fruit.

Our model for Rocketeer Growth at ServiceRocket

Five years ago I was stuck.

I spent too much of my time trying to keep everyone happy.

We almost didn’t make it. We almost ended up as one of the business statistics.

Here’s a short story about how we changed the way we ran the business by looking to nature for our inspiration. I hope it can help those who are really building businesses for their teams (vs just looking for a quick transactional flip)🐬. So let’s get down to it.

I founded our company with $100 Australian Dollars (about $55 USD at that time) and grew it by teaching customers and helping other friends also learn how to teach. We planted seeds. 🌱

Over time we grew, step by step and I had to learn about running a business and also the most valuable lessons of navigating a fast moving industry.

The company grew, we were able to afford more, hire more and serve more. 🪴

But as we spread locations, the expectations of us from our team got larger and larger. Small asks all seemed logical to approve. And if you didn’t approve them, you felt like you were being a bad leader.

The adage ‘Keep your employees happy and everything will be great’ kept ringing in my head and I was reminded of it constantly.

But over time, this almost led to our undoing. We neglected the company itself, we neglected the tree. 🌳.

In some ways it felt like we were stripping the branches, the bark, the trunk, the roots and leaves from the tree then asking “why isn’t there any fruit?” 🪵

The question we wanted to answer: “how we do create a simple, common understanding of how we should run the business?"

And part of that was also a commitment we made to treat our Rocketeers as stewards of the business vs treating them as billable resources. And we came up with the mantra “Grow the Tree. Share the Fruit” as a way to explain our philosophy. 🌳🍇.

So now, Rocketeers at all levels in the company all understand that we are all committed to the one goal. And because we’re owned 100% by employees and board members only, we’re able to live true to that promise - not just in words. 🚀

In future articles I’ll share how we rebuilt our Job Families, Benefits Strategy and Compensation structures to match our philosophy so you can use them in your company as well.