Cheers! 2020 in review and our promise for the new year

As a new year approaches, we wanted to take the chance to reflect on some of the positive things our team experienced this year.

Empodio was founded in the middle of 2019, making 2020 our first full-year as a business. And we’re glad to report that this year was full of growth, learning, and giving. We are fortunate to be in an industry that has only become more crucial in the wave of the health and economic crises — we enable field service-based companies to provide quality service and support with the Salesforce platform.

So with this year-in-review, we’d like to share some key learnings we had, important initiatives moving into 2021, and last but not least, our teams recommendations for a well-stocked bar this holiday season.


3 key things we learned as a business in 2020

  1. Crawl, walk, then run. As advisors, we firmly believe in taking a crawl, walk, run approach to digital transformation. However, when it came to applying our own advice internally, we had some challenges. From hiring too quickly to spending too much time building enterprise practices for our startup, we missed the mark a little.

    We learned to slow down. And to better identify issues and to focus on prioritization. We need to focus on what will help us in the short term in ways that allow us to scale more effectively in the future.
  2. We love our community. Building a business is not easy. From identifying your market fit to setting up processes and practices, through finding the right people to grow your team — it takes an army. In our case, it’s been with the help of advisors, mentors, industry specialists, and the generosity of the community around us that we’re here today. And we are grateful to them all.
  3. Always be learning. We don’t know everything. As a team, we’ve learned to identify our individual and group strengths and cater to them in a way that benefits our company, our partners, and of course our clients. But we’ve also made it a practice to continuously improve ourselves — so much so that’s its a key core value at Empodio.

    Lunch and learns, knowledge shares, and dedicated professional development time for each team member are just a few of the ways we strive to be outstanding.

 

A greater focus on community in 2021

As we mentioned earlier, we exist in large part due to the strength of our community. It’s because of that understanding that one of our major company initiatives for the upcoming year is centered around giving back. Here’s how we plan to do it:

  1. Loop & Tie. First, a partnership with Loop & Tie will help us level-up our gifting game for our clients and partners. We are so grateful to the people we work with and want them to understand just how thankful we are for their roles as key collaborators working to achieve a common goal. Each gift we give is custom to the recipient. Like the local coffee we sent to our VP – Revenue, Stephanie Danielsson, from her new city. And this partnership will only help us deepen the connection we have with our network.

  2. Internal Gifting Year-Round. We are Slack users and have been making use of the HeyTaco! integration to help team members celebrate each other for a few months now. Well, it’s getting an upgrade in 2021! While we feel it’s important to give back to our community, we can’t forget that our team is a vital piece of that. This upgrade will allow us each to gift to each other internally for a job well done all year-round. It’s a little pat on the back that we hope will go a long way.

  3. Be more charitable. What matters to our team and network, matters to our company. So, we’ve asked all employees to identify one charity that they want to champion for the year. As company revenue provides, beyond Pledge 1%, we will be helping to support the charities most important to our team.

Pour yourself a drink and let’s celebrate the year

To close out the year on a high note, pour your favorite glass and give it a raise — here’s to all the good, the hardships we’ve learned from, and the promise of great things to come! Not sure what to pour? No problem, we’ve got you covered with our teams favorites:

  1. David Lamborghini – A nice flavored seltzer on the rocks. Hold the booze please.
  2. Alex Scalzo – Scotch Neat. Or a fine Dry Riesling (It does exist! Don’t believe us, here’s one from a local winery.)
  3. Chris PateraWoodford Reserve Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey. Try it on the rocks or straight up!
  4. Stephanie Danielsson – A tasty Dry Red for dinner, some Bubbly to party, or Bulleit Bourbon to sip.
  5. Alex Bitar – Gin. All Gin, all the time.
  6. Abdul Ibrahim – Negroni, this popular Italian cocktail is made of one part gin, one part vermouth rosso, and one part Campari, garnished with orange peel.

Do you have key learnings you’d like to share from this year? Or at the very least a favorite drink? We want to hear it! Contact us or connect with us on LinkedIn.