One year ago, our executive team was altogether sharing a call to discuss our next business moves. Despite having the whole team together, the call was silent. The sounds of silence weighed heavily in the air. Jon, Mike and I (Pat), all sat deeply thinking about the future of SherpaDesk, the sprouting seed out of our previous venture, bigWebApps HelpDesk. Any founder, business owner or team manager is familiar with this feeling. For two years now we had been betting big on our new service, SherpaDesk, but growth was lackluster.
"We could try a partnership with Salesforce." Mike said with uncertainty.
Our team was unsure. We have always believed in the most expert of service and quality in what we deliver, but we were struggling to move the needle despite our resources being at an all time high.
We were profitable, but we had no time and no growth.
Despite working harder and harder, nothing was changing.
What are we doing wrong?
Business is difficult. And SherpaDesk has been no exception to that experience of tough business. However, since the day of that conversation our team has made a few moves that have put us in a phenomenal place to achieve our goal of serving professional service firms up to a world-class degree.
We exited our meeting with a long-term plan to re-calibrate. We aimed to learn from hundreds of business experts across the country and to build a winning gameplan from there.
In 2016, we completed two amazing business accelerator programs across the country. One in Silicon Valley working with world-class software professionals and one in Boston, MA working with prestigious strategizers and customer success champions.
After months of learning with top professionals, we exited the program energized and relocated parts of our team to Silicon Valley where we soon onboarded a new hire, our first marketer, a content storyteller in October.
Since then, we called upon hundreds of our customers, we sent emails and awarded our
famous yeti hats in the mail as we sought to narrow in on the most critical pains to deliver on something useful to professional service firms.
We were focused. Full of hope and determination.
We are so thankful for the time our customers lent us as we learned about what really mattered. With everything we have learned, our business is moving with great momentum allowing us to deliver on something big in 2017 starting today.
The month of April marks big changes.
Our difficulties have led us to this point where we see ourselves to grow into the best business we can be.
What to expect from SherpaDesk in 2017:
A focus on relationships & freedom of lifestyle
We learned professional service professional want freedom to create and deliver a personal touch on projects. They value personalization and relationships but are weighed down by administrative tasks preventing them from doing what the love with the mobile lifestyle they envisioned. Every move we make to simplify and consolidate the energy draining administrative tasks that hurt this industry.. Our ultimate goal is for admin tasks be so easy they forget they ever existed.
Our journey to catalogue the pains of professional services
Each month, our content team will expend all of their efforts on speaking to one major pain of professional services. We will use our prime location in Silicon Valley to bring the brightest, most notable sources on critical topics right to the inbox of our audience. To start, this April, we will be covering the difficulties of running an effective operation.
Our transparency
We have set out to openly discuss our big bets, our big wins and our big losses. To start with transparency, we have a goal of reaching $1 million in ARR by the end of the year, 2017. You can check back in on us in December, you can email us at anytime and we will share how it is going. You will hear about everything we did to be more effective, more efficient and more profitable.
We have redesigned our website & our blog & our brand
There's nothing more powerful than a website that just feels like an adventure atop a blissful mountain. Our new website delivers functionality and world-class design. Play with the new designs. Travel back onto the waybackmachine.com to truly see how far we have come
A Salesforce Integration
Mike's prophecy has come true and SherpaDesk now integrates seamlessly with Salesforce.
Professional services is the most competitive space in business. It's grueling. The hours can be long. The business can be sporadic and the stress levels high. Online resources are abundant and redundant.
At SherpaDesk, we hope to play as a critical resource in lifting the stresses and creating the lifestyle professional service pros want.
