It’s been an insane… I mean… interesting year.

The good news is that it’s all positive. Our hard work and dedication have paid off. Here’s a summary of what’s happened.

Growth: We're at 100 people

We’re growing. And we’re growing fast.

We've hit 100 people! We smashed our 50% growth target for the year, and we still have a month left.

Just typing that out is crazy!

Keeping our team happy is priority #1

The talent market is hot, hot, hot. Hiring fast enough is a problem, but retention is probably the most important for us, and we can’t lose focus.

All this growth has no doubt put a strain on our team.

We've had some mis-hires, which have added additional strain, and at times have sacrificed quality because we moved too fast.

We try to balance sales and recruiting to ensure we deliver for our current clients and grow the team at the right pace to deliver for our next clients.

Right now, we're killing it with sales. Our problem is we can't hire fast enough.

We’re recruiting the best people as fast as we can

We continue to look for the best people and not sacrifice quality, and to do that, we're casting a wide net and trying new things to reach a wider audience.

We have four full-time recruiters now. And they’re working hard.

We've reached out to over 600 solution architects—it's a difficult market, but we're on it!

Maturity

We’re poaching senior executives from Fortune 500 companies (Did I just type that?)

We hired two senior executives that I couldn’t be more excited to talk about. It's a long time coming, and a major step toward maturity for Foxbox Digital. Here are the announcements:

Foxbox Digital Hires Former IBM and Accenture Technology Leader, Steve MacKinnon, as Chief Digital Officer

Foxbox Digital Hires Former Deloitte and Lockheed Martin Technology Executive as VP of Engineering

I’m re-focusing on team and company growth and less day to day activities

It’s not that I want to do this, it’s just that I have to do this. It’s impossible to manage everything with all of the growth. Hiring Doug and Steve has given me some breathing room, and I’ve been using that time to set strategic company direction.

We’re hiring ahead of demand to build a better delivery system

The hardest part of agency hiring has to be balancing staffing. You want enough to handle demand, but you don’t want too many when demand is slow. It’s a constant battle.

Having a solid team opens up opportunities and gives us the help we need when we need it.

We made the decision to hire ahead of demand.

Since January, my goal has been to build a bench. However, It hasn't happened simply because sales demand has outpaced our recruiting abilities. We are catching up.

Foxbox Digital powers the X Company

We just published a new case study with The X Company! This was a very cool physical and digital experience project that we’re proud of. Here’s a quote from the client:

You can tell that Foxbox cares. They really wanted to understand what we’re building. The app has a lot of technical complexity. We tried (and failed) building it with another app developer prior to Foxbox. Foxbox nailed it. Ben Brichta, Partner, The X Company.

The X Company is currently active in six markets and rapidly expanding with 5,000 beds in their current portfolio and over $1B in construction activity.

See case study.

I’m writing on LinkedIn again!

• It can be intimidating to see other people succeed.
• We’ve hired 26 people in the past 90 days. Here’s what we’ve learned
• I started Foxbox Digital 3 years ago. We’ve grown from 0 to 60 team members in 3 years. It’s been an incredible run, and we just got started.
• Not every individual contributor (IC) needs to become a manager or go up the ranks.
• Crain’s Chicago Business recognized me as a notable LGBTQ Executive!
• The single piece of advice I can give about hiring amazing engineers is that you should hire for their strong suit, not just because they are full-stack engineers.

THANK YOU!

It’s been an incredible year, and I’m glad to share it with you all. If there is anything I can do for you, please don’t hesitate to reach out.