The good in the bad

There’s only a pinch of sand left in the 2020 hourglass.

But it’s tough to move on without acknowledging what came before. Years may stand out, but they aren’t solitary. They inform and attach whether we want them to or not. How do we know what feels new without knowing what’s not? Let’s start at the top.

Collectively, we had quite a year. We left a 16 year profession to come work at Bullhorn. We picked up and moved to the city that never sleeps. We welcomed two more members of our team. We celebrated 1st, 5th, 10th, and 40th birthdays. We walked from Kentucky to Indiana and back again a few times. We climbed atop excavators and ate extruded snacks. We selected three Sustainable Development Goals to guide our pro bono program. And we helped a new B Corp announce their status.

We learned that kids and pets can attend meetings. That conducting presentations in our lounge pants inspires great confidence. We got a glimpse of everyone’s reality. Our empathy muscle doubled in size. We discovered space to reexamine and reintroduce ourselves as an impact agency. And we said goodbye in the most unsatisfying ways possible.

As we muted and unmuted, we found a new rhythm. We named a lot of products and businesses (11 of them, to be exact). We worked with clients from Austin to Des Moines to New York City. And we took on new impact clients who wanted to change the world. We focused on doing work to become an anti-racist organization. We realized that our purposeful beginning to the year was a mighty thread tracking our trail. And we kept following it — our eyes not on a prize but on where we could best help.

We learned a lot. We can take some parts with us into 2021, including our ability to be nimble and empathetic. And we can gladly leave pieces behind, like our cranky office chairs and occasional stubbornness.

It’s difficult to predict what the next year will look like. We’re more than ready to take what worked and multiply it.