For Christmas this year our team gathered at the Melting Pot restaurant and enjoyed celebrating 2023 and reflecting on another year together as a team. We wanted to share some 7 of our highlights with the rest of you.
You can read about our previous years here on the blog: 2022 Wrap , 2021 Wrap 2020 Wrap
1. Finished Our Foundation Packet
This year we spent more time defining our concepts and ideas and working on a foundations packet. We had started it last year and it has been a process to get it just the way we want it. This year we were able to finally finish it. With that we now have a packet of concepts and ideas that we have crafted to help articulate who we are and what we value.
Over the past two years we have spent time each week crafting this document and then, word smithing, rephrasing, deleting, and rewriting until we came up with something that we feel is the best version that we have created to date. We recently read through it again as a team and didn’t make any corrections which is saying something since this wasn’t the case for almost two years. We thought you might enjoy reading through some of the highlights of this document so we included it below.
FOUNDATIONS: Defining who we are & what we value most. Our core values.
OUR VISION: For every person to live and work in a space where they can thrive.
OUR MISSION: To be tour guides dedicated to providing others with an exciting experience and clearly mapped out process of finding, designing & creating their own unique space to live, to work, to thrive.
OUR PURPOSE: As image bearers of our Creator, we create and work because He has and continues to create and work.
WHO WE ARE:
OUR PERSPECTIVE: Our work is an outflow of our relationship with God, our families, and our team. Our calling is to serve people to the best of our ability and to trust God with the outcome. Our commitment is to excellence and honesty in everything we do.
OUR CORE VALUES: Creating Redeemed Beaut, a “can do” attitude, and good communication.
OUR BRAND: Creative & character-rich, unexpected & unique – our designs reflect our clients, telling their story & bringing to life a space where they can thrive.
Our goal is to create a profitable business that allows a well-qualified team of people to be well-compensated while they perform a well-balanced workload that is fulfilling but not overwhelming
2. Job Tread
The second thing we’re very proud of this year is finding and using Job Tread. About 2 years ago we were on the hunt for project management software to help our design/build company run more efficiently. While attending KBIS in Orando, FL we had a chance to connect with quite a few different companies but ended up falling in love with the team and the product from Job Tread.
The actual process of onboarding and running our operations with this software took way too long but we are celebrating that we are now completely transitioned over. Thanks to our patient clients whose invoicing wasn’t always the clearest as we integrated with this new platform. The efficiency and clarity we have gained from this product was well worth the effort to transition. Huge shoutout to Job Tread for their amazing customer support as we learned our way through this.
3. Read Estate
The third thing that has really helped this year be a great one is our real estate sales. Overall it was probably one of the most challenging years to navigate with the every changing interest rates and economic conditions but we truly feel so blessed to count this as one of our top years every despite the turmoil.
Lance was gone for a while this summer and we survived. His family adopted a boy from South Africa which is so cool. It made us realize how much we miss Lance when he isn’t around. I guess everyone should take off every now and then to make sure they are appreciated. Anyway, you can all breathe easier now, knowing that Lance is back and is keeping our real estate transactions on track again.
4. Design/Build
We did our largest volume of sales ever in Design/Build projects. We still have so much to learn as we look to gain efficiency and volume but watching these pieces come together slowly but surely has been rewarding. Another huge highlight was getting to strengthen our relationships with past subcontractors and develop some new relationships. Our subs are the backbone of everything we do and so we are only as good as the team of subcontractors supporting us. We tend to have a nack for finding the more complicated and difficult projects but our subcontractors have embraced the challenges over and over to them we are so appreciative. Please don’t ask us for their names. We are trying to keep them for ourselves. LOL – just kidding. We don’t mind sharing their names with our friends and clients.
Tyler has taken our build projects to a whole new level with his superb management skills. He is always working to find a more efficient and cost effective way to do something to save our clients money.
Becca was the star of the design department again this year. A big change for us and for her occurred when she branched off and started her own design company this fall. She is still designing for us but is now working under her own label as a subcontractor. Best wishes to Becca as she launches this new chapter.
We also had the opportunity to partner with Claudia’s sister, Clarita from Old House Love on a project. We keep exploring the options of partnering with more designers as sub contractors so this was a great opportunity to try this out and see how it could work. We are hoping to expand this concept in the future through a model we are calling Tetris….shhh don’t tell Tetris we are using that name. Yes, we still need to find a new name for this before we can really launch this whole platform. Maybe that will come in 2024 or 2025 – who knows.
5. Marketing
One of our goals for this year was to dial in our marketing so that we can know better what our inputs and returns are for our different marketing channels. We still mostly just wing it but maybe this isn’t all bad and helps to keep our content more fresh. However we have been branching out.
A while back we started an email campaign which has done so well and helped us stay connected with so many of you. We are also started a YouTube channel and although we wouldn’t call ourselves experts by any imagination, we do cringe when we look at our first videos so I guess that means we improved, right? Instagram is still where we connect with most of you but we have seen nice growth on our website traffic (Thanks Justin Rule from Sparrow Websites).
And the biggest thanks for this goes to our our marketing team – Bri and Sarah. They crush it week after week to bring you fresh content. How they continue to come up with new ideas I’ll never know and when we go on crazy brainstorms they have a way of taking our rough concepts and curating it into something palatable for you, our audience.
6. Our Airbnbs
We had the vision to take our Airbnbs and use them to create a Chris & Claude Co showroom. We don’t have an official showroom but we have these spaces. And so with this in mind we have been working hard to transform our Airbnb’s into spaces that reflect our style and potential for what a space can become. They have a long way to go yet but we are starting to see our vision being built out. Stay tuned for everything we have in mind for these spaces.
7. Our Clients
Once again we have been so privileged to serve so many amazing people. Getting to walk along side people as they make some of their most impactful financial decisions of their lives is always a humbling experience and one that we truly take seriously. We know that buying the wrong house or spending money in the wrong way on a design/build project can be devastating for a family. However, when the real estate process is handled correctly and a project is well designed and built out it can create some of the most beautiful opportunities for experiencing life and building wealth for generations to come
We want to say a special thank you to our clients. May you be richly blessed as you round out 2023. Thank you for partnering with us to allow us to do what we feel called and privileged to do every day.
