Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending the Kick-off Breakfast for Denver Startup Week. As I sat at my table with colleagues and strangers, I started looking around at all of the people in the room, all here to try and learn something new. We may all have different goals and paths to follow, but in the end, we all share a hunger and a drive to do something to better ourselves and our communities.
A hush fell over the room as the speakers took the stage. The first two presenters, Amy Zupon (Vertafore) and Sameer Dholakia (SendGrid), both talked about how they grew their company as CEOs. I wasn’t even a bit surprised that both of them touched on the importance of company culture. Amy had mentioned this idea of “authentic energy,” or the energy that is created through believing in your staff and cultivating a trusting, innovative culture. Sameer mentioned the “necessities:” a checklist that every CEO has to deal with every day. He then reminded the crowd that all of those things were necessary...but not sufficient, and that cultivating a great company culture was the cherry on top of the success sundae (okay, maybe I paraphrased a little while hungry). He stressed the importance of actively leading a team and mentioned that, when it comes to building your team, good people bring good people. This really resonated with me as I reflected upon my first year at Ascend.
As the first two speakers wrapped up, I started to think about how well Ascend has handled growing as a small business and how much,in turn, has helped me grow as an individual. Being fresh out of college when I moved to Denver, I wasn’t sure what a “real” company would be like. How would the culture be? Would I fit in? Would my puns be too much? All of these worries about being myself quickly vanished after my first week. I don’t think the growth I have experienced this year would be nearly as noticeable if I hadn’t been placed in a company that has such an open, motivating culture—a place where I can feel the very authentic energy that Amy Zupon had mentioned.
I didn’t have any expectations when moving to Denver. To me, it was just the beginning of my next chapter. However, I have to say that working for Ascend has blown away any reality that I had imagined for myself. I’ve learned a lot in this short year about the importance of company culture, how to stay relevant in my field, and how to work with different types of clients.
When I started at Ascend, we dove right into our MAVEN Method workshop, only this time, we were doing the workshop for ourselves instead of for a client. That day was the most exciting, exhausting day I’ve had so far in my career. Here I was—the newbie, telling Ascend’s two co-founders what I thought of a company I had just started working for (no pressure, right?). The exercises laid out in this workshop helped me to really understand the bare bones of the company and to further fuel my desire to create work that told a story. After the workshop, I felt that I had gained a true understanding of what defines Ascend as a brand and how I could further propel the company forward through my work.
Right off the bat, we started doing company lunch and going for coffee runs, and before I knew it, I felt like I was a part of the Ascend family. (They even indulged my Gilmore Girls obsession by taking me to one of the Luke's Diner Pop up shops!) Being a designer, I was very worried about how the company culture would be. I had worked in places before where I felt I was always being watched and judged, but Ascend’s co-founders gave me their trust, which in turn fueled my creative confidence.
Working in a trusting culture like the one at Ascend has really helped me grow as a designer. Chad and Steven always encourage me to learn new things, explore options, and if I have an idea, they let me run with it (they’ll simply say, “we can always reel it in later”). I think that is one of the most crucial things that a company can do for a designer. If we, as designers, can’t explore what our imagination delivers, it hurts our ability to think freely because we feel as if we are trapped in a box. Ascend has never made me feel that way, and I am very appreciative of that.
Besides giving me confidence to explore my own creativity, Chad and Steven are huge believers in lifelong learning. They encourage me to read blogs, watch videos, and keep developing new skills every single day. They even bought me a book—how cool is that? I love being able to take a break from creative work and read an article every day on new Sketch plugins, studies about UI design, and more. Having the freedom to continue learning keeps me motivated to become better and better at what I do.
During my time here, we have had a diverse variety of projects and clients. From a marketing campaign for Boulder Public Library to an ecommerce site for Oyster Kits, I have learned a lot about how to really listen to our clients. Seeing as we are a relatively small team, it was very important to be able to be highly versatile in my designs. One of the reasons why I was drawn to Ascend is the fact that they only take on 3 clients at a time. That may seem like a minor thing, but it really influenced my decision to apply for a job there; it said to me that this company cares about quality, not quantity. Knowing that I could be hyper-focused on each client meant that I could really portray their brand to the fullest and think more conceptually.
I’ve always had the mentality that I am the hands for my client. We at Ascend provide a service—if I’m not truly listening to my client, what kind of service would that be? I think that notion is very important to keep in mind when working for an agency. A designer’s personal style can always reflect in their work, but it should never dominate it. My experience so far at Ascend has really helped me to better understand my client relationships and how to use that knowledge to bring their ideas to a reality.
Working for Ascend has been one of the most rewarding things that I have done in my life so far, and I cannot wait to see what the future holds for me and for this company. Cheers to one year—and many more to come!
