When the road gets tough, remeber the mission statement

I thought I would share an email I sent to my organization today. I have mentioned in previous blogs that we are in hyper-growth mode and moving extremely fast. I believe very strongly that when you get into this mode its important to frequently stop and ask yourself, why are we doing this? At the end of the day, despite pressures to grow revenue, we need to do one thing extremely well: provide the most respected and comprehensive spine education available anywhere, online or off. I believe we are on the way to achieving this and if we do, the revenue growth will follow. If we don't we will never be able to build a sustainable business.

Here is how I framed it internally:

"Let’s face it, between travel and workload we are moving 100 miles per hour right now. Couple the pace with the pressure to hit our aggressive revenue & expense targets and it makes for a head to the grindstone work day.

While we continue these herculean efforts, it’s important we all take a step back to remember our primary mission:

To improve the quality of care for individuals with spinal disorders and more common causes of back pain.

We do this by creating the most up to date and accurate education and information on the spine.

I believe very strongly that as long as we conduct ourselves with this in mind the long term growth prospects of this company are tremendous. Therefore I ask that we be especially cognizant of our ultimate mission as we struggle to meet deadlines, deliver results for advertisers and grow revenue. While each of those three objectives are critically important to the life of our organization, ultimately they do not matter if we do not fulfill our primary mission.

So keep up the great work and in the words of Ethan Ash [SpineUniverse VP of Sales & Marketing]: “ At SpineUniverse we got your back.”

Warmest Regards,

Bill Paquin