“The way you do anything is the way you do everything.”
It’s a phrase you might hear an overly aggressive high school football coach deliver, or a family saying passed down from grandpa to aunt to nephew. A funny quip that has a kernel of practicality hidden in the middle.
The way you do anything is the way you do everything.
Charlie, our Atlanta manager, heard the saying from a high school wrestling coach (surprise surprise) and shared it with us when we needed it most.
It was June 2018 and we were just opening our third market, Washington D.C. It was posing complicated problems that we were having a tough time solving. Delivery requests were coming in from all directions and we didn’t have nearly enough drivers to cover demand.
We were in a position far too familiar for most startups: panic mode.
Our launch team dropped everything and began brainstorming ideas to recruit drivers and drum up interest from local pickup truck drivers. It was a new problem that was frustrating and tedious at the same time. Good ideas and bad ideas flew around the room grasping to establish the first step in solving the problem.
How do you convince pickup truck owners to apply? How do you find truck drivers? Do you follow a truck around town until it parks somewhere and low-key strike up a conversation with the driver? (That was one of the bad ideas flying around.)
After weeks of trial and error without significant progress, the overwhelming recruitment woes began creeping into the rest of our responsibilities and our overall attitudes.
That’s when Charlie chimed in:
“The way you do anything is the way you do everything.”
It immediately struck a chord.
The way we wake up early is the way we plan a productive day is the way we create driver ads is the way we develop the most effective recruitment strategy is the way we help our operations team is the way we provide the best possible customer experience is the way we grow a 3rd successful market.
The domino effect includes tough decisions, determination and patience, but usually starts with a seemingly inconsequential decision.
That simple, timely phrase realigned our focused and reminded us that major improvement is nothing more than a culmination of small, seemingly insignificant choices that add up over time.
Two weeks later, Washington D.C. was our fastest growing market.
