As I write this, liquidfish’s owner and president, Cody, is attending the Metro 50 Awards Dinner. The Metro 50 is a list created by the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber featuring the top 50 fastest growing privately owned companies in the Oklahoma City metro area. This is our third year being included on this list, so in honor of that achievement, I want to write a little about the culture of high expectations and learning here at liquidfish that I believe is the reason we’ve been able to grow so much for this long.
When you start something new, there’s usually an expectation that things are going to go as planned. You decide to renovate a fixer upper by yourself and are confident you’re going to be the next Chip and Joanna Gaines. That’s just how we function as humans: if we knew the house had foundational problems, or that it was going to snow the day after we started demolition, we might not have started work at all.
High expectations happen here at liquidfish too. We start every project with a vision, and that vision is perfect in our eyes: the clients love the ideas and designs first time around, development goes as planned, and we get it all done a week early to boot. We aim high.
But when a seemingly unavoidable wrench (e.g. five people getting sick in the same week – get your flu shots, kids!) is thrown into that timeline, it’s time to bring some perspective into the mix and realize that just because things might not be going exactly to plan, it doesn’t mean failure. It’s words like progress and learning that help us see the big picture and grow.
In my time at liquidfish, I have seen so much progress. Just a small example of this is the work we have put into refining our process. The team here has been working tirelessly on improving the project lifecycle process to increase efficiency, reduce problems and miscommunication, and strengthen the quality of our work overall. We use every project as a stepping stone for growth, going over in detail what we did right and what we could do better next time. We have implemented the good ideas and solutions to problems in a structured way for future projects.
All of these tweaks and improvements to our process have produced advancements in many different areas at liquidfish, from client communications to development. This progress is due in large part to the overwhelming desire and willingness of everyone at liquidfish to learn. One of our core values here at liquidfish is craftsmanship. We define that as, “Finding unique solutions to every challenge and continually improving ourselves, our work and our industry.” This continual improvement comes from our ability to turn any challenge into a learning opportunity. We come out on the other side smarter and ready to use that knowledge to improve our work and better serve our clients.
Although we may feel annoyed or upset when problems arise and get in the way of our perfect plan, it’s important to keep the big picture in mind. Every obstacle is an opportunity, and working toward overcoming those in every new project might be the reason we’ve landed ourselves on the Metro 50 list for the third year in a row!