remembering our first employee

In the early days of Rock Scissor Paper, it was just me and Susie. We tackled all the tasks ourselves, even when we had no idea what we were doing.  Sales? Marketing? Production? Order fulfillment? Designing?  We did it all without any help.  We often would sit and dream out loud about how nice it would be to have an employee who could help with the to-do list that grew in tandem with our business.

I don’t really remember what precipitated our first “employee” Stephanie coming on board, but I do know that she solved a very specific problem for us.  The one task we always dragged our feet on was collection calls. Both Susie and I dreaded picking up the phone and calling people who owed us money.  I wish I could say it was a rarity, but the reality is, that in business, you end up having to do a lot of this.  We really liked most of the people that we sold our products to and it always felt awkward having to call and ask where a check was.

Enter Stephanie.  We call her our first employee, but she wasn’t real. We made her up.  When we had to make those calls, we would use the name Stephanie instead of our own.  “Stephanie in Accounts Receivable” to be exact.  Sounds professional, doesn’t it? We weren’t trying to sound like a bigger company than we were, just trying to find a solution for an awkward situation.

As we used her name more and more, she started to take on a life of her own. One day Susie put pen to paper and did a portrait of what we imagined Stephanie would look like.  Stephanie was in her late 30’s, a thin-lipped brunette with a severe haircut.  With the exception of dark red lipstick, she favored minimal makeup. She always wore collared, white, men’s shirts in an easy-care poly/cotton blend.  Stephanie was very matter-of-fact and not necessarily prone to small talk. Brown was her favorite color. She lived alone with her two cats and in her spare time liked reading mystery novels and collecting Precious Moments figurines.

We hung her portrait directly over the office phone so that we could channel the essence of Stephanie when we needed to. It was an oddball solution to the problem, but you know, it worked! If Stephanie left a message for someone, they inevitably would return the call asking for Stephanie by name and we would put the call on hold and slip into character.

Stephanie “worked” for us back in the days when we ran our business out of Susie’s home.  When we later moved into our studio, we packed Stephanie up and brought her with us.  She doesn’t handle accounts receivables for us anymore, but her portrait hangs on the wall near Susie’s desk.  It actually serves as a great reminder to think creatively about day-to-day problems.

The past year has been difficult for a lot of businesses and we haven’t been immune to it. Our mantra lately has been “Think like a start-up!” meaning, when trying to solve problems, think back to a time when we were just starting out and had less resources available to us.  How did we tackle problems then?  With ingenuity, creativity, a good dose of optimism and of course….with Stephanie!

-Heidi