2018 has been an incredibly challenging, yet rewarding year. We learned more in the last year about building Boldr, forging relationships, developing our people, and delivering results than I ever expected.
I’m proud to be working with 200 of the hardest working team members I’ve ever met. I draw on my team for inspiration and I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to be building a Company comprising of such impact-driven individuals. It’s been an amazing experience watching our team build the Company of our dreams. They’re nurturing our purpose and evolving it into ways I never dreamed of. Like any organization, we experienced challenges that pulled at our core beliefs. Fortunately, these experiences have created a deeper foundation for us to act on in the future.
In 2018 we reached most of our strategic goals, a trend that we continued from the prior year. Boldr strives to continue growing responsibly and ambitiously in 2019, bolstered by a shiny new office in Manila, values-driven leaders at all levels, and stronger relationships with advisors and Clients from various backgrounds.
I am humbled and grateful for everyone who has played a part in making this year a success. As we prepare ourselves for 2019, we’d like to take this chance to reflect on some major milestones and lessons learned from 2018. If you’re interested, check out the post below. Again, here’s a huge thank you to everyone who participated in making this year incredibly special and cheers to 2019.
Also read: 2019’s Challenges Become 2020’s Progress
This year, we tripled our Client portfolio. We’re proud to be working with companies that stretch around the globe and across various industries. Through Client referrals, we’ve boosted our presence in Washington D.C. while finding success in building new partnerships in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles. In 2019, we plan to strengthen our relationships in Europe and Asia Pacific by collaborating with more diverse, global partners.
Our Clients have been growing ambitiously and trust us to find new ways to help realize their goals. Just this past year, we developed and provided new services such as Data Visualization and Dashboard Maintenance, Content Moderation, and Outbound Sales in addition to honing up our Data Management and Customer Experience service offerings. More information about these services will be released as soon as we update our website. 🙂
We’re excited to learn and grow with the ever-changing outsourcing industry and we’re even more thrilled by the chance to share what we know with you. This year, we proudly kicked off Boldr’s Purpose-Driven Outsourcing Blog. We invite you to read up on our most recent case study where we helped a flower delivery service company bring joy to its clients. For a story on how we’re making a difference in our community, please check out the photo story about the Basketball Clinic we coordinated with a national basketball coach to instill leadership in our teenage scholars.
New business means new faces, especially at our office. Our team doubled in the last year to over 200 team members. Among them are new folks in key positions: Mari Parker as COO, Andrew Herleman as CFO, and Erlend Johannesen as Director of Operations Support.
Saying hello to so many new team members meant saying goodbye to a precious part of our history–our first office! We traded up to a new home based in the heart of Ortigas, one of Manila’s liveliest central business hubs. The city offers everything that a global company needs — high-speed internet to connect with partners around the world, great restaurants and event spaces for team building activities that inspire us to push the envelope on what services an outsourcing company can and should offer.
Enjoying the milestones we’ve achieved would not be possible if it weren’t for our secret sauce– our People! From Day 1, our team members have access to diverse Learning programs that will help them grow both personally and professionally, from data science courses to business writing, and even one-on-one coaching sessions. Many of the courses taken have been adapted uniquely for each team member based on their own career goals. Nearly 20% of our team members have graduated from professional courses and received certificates testifying to their improved skill sets.
We have several other learning and development programs such as the General Learning Program, a monthly event where we invite a subject matter expert or community leader to speak. We’ve heard from interior designers espousing the benefits of minimalism to founders of NGOs sharing their motivation to do difficult yet rewarding work. The lectures have been popular with our last three months’ average attendance reaching 90%.
Our support for growth goes beyond work as we give every team member the chance to found their own Boldr Club, an opportunity to live and share their passion with others. A few took this as a chance to relax and enjoy themselves by founding a basketball club, a board game club, and a book club. And no, we surprisingly did not have any rules on clubs needing names starting with the letter ‘B.’
Others wanted to be more involved with Boldr’s future so they formed the People Committee, which will champion policies and development programs. We know that other groups like a trekking club, an escape room club, and perhaps even a language club might charter in 2019.
Our only ask for any group is that they have to show how they will empower members and improve their skills, a surprisingly simple but effective guide.
Our team members are not only creative but pretty competitive too. We celebrated Halloween with a huge team costume contest that was absolutely BOOlderific while for winter holidays, a multibracket video game tournament showed us who had the fastest thumbs around town. We also organized a Wellness Challenge where we encouraged team members to compete against themselves for six weeks in pursuit of physical, academic, or social goals. These activities were not only fun but were also instrumental in strengthening bonds within our teams.
Our mission to empower people to grow both personally and professionally has and always will include our Community. This is why we have built strong partnerships with several inspirational nonprofits that focus on giving people access to education and healthier lives. These partnerships include Elevate Lives, which mentors at-promise youth in Los Angeles through sports; Streetlight Philippines, which aids in-crisis and neglected youth in Tacloban; and A Million Voices, which grants comprehensive scholarships to youth in Manila.
As our company grows, we will increase our support for existing and new partnerships. We have already dedicated an entire department, the Impact Team, to researching partners and proposing new and innovative ways our team can contribute to meaningful impact initiatives. We’re proud to say that our team members strongly support giving back to the community, having contributed over a thousand hours of volunteer support over the last year.
Our goals for 2019 are purposely big and audacious and more importantly, open for support from others. If helping people gain access to education and opportunities so that they can lead productive and healthy lives is something you’re interested in, reach out to us. 2019 will include chances for you to sponsor programs and activities that could really make the difference in someone’s life.
Related Read: Building a Global, Purpose-Driven Outsourcing Organization
As much fun 2018 was, we’re ready to welcome the new year. We want to step up our game in revolutionizing the outsourcing industry. That means we will continue to be the purpose-driven outsourcing company that seeks to provide better services to our clients and become an active part of their success. We will nurture and develop our people and always promise to uphold our values: Curious, Dynamic, and Authentic; and most importantly, we will give back to our Community in new and bigger ways.
2019 will be Bigger, Better, Boldr.