Wonolo
I recently read a comment on one of our Facebook posts that reminds me why I came to work for Wonolo. Sure, marketing for a tech startup is fun and challenging. Everything is new and bursting with creative energy. You experiment, and sometimes fail, and always learn. You set benchmarks to measure against and watch your company grow. Our team is fantastic and full of smart, talented, and caring people.
But with startups, you really have no idea what you might be getting into in terms of culture. There’s always the “work hard, play hard” stereotype, but that’s not so much my thing. I have a 9-year-old to pick up from school, a family to eat dinner with, and books to read at bedtime. Sure, we all work hard, but “play hard” to me involves a park, my family, a dog, and a ball of some sort.
With this notion of company culture, people love talking about it and how to make sure a startup works to maintain the values and purpose that brought them together in the first place as the company grows and matures. I’m so glad to see that Wonolo isn’t just paying lip service to this belief, as it truly lives and breathes our purpose every day: to help people find flexible work while helping companies fill immediate needs. We do this through a mobile, on-demand staffing platform, and I guess that means we’re a tech company, but our “product” is people, and we have vowed to never lose sight of that.
One way we achieve this is by doing Wonoloer jobs. Every employee must do at least one Wonoloer job on our platform every quarter (and must also hire a Wonoloer to do a job for the company each quarter). That way, not only are we testing our platform and user experience, but we also have opportunities to interact in the field with both hiring companies and other Wonoloers. They are an endless source of inspiration as we work side-by-side and gain a deeper understanding of the needs of our Wonoloer community and the businesses who look to us for help. It is immensely humbling to meet these people and know that when we gain new customers, it means more jobs on our platform, and more opportunities for people who need work.
So back to that Facebook comment. When I think about the success metrics for my job, the one that matters the most to me is that when I come to work and create a marketing campaign that helps win new business for Wonolo, people like MaGa, Eternanda, Dominic, and Michelle have the freedom and flexibility to make ends meet on their own terms – no resumes or applications necessary. They can support themselves while they take care of their kids or care for an aging parent, make art or write books or act or play music, or even make extra cash around a full-time job or college coursework.
“I made a difference in someone’s life today” is a much more satisfying measurement of marketing success than increasing advertising click-through rates or a boost in Facebook “likes.” What makes it even better is that I come to work everyday knowing that every single Wonolo employee feels exactly the same way.
