We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Travis McAshan a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Travis, appreciate you joining us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

Travis McAshan, the Founder and CEO started GLIDE in 2003 with a vision to be “an INDUSTRY LEADER in web design for ROI” with a mission to “Create RAVING FANS by making KICK-AWESOME WEBSITES, providing FANATICAL SUPPORT and delivering quantifiable BOTTOM-LINE RESULTS.” Literally, word for word his vision and mission, LOL. Interesting so far?

Let’s skip forward 10 years! After nearly a decade of making mostly awesome websites, with a few exceptions, and lots of raving fans, he realized there has to be more to life and to running this business. At the same time he came across the TEDx talk by Simon Sinek called Start With Why.

Simon’s premise? “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it!” and he used a handy golden circle to illustrate the point. If only we’d thought to draw three concentric circles and write a book about it?!? JK, but for real genius ideas are the most simple and obvious. You just can’t unlearn this stuff.

What’s the point? The main point of the illustration was that most businesses know what they do, they know the outcome of the work. In our case it’s a marketing website. Good companies know how they do what they do, the systematic process behind the what. But the very best companies, the timeless, legacy-building companies that truly make a dent in the world are the companies that know WHY they do what they do. And not just the CEO, the leadership, the managers, the technicians, everyone.

Anyway, back to the story. So Travis went on a 1.5 year journey of self-discovery. Why did he wake up and go to work every day. What’s the point, why do this at all. Luckily, he’s an avid reader and he connected the dots from another celebrated business author, Michael Gerber who said, “In order for your business to be more than just another job for you, it is vitally important that you identify and articulate your Primary Aim.” He goes on to say, “If your business is to have any meaning beyond work, you must connect with what is most important to you. Your business should be making a healthy contribution to the realization of your dream.”

So he spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about this and settled on two major life goals, 1) to spend time with people he cared about and 2) to help people. But there’s a caveat, he’s a self-professed workaholic. If he had $100 million dollars in the bank or was going to die in a year, he’d STILL be working, no joke. He once spent two full days, while on vacation making a sand castle pyramid larger than a small car. No relaxing, no margaritas. There’s no off switch!

At first, it seemed like there were two opposing forces, a desire to help people, and an overwhelming urge to work. How do you reconcile and find the time to do both? Maybe become a church pastor or work at a non-profit? But he was a maker, with a desire to build things that didn’t exist before. Digital things, with a special emphasis in marketing and communications. The answer it turns out was simple, find people who are already helping people and help them. Booyah! That was it.

At GLIDE, we can’t build wells in Africa but we can help the people that do spread their message! We can’t deliver care packages to cancer patients at scale but we can support the organization that does! And finally, we can’t make Central Texas best tacos but we can help the companies that do and bring joy daily. Can I get an amen?!

So that’s the story but there’s one more piece. The GLIDE “why” behind the purpose, So, if he’s going to work, hopefully they will be big ideas which require others to help and they better be “A” players. Additionally, if he’s helping people then the work will be for other people, so they better be good people that share his core values. Finally, and this is the piece de resistance, the work has to be meaningful, it has to make a difference. Why show up to work at all, why do any job, any work that isn’t meaningful, that doesn’t make a difference, for any significant length of time?

We’re bringing it home! So his why, succinctly stated is, “To work with great people, for great people, to do meaningful work that makes a difference.” This statement will be true to him today as it will be in 100 years, assuming we invent a pill that cures aging. And once that statement and the GLIDE purpose was defined, the puzzle pieces started falling into place. People buy your why and the GLIDE why is doing meaningful work that makes a difference which is the essence of helping people who help others!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Travis Mcashan and I started GLIDE almost 20 years ago. One of my favorite quotes is that an expert is someone who has failed in every possible way in a very narrow field. And while I wouldn’t call myself an expert I am definitely a passionate apprentice when it comes to creating digital experiences that are beautiful, useful and produce lasting results.

My why is working with great people, for great people to do meaningful work that makes a difference. The most important job I have at GLIDE is continually aligning the company to achieve our purpose, to help people who help others, companies like XYZ and staying true to our core values.

The GLIDE mission is to create digital experiences that are beautiful, useful, and produce lasting results. We take what’s special about your brand and use it to tell a powerful story that aligns with business objectives.

What makes GLIDE special is the combination of beautiful design AND over 20 years of experience in user-centered design, content strategy, organic search visibility, conversion optimization, performance and analytics.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

See the initial answer on GLIDE mission that include’s Simon Sinek’s TED Talk (and book) “Start with Why”.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

A couple of years ago, we reached a period of growth where we felt that we needed to balance project based work with recurring client revenue and more long term partnerships. We decided to invest in having our entire team take a Hubspot course called “Growth Driven Design” and to roll out this new way of approaching website design and development to all of our current and future clients. The concept was solid, initially – traditional website design is dead and there are better ways to approach both brand new websites and redesigns.

Everyone in the company took both the individual and the agency course and took certification exams. We created templates for deliverables, proposals and scopes of work, project management and strategy processes and pricing. We closed 3-4 clients on this new service offering and began to host the wishlist workshop that was intended to shape the strategy and agile plan for months of work to come.

And then reality hit. This service offering required a lot of customized work. Some client sites came with a lot of existing issues and code bloat but they didn’t want to pay to fix it first. Some didn’t want to pay for strategy, they just wanted ongoing implementation. Some clients expected launch pad sites up virtually overnight with very little research or planning in advance. Almost all clients expected direct access to high level team members without adequate budgets to involve multiple team members. And our team was getting burned out by the constant unknowns of the agile work needs.

So what did we do? Well, we went off script. We stripped Growth Driven Design down and started to practice what we now call “Continuous Improvement”. With continuous improvement, we make it clear up front that we have to start from a good place – solid research, strategy, analysis, clean code and a prioritized list of what’s next. And we also confirm that nothing is a rush. Monthly sprints are estimated, planned in advance and with plenty of time to test and deploy new features. Clients get results while our team gets to do it right.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.glidedesign.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glide_design/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/glidedesign
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/glide-design/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/glidedesign
• Other: https://dribbble.com/glide_llc

Image Credits
GLIDE LLC