Ask most people what a worker bee is and you'll hear a familiar description. It's the dependable one, the person who keeps their head down, takes on the jobs nobody else wants and keeps everything running, while somebody else collects the credit. Plenty has been written about the worker bee mentality, and a lot of it reads like a cautionary tale about being passed over. In that version, being the worker bee is a trap, and the smart move is to grow out of it.
Part of that picture is fair. The worker bee's jobs are rarely glamorous, and many of them get done quietly, without anyone stopping to notice. But that picture rates the bee on credit and promotions, and that isn't how we keep score. We are serious about outcomes, not about egos. From where we stand, there's honor in being the worker bee, and humility too.
The honor is in showing up for a client and treating their business like it's our own. That includes the jobs nobody else wants, which are usually the ones that move a business forward. For us, it means going above and beyond for every client and being the same people answering their emails, calls and text messages one year from now. It also means setting a goal at the start, going after it every day, and changing the route when the numbers point to a better one, never changing their goal.
The humility is in letting the results speak for themselves, rather than chasing a quick bump, the clicks and likes that look good in a report and then fade. We stick with the quieter jobs that get a client where they want to go.
In practice, that shows up in something as everyday as an ad campaign. We're in a client's campaign report daily, checking in and looking for the next thing to improve, and we manage it quietly, so the client gets the results without hearing from us every time something moves. About the numbers, we're unrelenting.
None of that is the fast route. A quick bump shows up in a report right away, while the results we're after take longer to build because they're meant to last. At the start, we tell a client exactly that instead of promising otherwise.
That's the worker bee we see. This is how we are and how we're always going to be. Behind our icon there's a family story as well.
Our ethos is the worker bee. For our clients, and everything we do.
If you'd like to talk, we're at hello@vboadv.com.