{ "lastChecked": "2025-11-05T15:21:59.808Z", "posts": [ { "id": "4157248136983629110", "title": "Culture starts at the top", "slug": "culture-starts-at-the-top", "published": "2025-07-27T13:44:00-07:00", "updated": "2025-07-28T04:29:42-07:00", "excerpt": " Culture starts at the topIt was mid-2020, right after the pandemic lockdown, when we saw a huge surge in demand for our services at division5.At that time, we were a team of about...", "content": "

 



Culture starts at the top

It was mid-2020, right after the pandemic lockdown, when we saw a huge surge in demand for our services at division5.

At that time, we were a team of about 15 people, and to meet the growing demand, we needed to hire quickly.

Up until then, we didn’t have a formal set of values. Culture wasn’t something we had intentionally built—it was just something we lived.

When you’re fewer than 10 people, you can influence culture directly through your actions and behavior. But as you grow, it becomes harder to maintain that influence, so I realized we needed to define a set of values that would guide us as we scaled.

But I made a mistake.

I focused too much on the social aspect of culture and lost sight of the business side.

Build culture with business in mind

If you think about it, it makes sense. An organization’s culture should not only make people feel good about their work but also drive results. In fact, good results help people feel good about their work—they’re interconnected.

So, after a couple of years heading in the wrong direction, I went back to the drawing board. I simplified our culture down to its essentials, based on what our customers valued and what made them come back to us repeatedly. It made sense for our culture to be built on three core principles:

These aren’t unique to division5. They’re fundamentals that can apply to almost any service-based business.




Trust

Trust has always been central to our culture, both in the initial approach and the refined one. It’s essential in every professional relationship. If I don’t trust you to do a good job, how can we work together? And it goes both ways—if you don’t trust me as a leader to make the best decisions, how can you follow me?

By trust, I don’t mean blind faith without oversight. But to do their best work, people need to feel trusted that they will deliver.

Responsibility

I hate telling people what to do—and I hate even more telling them how to do it. As an employee, I would dread working in an environment that didn’t allow me to own my work.

At division5, we expect people to take full ownership of their roles. This leads to more fulfilling careers for individuals and better results for the business. So, we hire people who don’t shy away from responsibility.

Accountability

Accountability is essential for a strong culture. This was one of my biggest mistakes when I first tried to implement culture—I focused too much on trust and collaboration, and not enough on accountability. While trust and caring are vital, without accountability, there’s little motivation to avoid bad behavior.

Over the years, I’ve learned that you get what you tolerate. If you tolerate slacking, poor results, or low commitment, that’s what you’ll get. Accountability means rewarding good behavior just as much as addressing poor performance. Culture starts at the top, if you don’t proactively work to build the culture you want, that will not be the culture you will have.



Culture starts at the top

One lesson I’ve certainly learned is that culture starts at the top. As a leader, it’s your responsibility to shape and steer the culture in the right direction. The best way to do this is by leading through example, hiring the right people, and not tolerating behaviors that go against the culture you want to build.

", "category": "Entrepreneurship", "readTime": "3 min read", "labels": [], "author": { "displayName": "Engjell Rraklli", "image": { "url": "//www.blogger.com/img/blogger_logo_round_35.png" } }, "images": [ { "url": "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6CV6kTVlxgjA36P8XO4Al8gaPycuSZuR5HVgH9SR839ffF9-YVCL5IUe5yxzgLh1hag3w-57rpBB1XasVQVMZmq9zPTelatHTMHs8OdeEhwvOrnvOV4DILOf-qvhhpK8k-o52tpof2hZht4o-HSm3cUC_aCH_btAR7d1daXUPY5-PlwmaW8J9xofAKLs/w640-h426/DSC0091.jpg", "width": 1200, "height": 630 } ], "campaignCreated": true, "campaignId": "eZj3D6" }, { "id": "2188298756829490254", "title": "Provide a service people love to share", "slug": "provide-a-service-people-love-to-share", "published": "2025-07-27T13:43:00-07:00", "updated": "2025-07-28T04:25:45-07:00", "excerpt": " Provide a service people love to share.A few months into my entrepreneurial journey, I was trying to figure out how to stay in business.Without connections, it’s tough—especially when your clien...", "content": "

 



Provide a service people love to share.

A few months into my entrepreneurial journey, I was trying to figure out how to stay in business.

Without connections, it’s tough—especially when your clients are businesses.

Most collaborations in the B2B space happen within internal networks. You need a strong value proposition to gain customers.

So I cherished every client I got

I did my best to deliver exceptional service and make my clients happy.

Profit wasn’t my priority at that time.

Maybe that was a mistake. I’ve left so much money on the table, but I wouldn’t change a thing.

Some clients referred us to others. Slowly but surely, we built a customer base that kept coming back. Not only that, they promoted our services to their inner circles until we had to hire just to keep up with demand.

Unwittingly, we were able to provide a service people love to share.

Word of mouth is the best marketing strategy



For the first four years of division5, we acquired customers solely through word of mouth. We spent no money on marketing or sales; we just focused on the service we provided and the relationships we built.

It’s a slow way to grow, but it ensures you get the basics right.

To get promoted, you need happy customers. To have happy customers, you need to provide quality service.

It’s simple, right?

This approach forces you to continually improve, stay in business, and grow.

I believe every service-based business should double down on the quality of their service and the value they deliver before jumping into fancy marketing tactics.

Marketing won’t help you if your customers aren’t happy. 

Give give give then ask

As a service provider, you will always face different dilemmas:

I face these questions every day.

But here’s a lesson I’ve learned: Giving first often leads to receiving more later.

Sometimes, offering free advice makes someone come back for your service.

Other times, helping a client without charging for that extra 30 minutes builds a stronger relationship and leads to long-term work.

When people see that you’re invested in the relationship, they’re more likely to invest in it too.

A few years ago, I spoke with a fellow service-based business owner who wanted to charge clients for the time he spent sending them quotes. I don’t judge him—everyone can run their business as they see fit. But if I were deciding whether to work with him, I probably wouldn’t choose him.

Nobody has to work with you. It’s always a choice. So, help your clients keep choosing you.

Make your customer’s success, your priority



When you provide services, it’s not about you—it’s about your clients.

If your customers are to work with you, what value do you bring to them?

Show them you understand their business needs. Show you can help them and they will gladly pay for your service.

Put the customer at the center.

If you genuinely care about your customers and their success, they’ll appreciate it and keep hiring you.

Business is simple

We tend to overcomplicate things but in reality, business is simple. Running a successful service-based business, means getting the basics right.

Provide a valuable service, keep customers happy and serve as many customers as you can.

How do you know you are doing the right things? If you provide a service people love to share, that’s a great indication that you are headed towards the right direction.

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Your service is your brand.

As a young entrepreneur, I was fascinated with Apple’s brand.

The idea that two tech guys could build a multi-billion-dollar company was inspiring, to say the least.

Being a tech enthusiast and an aspiring entrepreneur, it really resonated with me.

So, I dove headfirst into reading countless articles on how to build a great brand.

Some of them emphasized the importance of a memorable name. Others discussed how crucial the logo and font selection are. Over time, I’ve come to realize that while these elements matter, one thing matters much more:

The experience your customers have with your service.

That’s what a brand truly is.

It’s not your logo, it’s not your font, and it’s not your name. To put it simply and clearly:

Your service is your brand

There’s a direct correlation between your customers’ experience and your brand.

If the experience your customers have with your service is good, then your brand is good. If it’s bad, the brand is bad.

Take Apple as an example. What immediately comes to mind is premium quality. That’s the experience I’ve personally had with Apple products, and it’s also the experience most others have had. Over time, that consistent experience shaped Apple’s brand identity.

You can’t force a specific brand perception if it’s not rooted in reality.

A cool name won’t hide the fact that your service sucks. A well-designed logo won’t cover for poor communication, and a good font won’t compensate for a bad experience.

The best and easiest way to create a good brand is to focus on delivering the best service you can.

From my experience, three ingredients make up a great service:

Communication

When you provide a service, the way you communicate matters a lot. I don’t mean how well you articulate or how concise you are, but how well you understand your customer.

You’re a great communicator when you’re a great listener.

How can you provide a great service if you don’t listen to your customers? It all starts with understanding their needs and doing your best to help them.

Then, be as clear as possible.

Set expectations straight, be clear about your pricing, be clear about what your service entails, and be clear about what you need from your customers. Clarity helps build trust, which is the foundation of every relationship.

When you provide services, your relationships are your biggest assets.

Transparency



It happens from time to time that I hire different service providers.

I hate it when I have no idea what’s going on. They might be doing a great job, and everything might be going according to plan, but if they don’t tell me, how am I supposed to know?

On the other hand, there are many cases when things don’t go well, and I only learn about it at the very end when there’s not much that can be done.

While providing services, I’ve put myself in my customers’ shoes. I’ve realized that if you’re as transparent as you can be, they’ll appreciate it. Not only that, but it will also help you provide a better service overall.

I see my relationships with my customers as partnerships where we are both invested in their success.

So, as in every healthy partnership, be transparent.

Transparency breeds trust and helps build an even stronger relationship.

Reliability

Last but not least, the third ingredient is reliability.

This one shouldn’t need much explanation. If I hire someone to do a job for me, I need them to be reliable. I need to get the service on time, at the right quality, and within the agreed-upon expectations.

If a service provider can’t provide this level of reliability, I’ll simply go elsewhere.

Your customers will do the same when you constantly miss deadlines or under-deliver. To be reliable, don’t over-promise. Promise only what you can deliver, and do your best to deliver just that.

Many service providers offer the world but fail to deliver. I’d know—I’ve made this mistake myself. It might help you land the contract, but it won’t help you retain a customer.

Optimize for relationships, not for profit.

division5 has customers dating back eight years. They keep coming back because they know they can trust me and that I’m reliable. Prioritizing relationships is the best investment you can make.

Don’t build a brand, deliver a great service.

If I could give advice to my younger self, this would be it.

Don’t focus on building a brand. Brands aren’t logos, names, colors, or fonts. Brands are by-products of great services or great products.

Focus on improving your service and delivering an extraordinary experience.

The brand will follow.

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Challenges running a service-based business.

In May 2015, I finally took the first step and founded division5.

Picture this: A 23-year-old with no connections, no money, no references, and no experience.

How hard could it be?

That’s exactly what I thought. How hard can it be…

Boy, I had no clue.

I wanted to build a game development company, but soon after starting, we found ourselves without money. The only way to keep the business going was to provide software development services.

I guess this was the first big lesson in my entrepreneurial journey: The market doesn’t care about what you want to do

Over the years, I’ve faced my fair share of challenges running a service-based business. Here are a few:

Finding Customers

In business, the most important thing is finding customers you can serve.

Without customers, there is no business.

In a service-based business, your service depends on three things:

If you have references and referrals, people can judge quality and speed from those. Good references allow you to charge a higher price.

I had none.

People had to trust me based on how I presented myself—and on price. So, I aggressively offered low prices to acquire new customers.

It worked!

Soon, we had our first projects, and I had to hire my first employees.

Then came the real test: delivering.

Promise and Deliver the Best Service You Can



In the rush to close a deal, I sometimes promised the world.

I’m sure everyone running a service-based business has, at least once, promised more than they could deliver, or taken on more than they could handle.

The key isn’t to promise the best service possible—it’s to promise the best service you can actually provide and then deliver just that.

This was a hard lesson for me.

You need to be honest with yourself about what you can deliver, and then be honest with your customers.

Over time, I’ve learned that beyond expertise, three ingredients make up great service:

If you combine these with your expertise, you’ll deliver great service, and your customers will keep coming back.

But unless you’re a solopreneur, you don’t provide services alone.

You also have a team working with you—and that’s where things get tricky.

Hire Great People, Build a Great Culture

I wanted to build a business that delivered high-quality services. But in the beginning, our service was far from high-quality.

It was average at best.

As we took on more customers and division5 grew, I realized that if I wanted to provide great service, I needed to hire great people and build a culture focused on the quality we aimed to provide.

In the end, every service-based business needs three things:

You need strong leadership to set the values and vision, great people to live those values, and a culture that promotes them.

At one point, we doubled our headcount in two months. Our processes weren’t ready for that. Our culture wasn’t ready for that.

The result? Our service suffered—until we had the hard conversations and made changes.

Future Challenges


Every stage of business brings new challenges. As division5 grows, I know new challenges will arise. But after nearly a decade facing challenges running a service-based business, I’m more than ready to take them on.

Each challenge is a new opportunity to improve your business.

Don’t fear them—embrace them, find solutions, and learn the lessons.

They’ll definitely serve you in the future.

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Entrepreneurship is a rollercoaster

If there is one advice I wish someone told me before starting out is this :

Entrepreneurship is a rollercoaster. Be humble during the highs, don’t despair during the lows. The journey is long and full of twists.

When I started division5, the business I have been building and scaling for the past 9 years, I had no idea what it meant to run a business. So obviously I had no clue of all the ups and downs I would experience along the way.

Little did I know that entrepreneurship is a rollercoaster. 

One time, I didn’t have the money to cover the monthly expenses. Another time, we had so much demand we were not able to keep up.

It’s crazy how fast things change and you go from the top of the world one day, to feeling you are an utter failure the next one.

However, there is one thing I have learned during the years.

Don’t take business decisions based on emotions.



You will almost always make a mistake.

Been there, done that.

This is easier said than done though.

I can’t recall how many times I wished to yell at a customer for being irrational.

Or how many times I had the feeling of giving up because all the effort I was putting in, was not yielding the right results.

You very badly want to scratch the itch, give in to whatever emotion you are going through and let it all out.

Don’t.

It will be bad and you won’t like the result.

Emotions are not a good way to do business.

If you are feeling strong emotions on something business related, sleep on it. If you have a sparring partner, talk about it with them. But don’t decide anything until you can make a clear-headed decision.

This brings me to my next point.

You will need support.



Let me tell you a story.

I had this one friend a few years ago who was quite supportive of me. As soon as division5 started to grow, we started drifting apart.

Not only was he no longer supportive, but he also did his best to belittle what I was achieving. I think he still does.

You don’t need these kinds of people in your life.

Hate never comes from above, always from below.

The only people who hate on you are those who are less successful than you. More successful people don’t think about you at all—they have other things on their minds.

So, find people who support you, who can teach you things, and who genuinely want to see you win. Everyone else will drag you down.

Entrepreneurship can be a very lonely journey. It’s better if you don’t travel alone.

Buckle up; it will be a long journey.



After almost 10 years of doing business I’ve learned a thing or two about entrepreneurship.

My key takeaway is: buckle up; it will be a long journey.

Entrepreneurship is a rollercoaster.

Don’t despair when things are bad, don’t celebrate when things are good. Set emotions aside and surround yourself with people who support you and can teach you things.

Most important of them all, enjoy the ride, it can be a very fulfilling one.

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A Service-based business sucks! Products are cool.

A Service-based business is not sexy.

It is boring! You need a product to be a cool business, right?

If you would have told me 10 years ago that I would be running a service-based business, I would have not believed you.

I used to be part of the problem. I thought services suck but then I found myself providing services to keep my business afloat. I kept trying to pivot the company from a service-based business to a product business. All for the wrong reasons. 

Here is why:

Reason #1 – Services are tightly coupled to the owner / founders.

As division5 grew, I noticed our customers were more connected to me than to the business. I was doing the communication, I was solving their problems and essentially making sure the service we provided was right.

I hadn’t set up a structure to decouple myself. In my defense, I couldn’t, we didn’t have the money. In order to build a structure you need to pay people. So I did most of the stuff myself.

I thought services would always rely on me. As we kept growing though, I started hiring more people and built better systems. The more systems I implemented, the less I was needed.

Reason #2 – With services you don’t build an asset, with a product you do.

When you provide services oftentimes you need to hire people who do the work and find customers who need the work. So your product is the outcome of the work someone in your company does. If that person leaves or if that customer leaves, you are left with nothing and you need to hire someone else or find a new customer.

What I failed to realize back then is that you can build systems and processes which strengthen the service and lower the dependencies you might have. For example, you might tightly couple the expertise to your business and share it with new people when they join. This way, someone leaving does not impact you as much as it could.

Reason #3 – Services don’t scale.

When I heard stories about product companies increasing in valuation and growing super quickly, I started believing that service companies don’t scale. As a matter of fact, I was having a hard time scaling so I inherently assumed it was something to do with my type of business.

Thing is, every business scales. They just have different bottlenecks and different challenges. Oftentimes your business doesn’t scale because of your inability to scale it – as it was in my case. Build the right systems, hire the right people, solve the right problems and you will grow.

Don’t cheat on your business.





So as I attempted to build the product that would grow my business, I failed to grow the actual business. You know, the one that was bringing in profit and solving customer problems. And I did that over and over again until I learned what was probably the most important lesson I have learned in my entrepreneurial journey.

If you want to grow a big business, you need to focus.

Don’t follow the trend, don’t follow your passion, that cool idea you thought of yesterday? Drop it. Don’t diversify. Keep doing what you do until you improve every aspect of it. If you stick with that service for an extended period of time, your service will improve and eventually, your business will grow. But changing directions causes you to start from zero once again.

The truth.

Building a successful service-based business has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. It’s not about being sexy, it’s about solving problems, building relationships, and making a real impact.

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