Report #6 Message from a founder

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Our purpose remains unchanged

“Unlock the potential of the new economy to leave behind a better world” and to us that means high quality work, reasonably priced, efficiently delivered for conscious businesses. This year's focus was squarely on elevating quality of work.

All said and done, I feel we delivered some exceptional work, delivering genuine ROI & value for our clients, and a small but mighty team of very seasoned practitioners. The focus on senior team members is a critical strategy to ensure Harvey delivers impact with less reliance on Beck and I. In 2-3 years my personal goal is to be involved in fewer projects but still hands on in those, which means less time spent on managing the business.

A recent co-working day at Hub Southern Cross, Back: Simon, Alex, Si. Front: Sarah, Becky and Celine

There were short term sacrifices

For about 3 months I worked way more (12-18 hrs a day) than is healthy or sustainable. It was a sacrifice Beck and I were willing to make (maybe not as significant as it ended up being) to ensure we meet client expectations, improve our processes, manage cashflow, create space for the team to learn and grow while managing a sustainable business. It was a result of scope creep, investing in development frameworks, learning and ramping up new senior team members.

Those short term investments have lasting reward

Months later, our 3 year old had a bike accident (no shoes + toe + ebike + spokes = 🤕) that led to emergency surgery, my everything stopped - with 1000% of my emotions and attention focused on him. The good news story, however, was that Beck and I could stop because our team delivered without missing a beat, and our clients showed nothing but compassion. Those moments remind us why we’ve built Harvey the way we have: values-led, human, and grounded in genuine relationships.

It’s nice to zoom out from the daily rollercoaster of being a parent + business owner.

We are grateful for the wonderful humans we work with, at the conscious organisations we get to help. We got to learn about new impact areas for us, including period products, ethical finance, cleaning, conscious gifting, first nations knowledge systems while continuing to have impact in regular sustainable fashion, construction, travel, and food & beverage.

It’s a positive sign we’re working mostly with long term / repeat clients, with our longest ATEC & Jasper nearly since day 0.

We got a few things wrong

We over-invested and discounted by about $50k; we had significant scope creep on a few projects that we had to make up for; we had one excellent team member who decided Harvey wasn’t right for them and left us; a bunch of those little monthly subscriptions started adding up costing us probably $20k before we optimised it; we didn’t do much advocacy or community building;

Probably most importantly we didn’t have enough time (patience/sleep) for our kids; something we know many parents are struggling with, an eternal challenge in the modern age?

Dang challenging, but we wouldn’t change it

So every few months when Beck and I are broken, questioning our life decisions and why we are in the situation we’re in, we quickly realise that the grass is greener - nothing is perfect. It’s hard, and while alternate work/family/financial situations are appealing, there are so many things we’re grateful for and wouldn’t change for the world.

Looking forward FY26 is already off to a cracking start, launching more great brands & websites, a few new fabulous clients (and our long term favourites), 3 new team members and Celine on maternity leave.

Over the next few years we’re hoping we can make a greater impact in Sustainable Buildings, Ethical Finance, Clean Energy & First Nations.

As always we’ll do that by continuing to focus on quality work, client satisfaction & happy team.

Dive deeper

This Impact Report covers FY24-25, broken into 7 parts, plus this executive summary. It’s a lot of info, which some people love and many probably aren’t interested in but we do it for transparency & accountability.