On Working Together

Behind the Scenes. Three insights about working together.

Trinidad and Tobago has a brilliant motto: “Together We Aspire, Together We Achieve”.

We have been aspiring and achieving together since high school. Elina saw a boy in red trousers skateboarding in the school hall, Dan saw a girl with paint in her hair. We joined our forces to make things happen.

🌙 Efficiency: The best thing about working together is night-time brainstorming, we call it Night-FM. Ideas can’t be conformed to 9 to 5. Creativity often comes unannounced breaking the door with a sledge-hammer when we’re sound asleep. We have a rule that it’s ok to wake each other up at night if there’s a spark of a great idea. Though our cat Loki is the one abusing this rule - his greatest urgent idea is demanding breakfast at 4am.

🧐 Criticism: Giving and receiving criticism is probably the most difficult part. Stepping back from the family-related issues and putting on a professional hat. When it comes to work, we do our best to act like colleagues. We practice radical candour and offer productive advice. Missed deadlines do affect our suppers, but we learn the lesson and revise our rules and communication practices regularly.

⏳ Intensity: While it’s great for business, we love our work too much. We often ask: “Do you wanna stay in and... work?” That’s the red flag when we need to drop everything and go on an adventure.

Eventually, we learned to plan our days-off. Otherwise, we tend to happily continue working 24/7. It never gets boring!

Mindfulness is key - working and relaxing with 100% focus. We have reading breaks with the morning coffee and gaming&movie nights to clear our heads. It all helps get the full throttle energy for all our creative and business endeavours.