🌟 ntegrity turns four 🌟

Can you believe it? ntegrity turns four! From one woman with a laptop to 21 staff across the globe, our story is one of growth through ups and downs. Our founder, Richenda Vermuelen, writes about the inspiring ntegrity story and the people who have crafted it…

When I was 16, it was my dream to work for World Vision. I wanted to make a difference in the world.

I studied social work and ended up in Seattle helping people with disabilities find jobs. In the midst of the global financial crisis, I lost my job – only to take up a new role working in social media at my dream organisation: World Vision.

I got comfortable in the new role, using social media rather than social work to make a difference. It was an exciting concept back in 2008!

But life had other plans for me.

When I moved to Melbourne to work for World Vision Australia, I started to notice things were very different back home. I started to get angry. Many thought it was easier to outsource to agencies… Not realising those same agencies would take advantage of their lack of knowledge to pitch ridiculous ideas or keep brands dependant on them. I saw this happen to many not-for-profits and brands I loved.

It was a strange crossroads… to realise that I could help more people working outside World Vision than in it.

4 years ago I left World Vision to start ntegrity, a digital agency that would “change the face of digital in Australia”. From one woman with a laptop to 21 staff across the globe, our story is one of growth through ups and downs.

When I was on maternity leave last year, I missed everyone so much! And it was then that I realised I had our story wrong the whole time.

It wasn’t our success that made us special. It wasn’t about the groundbreaking work, the awards or the fact that while I was away the business grew by 102%.

The special part was that we’d built it together.

How much we’d grown as people and how much we’d helped others to grow.  The ntegrity team was no longer me. It is a team passionate about digital and united by a genuine desire to help our clients grow.

I used to think we’d have to cap the amount of staff and clients to protect what makes us special. But we’ve just taken on two more full-time staff members and turned over two million dollars in revenue and weirdly, it feels more special and stable than ever.

The secret is in growing well, rather than growing for growth’s sake.?

That’s why we don’t say yes to everyone, we pick our clients carefully. Why we take a day off every quarter to think about how the business is growing and how to make it better. Why each staff has a personal development plan. Why we place such an emphasis on growing the capabilities of our staff and our clients.

It’s also why we’re tightening the amount of new work we take on over the next six months to hone in on strengthening our systems. We want to grow well because we don’t want any part of our work or service to suffer. Our smallest client is equal to our biggest, because we chose each other and we made a commitment.

Thank you for being part of the ntegrity story, and for letting us be a part of yours! 🌟