K2 is a few months into year 9. We have come so far and learned so much, it’s hard and easy to believe at the same time.
Neither of us have an MBA but we’ve definitely earned one through our blood, sweat and tears over these years. We do the work, we train people to do the work, we hire and we fire, we look for efficiencies, we try to be better leaders, we learn about state regulations and tax codes, and we try to bring our team more and more benefits every year. Every day we wake up trying to offer better services for our clients.
While we didn’t call ourselves entrepreneurs when we started on this journey, we’ve learned we have both always had that spirit. We’ve also learned how uncommon it is to have.
Not everyone wakes up with the curiosity to push themselves and others to do and be better. We like the trial and error, we like the risk and the reward.
We love waking up to solve problems for our clients, moving the ball forward to get wins and surrounding ourselves with people who like to connect dots like we do. And we love growing this company that can help us do that every day.
That entrepreneurial spirit is what’s made our company evolve over the years. We’ve continually grown as our clients’ needs have grown. We’ve always focused on advocacy and communications but we quickly found that our fundraising and events experience is complimentary.
People do events for a lot of reasons – for money, for PR, to advocate for a mission. The best organizations likely do all of those at the same time which happens to be our strength.
In the last year we expanded and now strive to provide a comprehensive approach including advocacy, communications, events and fundraising for the people we work with.
K2 is a proud women-owned business and we’ve faced some barriers over the years. Sometimes we are told we are too young, maybe too female, some days we are told we can’t do something and it got us down for a day.
We get inspiration from climbing over those barriers. We both have mentors in our lives who tell us to keep getting up.
As the years pass, with experiences and battle scars to show for it, we want to be those mentors for other women. To tell other women that entrepreneurship is awesome.
On International Women’s Day, we want to encourage anyone thinking about starting their own business to dive in. There is no better feeling than waking up with those battle scars and continuing to climb that mountain.
-Kristen Sheehan & Kirsten Kukowski, K2 Partners