Sticking That Landing: Unglamorous work and grit

The landing was extraordinary. The work that made it possible was not. It was meticulous, repetitive, unglamorous, and absolutely necessary.

That's the version of the story we think about most.

Where we started

ConMura did not begin with a vision board or a five-year plan. It began in the middle of the pandemic, when a freelancer took on a six-month contract that nobody (including her) was entirely sure would go anywhere. The work was small. Just a supporting role. The kind of work that doesn't make it into the highlight reel.

The six months became a year. The year became a renewal. Somewhere inside that renewal, the idea of something bigger started taking shape. Not because it was planned, but because the work kept proving there was a need for it.

That freelancer is our CEO. And what she built from that contract is the ConMura Collective.

What the in-between looks like

Five years sounds like a long time until you're living it in increments. A new client figuring out who you are. A project that teaches you something you didn't know you didn't know. A process you build, break and then rebuild better. Decisions made without a playbook because the playbook didn't exist yet.

We built our systems the hard way, by needing them before we had them. We felt the exact pain our clients do when things are undocumented, inconsistent, held together by the memory of whoever's been around the longest. We didn't learn this in a classroom. We learned it at work.

That experience is the most useful thing we bring to every client engagement.

What we actually do with grit

Here is what we have learned about grit. It is a practice. It is showing up to the unglamorous part of the work. The SOPs nobody wants to write, the process that takes three attempts to get right, the training material that has to be rebuilt from scratch because the first version didn't land. And doing it anyway. Without cutting corners because nobody's watching.

That is the work that makes the landing possible. The thousand steps before the moment. The systems built before the scale. The decisions made before the growth arrives and demands something the business isn't ready to give.

We started by doing that work for ourselves. Now we do it for businesses that are ready to stop winging it.

Five years in

We are a female-led, female-powered team that started with one person and a contract and stumbling around as she went. We are not the biggest firm. We are not the loudest. We are the team that shows up, does the real work, and builds things that last past the engagement.

We have always been more interested in the thousand unglamorous steps that make change possible. That's where we live. That's what we do.