Kaizen

Kaizen is the Japanese ethos of continual, never-ending improvement.

We believe that small hinges swing big doors. When we show up every day and do great work, no matter how insignificant it may seem on any one day, our efforts compound over time into huge results for our customers.

Earning the business

We believe that we should continue to earn your business month after month, year after year.

Complacently sitting around while your hard-earned money rolls into our bank account is something we’re just not cool with. 

That’s why we continue to make improvements to every aspect of our product, no matter how much we’ve done already.

There’s always something we can improve on that translates into a win for you, be it a small increase in site speed, a security patch, a suggestion.

Your website is the foundation of your online business; it’s your home.

And you never stop making little improvements around the house because it’s “good enough.” 

Order of magnitude

We strive to be an order of magnitude better than the other companies you could give your business to.

If you have to choose between us and another hosting platform, we want to be so ridiculously good at making your life as a business owner better and easier that you wouldn’t even have to THINK about it: we’d be the obvious, no-brainer choice.

We strive to earn that distinction by paying attention to every single little detail of everything we do.

Family First

We believe our customers are our family. 

Web hosting relationships typically last for years. And you want to be sure that the people to whom you entrust your websites treat you as such.

One of the motivations we had for starting this business was seeing what a downright shitty experience getting customer service is with most of the major hosting companies.

Many of these hosting companies outsource their support to large, faceless customer service outfits who have no skin in the game when it comes to making sure you’re 110% satisfied.

Can you pick up your phone and call the CEO of Bluehost? I doubt it? 

But you can call Vic at home. He’ll hop out of the shower just to chat with you. 

Want to ask Lesly a question about croissants? Pop onto our live chat and leave him a message.

Because we treat our customers as our family we also don’t let just anybody become a customer.

While we embrace new business with open arms, if a customer proves to be a poor fit for us, we will kindly refund their money and move on.

It’s not fair to a customer who doesn’t mesh with our family values to keep him or her onboard just for a little extra cash.

You wouldn’t stay in a romantic relationship with somebody who you don’t get along with and who doesn’t share your outlook, so why do it in business? 

Prevention > Cure

Several of our customers have come to us on the heels of a nasty malware attack / website hack.

The cause of these hacks is almost always WordPress plugins and themes that haven’t been updated in a long time, which causes security vulnerabilities. 

That’s why we proactively update all plugins, themes, WordPress version, and even external plugins (Xenforo, DAP, etc.) for our customers on a weekly basis and keep dailly backups of all site files and databases.

This, in addition to the other security measures we take, closes the largest loophole that hackers exploit in WordPress sites. 

Once a hack has occurred, cleaning up the mess is costly in terms of time, money and resources. The damage to your brand, your Google rankings, your customers, and your morale can be mammoth. 

We believe that prevention is infinitely better than cure. And because we take security seriously, we take preventative measures to ensure no cure will be necessary. 

The result? You can sleep a little bit tighter knowing that your business website is safeguarded and protected against attacks.

Extreme Ownership

This is a term I first heard from former Navy Seal and best-selling author Jocko Willink. 

The concept is simple enough: take utter responsibility for everything. Own it. In fact, own it to an extreme degree.

If Navy Seals can hold themselves to such a high standard of excellence and responsibility, so can we.

Sometimes we drop the ball, make a mistake, err. To err is human.

But to err and make excuses and complain about it is weak sauce. We don’t play that.

When we f*ck up, we take responsibility, apologize, own it, and fix it A.S.A.P. No excuses, no nonsense, just results.

Rectify > Notify

I credit our superstar customer Dr. David Tian with teaching me this lesson.

It’s not enough to merely observe that something is wrong or broken. Neither is it sufficient to simply notify the team of the situation. 

If we see that something is amiss, we fix it right then and there. We rectify then we notify, and in that order.

Do things that don’t scale…at scale

Paul Graham of Y Combinator fame once gave startups the advice to do things that don’t scale at the beginning of their journey.

Things that don’t scale can include:

• Spending a lot of time courting potential customers
• Taking time to resolve a customer’s issues even if they’re not directly related to your product
• Taking phone calls and face to face meeting even when you’re super busy
• Offering incredible, non-outsourced support
• Sending our awesome customers a postcard to show how much we appreciate them

…and really any version of “getting your hands dirty” and “doing what it takes” to delight your customers.

Well call us crazy but we think this ethos shouldn’t just apply to the beginning days of a company.

It should be an enduring core value practiced by every single team member.

So we believe in doing things that don’t scale even as we scale.

Sure, it cuts into our profit margins and takes more time, effort and thoughtfulness.

But so what?

If we’re not going to go the extra mile and then another extra mile after that, why the heck are we in business to begin with?

And why would you choose us over another provider?

Exactly.

Community Led

Our community makes everything we do possible. 

Without a community to serve we’d have no business!

Therefore, we listen deeply to the needs and feedback of our community across as many channels as possible, including:

• The SpeedKills.io Facebook group
• The Feedback & Voting Center
• The on-page chat widget
• The contact us form
• Via telephone (+1 415-697-1958)
• Via email ([email protected])

…and however else you’d like to communicate your needs and concerns to us, we’ll listen!

The members of our community get to contribute to the very DNA of our business by challenging us, inspiring us, letting us know what they like and need, and what they dislike and don’t need.

We take it upon ourselves to listen mindfully and egolessly so that we can better serve the people who make our existence possible….you!