Words by Morgan Mercer | Photos by Sarah White
Pollen is celebrating the 14 businesses that have come together in support of Pollen’s mission to build better connected communities. Together, these businesses challenge Pollenites to raise $15,000 by December 31, which they will match dollar for dollar. Donate today and join them in their investment to power human connection.
A single goal drives the process of building websites at Us Creative Works: empathy. Co-founders Erika Stenrick and Molly Nutting infuse that value into the digital experience in two ways. First, they get inside the website users’ heads far before writing a single piece of code. That means asking questions like, “Why did they visit the site?” and “What words do they use?” Once a prototype is up and running, Molly and Erika go back to those same people again. “You can’t improve what you’ve built if you think your way of seeing the world is the best,” says Erika. “Watching real people use what we build is important. It’s up to us to meet them where they’re at and understand why something may not make sense to them.” Beyond empathy for the user experience, Us Creative Works aims to build sites for mission-oriented organizations that inspire compassion in those visitors, too. Take the immersive videos, photos, and scrolling animation the team put together for Save the Boundary Waters. It’s meant to capture the beauty of northern Minnesota and the immediate threat sulfide mining poses to the wilderness in that area.
Pollen: What were some of the greatest risks you have taken as a small business owner?
Erika Stenrick & Molly Nutting: Even though we are the main people supporting our families, we quit our jobs to make a go at Us Creative Works. The next risk we took was adding our first employees. When we started, it was just the two of us. We had built websites together for over a decade, and during that time our clients had direct access to both the technology and creative experts in our business. We never wanted to lose that, and we certainly didn’t want to become a website assembly line. We were careful not to hire specialists or know-it-alls. We found amazing employees who get it. They care about the big picture and they don’t get caught in the weeds.
Pollen: Where do you look for inspiration?
Erika Stenrick & Molly Nutting: We don’t have to look far. All of the organizations we partner with do meaningful work and are staffed with people who care deeply about the issues we want to tackle. Every meeting with clients reminds us that the things we make are part of something important. That inspires us to do our best work. Creatively, there is no single place we go to for inspiration or magic bucket of visual greatness that sparks ideas. We rely on each other and ask for input and ideas often.
Being out in the world and bumping up against new people, ideas, and communities is what matters to us.
Pollen: How intentional or organic are you when it comes to growing your network?
Erika Stenrick &Molly Nutting: We’re intentional about the events we attend. We come from a technology-focused world where we used to only know people working with similar software to us. But now, we seek out creative people working on problems that we care about—the environment, racial equity, education, and more.
Only time will tell if it’s a good strategy for business ownership, but we feel good about letting our values lead our growth.
Pollen: Along with story, design, and technology, what tools are you using to make your community a better place?
Erika Stenrick &Molly Nutting: Story, design, and technology are unabashedly our key tools for community betterment, but we also think it matters that both of our founders are women.
We are minorities in our industry, and we value that vantage point.
We are just getting started, but we are committed to creating a culture and a client base that values a diversity of perspectives and experiences. On top of that, we’re both working really hard to raise kids that are compassionate critical thinkers.
Pollen: Why are you a Pollenite?
Erika Stenrick & Molly Nutting We share a similar mission to expand the reach of people and organizations doing important work in our communities. Plus, every Pollen event we go to makes us think about big things, and we like thinking about big things.