Keep doing what’s working. That is where the conversation begins and ends. That is among the best bits of advice Makelab CEO Christina Perla has ever received. And that is the lens through which she now views everything.
Perla sits down with TCT in Boston on Day Zero of a RAPID + TCT event she is paying a flying visit to. By the time the trade show is fully underway, she’ll be back in New York doing more of what is working and a little less of what she has been in town for this week.
Networking has been one of the sacrifices Perla has made to properly focus on the Makelab business over the last 12 months. And though she couldn't quite resist the four-hour train ride to connect with peers ahead of RAPID + TCT this year, she has been reducing her extracurricular load in other ways, too. In addition to steering the Makelab ship, Perla has, in recent years, held positions on the Boards of Women in 3D Printing (Wi3DP) and Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), helped to co-organise New York Hardware meet-ups, and hosted her own podcast. Perla stepped back from her Wi3DP commitments, and a new host - Makelab Head of Manufacturing Engineering Cinerita Andrandes - will be in the hot seat for season two of the Talking Design and Engineering podcast.
“I was spreading myself very thin,” Perla tells TCT. As she reflected on her resources and the capacity of her team, Perla began to think of every task in the context of the impact and effort matrix. Ideally, a wealth of tasks would fall into the low effort-high impact quadrant, and while high effort-high impact jobs can be justified, anything falling on the low impact half of the grid ought to be addressed. It helped Perla regain focus and provide context for how she allocated her time.
“It was time to change,” Perla continues. “If I’m spending all of my energy elsewhere, I’m not spending it on the things that are just working. So, I [thought], let me just try and refocus for a little bit and see what happens. That’s what led to a lot of the big revelations and the big growth.”
As we convene in Boston, we are 39 days away from Makelab moving into a new facility in South Brooklyn. It’s five times the size of the current Manhattan site, is equipped with two big freight elevators and five indoor loading bays, and, because of its location, it works out cheaper.
