Five Years In (#14)
Inscribe Wisdom turned five today
It’s strange how something so steady can still feel surprising. What began as a few freelance projects and a quiet belief that writing could be done with more care has grown into something that moves with weight. Not just a business, but a practice. A way of seeing.
I still pause in disbelief that it works. Somehow, subject-verb agreement, practical empathy, and earned clarity have become the foundation of a business. Thoughtful documentation, often overlooked and nearly always invisible, has proven capable of reshaping how people understand the tools they use and the teams behind them.
There was no launch plan. No brand campaign. Just careful work. Then more of it.
What carried me through the early days wasn’t vision or momentum. It was a sense of responsibility. If someone trusted me to clarify a feature or explain a system, I wanted to meet that trust with precision.
That principle still holds.
Critical Building Moments
The early contracts didn’t come from a strategy deck. They came from people who remembered how I showed up. One came from a former engineer, years after we’d worked together. He knew I took the writing seriously.
Another came from a business development colleague I’d barely interacted with —maybe two meetings in passing. Still, he remembered. When his team needed help, he sent a message.
These weren’t favors. They were the delayed returns of consistency.
I think about the quiet decisions that made those referrals possible. I chose clarity over cleverness, even when cleverness might have seemed more impressive. I flagged assumptions in documents that were easy to miss and even easier to ignore. I revised drafts no one was likely to read twice, simply because it mattered that the work was right.
There was also the conversation with my former manager. I had asked to shift from employee to vendor. He spoke with the Chief of Staff and returned with hesitation in his voice.
“She’s not on board,” he told me. “What happens if we can’t come to an arrangement?”
I answered without pause: “Then I’ll help you find my replacement.”
That wasn’t a threat. It wasn’t even a negotiation. It was a moment of clarity. I had a sense of what I was building. I knew what it required. Staying would’ve meant walking away from that.
A Quiet Expansion
In the years since, Inscribe Wisdom hasn’t grown in headcount or surface metrics, but in sharpness. The business has become more focused, more grounded, and more aligned with the kind of work we believe deserves to exist.
A major reason for that is Gabe Laskey.
Gabe joined in 2022 and is now co-owner of the company. He didn’t arrive with disruption. He brought discernment. In difficult moments, he offered wisdom without noise, counsel without positioning. Over time, his presence helped recalibrate not just decisions, but direction.
Like me, he sees the business as a vessel for something useful: work that’s respectful, enduring, and quietly necessary.
Gabe’s temperament complements mine. He is measured where I’m instinctive, deliberate where I’m direct. He holds high standards and carries them without performance. That’s rare. And it’s exactly what this work requires.
If Gabe brought structure to the business, the writing kept teaching us what the business was meant to be.
Writing's Purpose
When people think about technical writing, they often picture grammar rules and formatting conventions. Those things matter. But they are only the surface layer of the work.
At its core, technical writing provides clarity in moments of strain and uncertainty. It shows up when systems fail, when pressure is high, and when someone — often tired, often frustrated — needs a clear path forward. A support engineer troubleshooting a feature in real time. A customer teetering between giving up and staying. A teammate scanning for an answer that makes the problem solvable. In those moments, a single sentence can restore momentum. A single paragraph can hold trust.
That’s why we work the way we do. We remove complexity not for elegance, but because confusion erodes credibility. We structure language to make room for confidence. We guide readers without condescension or excess.
This kind of writing doesn’t seek attention. It doesn’t posture. It exists to be useful. And when done with intention, it quietly holds things together.
Doing the work well is one challenge. Sustaining it, year after year, is another.
On Endurance
According to an analysis from LendingTree based on the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, nearly half of all businesses in the United States fail within five years. By the ten-year mark, more than 60% have closed.
This kind of data doesn’t dramatize. It reveals. Staying in business requires more than momentum or ambition. It asks for patience, discipline, and a steady refusal to compromise the work.
The early years of Inscribe Wisdom were quiet. We didn’t scale quickly. We didn’t chase visibility. We worked with a small number of clients who returned because the writing made their products clearer and their teams stronger. That was enough to keep going.
Crossing the five-year mark does not signal arrival. It marks a kind of durability. The business has held through uncertainty because the work has remained consistent. We have written carefully, delivered on time, and told the truth. That rhythm has carried us forward.
Looking Ahead
After five years, I still feel like we’re early.
We’ve made deliberate choices to narrow our focus. We’ve let go of adjacent services. We’ve turned away from opportunities that didn’t align out of respect for our clients, our craft, and the people who trust us to guide them.
Every document we touch is a reflection of that posture. Some require careful, detailed refinement. Others just need to be functional and clear. Part of the work is knowing which is which.
In April, we launched Refined Draft — an extension of the same mission: helping people think clearly about writing in a world full of noise. If any part of your work depends on communication landing cleanly and credibly, subscribe to the blog. Read along. See where it takes you.
And if you’re doing meaningful work that needs to be understood, reach out.
Our expertise spans cloud resource access management, content delivery networks, digital advertising, online video, and social platform moderation. Increasingly, we’re exploring more tactile domains: robotics, precision tooling, agriculture, connected systems. Work rooted in sensors, machines, materials. The kind of work where a mistimed instruction leads not just to confusion, but to cost.
This isn’t a departure. It’s an expansion. Taking what we’ve learned documenting the abstract and applying that clarity to the concrete. The mechanical. The built.
If you’ve followed our work, collaborated with us, or simply shared the belief that words matter — thank you.
We’ll keep building.
Not louder, but deeper.
Not faster, but sharper.
This is just the beginning.