As I sat here at my desk today, I looked at my iCal and realized we had forgotten to celebrate our one year anniversary. The company has successfully weathered our first year and we are well into year two. We have been so busy that the milestone just came and went, luckily.
It’s funny to remember how nervous and unsure I was about my choice to start this business. I remember those first few months of just worrying… constantly worrying (thank you Tums for your unofficial sponsorship of Tripp Co. Creative, Inc.). Don’t get me wrong, I still worry (a lot), but now it is more about keeping clients happy and getting new clients to help grow the business. It is less about “can I feed my dogs or myself”.
My business partner and I still struggle with the balance of doing the work and getting more work and I think we are on the right track. I would like to eliminate the peaks and valleys in the work flow, but for now I can’t complain. I know many more companies out there that are struggling and laying people off. Some of that comes from bad choices made before this economy crisis, but some is just luck of the draw. I am confident our smaller size and flexible business model will help us expand at an appropriate rate and we will grow as projected over the next year (well, 9 months now).
And to our valued clients, thank you. Thank you for trusting us. Thank you for referring us to your colleagues. And thank you for being the best clients on the face of this earth. I have worked for several agencies where that wasn’t the case. When I first started this business, I vowed I would not do any work for anyone that did not respect us and whom we did not respect. Case in point: we had a designer who’s father was rushed to the hospital. She was not able to answer a client’s call at 8am. Later (once our designer got the message and called her back) that client asked her why she was not available when she wanted her to be. After our designer explained the situation, the clients response was “Couldn’t you have had your sister deal with it?” Needless to say, the designer was very upset and told me what happened. Long story short, we will not be doing work for that client ever again. She refused to apologize for her remarks and I refuse to work with someone so callous and cold. We don’t need that kind of business… no one does.
So here’s to another year and more. I hope you’ll stay on the ride with us.