It’s that time of year when people like to be reflective of what they’ve accomplished during the year, and what they’re hoping to accomplish in the coming year. This year, for some reason, I’m not feeling particularly reflective, but here goes a quick recap:
- Evolve Communications (my business) grew by a WHOPPING 183 percent in 2011
- We hired our first full time employee
- We retained three of our four largest clients (the fourth is in the works)
- We picked up a number of new, smaller clients with whom we hope to develop long-term and mutually beneficial relationships
It’s been an exceedingly busy year, and the coming year doesn’t look like anything will be different, fortunately. In fact, I’ve been so consumed with working “in the business” that I haven’t had a huge amount of time to work “on the business.”
As most business owners will tell you, that’s an issue. Working too much “in” and not “on” the business can lead to burnout, and while I don’t think I’m particularly burned out, I do recognize that my attention span is stretched. Ultimately, that makes growth an even bigger challenge. Instead of focusing on getting ahead, energy is often spent on maintaining the current level, and that can undermine long-term stability and growth. Balancing this is one of the biggest challenges for new businesses and their owners, and it’s probably my biggest challenge in the coming year.
That’s why, we’ve devoted most of this week to tying up loose ends on client work, but also for developing a new company website that we hope to launch in the next week. I’ve recognized for a while now that some of our messaging needs to be reformed, reworked, and that the website wasn’t quite where I wanted it to be (it turns out that explaining white-label marketing & PR services isn’t as easy as I thought it’d be). Pretty soon, we’ll be launching a redesigned site, with some fresh messaging and content.
We’ll also be launching a new set of services, designed specifically for startups (in addition to servicing clients through agencies, startups are our next biggest category of client). We’ll also (hopefully) be working on a really cool pro-bono project in the first quarter of the year that has the potential to expose Evolve to a wider audience and potentially new clients in new markets.
I don’t want to make any prognostications about where Evolve is going in 2012, where I want it to go (other than the above points), where the marketing/PR industry is heading, what changes we can expect in 2012, or any of that stuff. It’s not because I don’t have thoughts about those things (I do), but because I just don’t feel like they’re that important.
What is important is continuing to develop my vision for white-label marketing and PR services, continuing to provide excellent, high-quality services to our existing clients, and to continue to grow–as a professional, as a person, as a husband, a father, and an individual.
So, I leave you with the words of one of my favorite radio personalities: