Three years ago on this day, I wrote this post: Five years ago today, my life changed forever.
If you want to know how I started this business originally, have a read of that post. The basic gist of it is this: my oldest child was born on this day in 2004. The company I was working for (who had attempted to recruit me for most of a year) laid me (and the rest of the department) off one week later. I vowed to never be an employee again and here we are eight years later, and I seem to have kept that resolution.
Much has happened in the three years since I wrote that post. Two years ago, Carman Pirie, then VP Social Media at Colour and I decided that we wanted to build a new kind of agency. One that used the power of the social web to help advance the marketing goals of our clients. It was really just an extension and focusing of Brightwhite’s core abilities.
These posts have a way of becoming braggy, and I don’t want that to happen, but I do want to share a little of what we’ve managed to accomplish in eight (short) years.
- Grown the business from one person in a tiny spare bedroom (seriously it was 7′ by 9′!) jammed between my daughter’s crib and the bathroom in our minuscule 150 year old farmer’s cottage to seven people in a beautiful loft space on Grafton Street in downtown Halifax
- Worked with hundreds of wonderful people at companies as tiny as we are up to huge multinational corporations and governmental organizations
- Advocated for a better life in a city that I love
- Travelled all over Canada to meet with clients and partners
- Started speaking professionally and had the opportunity to offer lectures and train people all over the Atlantic Provinces
And there’s much more to come. Our client list continues to grow, and the projects are getting bigger, more challenging and technically interesting. Our processes have been refined to a point where I don’t need to worry about work getting done when we’re out meeting new prospective clients. Our team is incredibly capable and the work we’re putting out there is the best we’ve ever produced.
I’m incredibly excited for what’s coming next. We have some amazing internal initiatives, awesome clients and projects, and we’ll be looking to add to our growing team throughout 2012.
All that to say this: if you’re thinking of working for yourself, do it. There is no better time than now. It’s as rewarding as it is stressful, and I wouldn’t change it for anything.
