It’s been five years since my first blog post. Who knew? I didn’t until I just happened to open up my word document where I keep all of blog entries and happened to notice the date of the first entry. Five years ago today.
Seems like it would be a good time to assess how we’re doing.
Foremost, we’re still here! No small feat for any small business.
Secondly, we’ve grown! Five years ago we had six employees now we have over twenty in the building.
Thirdly, our move to a manufacturing model has proven to be life-saving for the business. Our prior model relied entirely on co-manufacturing partners and much of our own destiny was out of our hands. The ability to control our own production and institute our own standards concerning food safety, product quality and employee programs has made us a much more interesting partner for many of our customers.
The result? Our business has more than tripled in the five years since this I penned the first entry to this blog. Not to mislead though. It certainly hasn’t been easy. I’ve also had growth in sleepless nights and long, complicated conversations with employees, suppliers and customers. This small business thing still ain’t easy.
But, it is important from time-to-time to stand back and take stock and see how far something has come. It was five years ago today that I started blogging, started to think about a pivot, started thinking about where we were going. Now is a good a time as any to take stock and I have to say – so far so good!