Every business struggles with the climb up the mountain of growth. This is an appropriate time of year to stop, take a breath, turn around, and look back down to see how far we've come.
I'm going to take a quick look back over the last six years.
2019 closed out as our best year ever. And the early 2020 pipeline of work was so strong, that it looked like 2020 would easily beat the year we were just closing.
Of course, 2020 had different plans and it ended up being our worst year in modern times.
We established a five step plan at that point, with a rallying cry as the fifth point:
1. Survive.
2. Adapt.
3. Sustain.
4. Emerge Stronger.
5. Thrive again!
As 2020 unfolded, thriving again seemed like quite a stretch.
We stayed the course, ran lots of experiments and simply did not give up, despite the headwinds and bad weather.
Through 2021, we accomplished the first 3 steps in our plan. Then 2022, 2023, 2024 and now 2025 ranked as the 4 best years in our history. In short, the last 4 years got us back to thriving again. Our long-time clients stayed with us. We landed great new clients. Our volumes of visitors both in person and virtual returned.
We went through a lot to get here, and it feels like we still are.
Now it's time to get back to climbing.
We are adding a 6th step to our plan ...
6. Now Grow!
We have a lot of reasons to be hopeful for 2026. We have a solid book of work with wonderful clients. We've added a lot of newer team members who themselves are growing quickly.
The leadership team we formed as we moved to an EOS structure is seasoned, strong, ambitious, smart, and capable.
We plan an office move in the coming year into a space that will double our footprint and give us the area we need to grow our team.
It is an exciting time, and a bit stressful. This is typical of growth phases.
Through the next year, I will keep you posted on how things are going.
I would encourage all of our followers to spend time looking back down the mountain and remind themselves of how far they've come. Then get climbing again.
I wish you JOY in 2026!