In my real life, I’m the COO of a multimillion dollar company in the events and hospitality industry, with multiple locations, teams of employees, and a national audience. By all accounts, we’re the definition of a small business that has successfully made the leap to growing mid-size business. But it hasn’t always been that way.

We spent the 2010s experiencing moderate success. We had annual growth and brand recognition, but like all small businesses, we were just figuring out everything as we went. And we were lucky that it was all mostly working.

Then 2020 happened: Covid-19 shut us down, and it shut us down hard. Events evaporated overnight in the middle of what normally was our busiest season. We owed refunds to dozens of clients because we, like so many others, were not legally prepared for Acts of God like a global pandemic. We were still a pretty small team at that time, but we had to lay off employees and furlough others to make it through the year. But, we survived.

If the theme of 2020 was survival, 2021’s was growth. Not the fun growth with record profits and celebrations, but the kind of growth that still looks a lot like survival. When society decided it was ready to start celebrating again, the work didn’t just start flowing in again - it flooded. While the uncertainty of making payroll eased, we were being exposed: all of our flaws and gaps were on display. The missing systems, the inconsistencies in how we performed everyday things, the lack of clearly defined goals, friction that made the team feel completely disjointed. The quality of our work suffered, which led to a lot of refunds and damaged the trust our clients had in us. We were drowning.

There were tears and tough conversations and some employees and clients jumped ship, but in the middle of the chaos, there was the moment of clarity that something had to change. And change it did. In 15 months, from August 2021 to the end of 2022, we grew our gross revenue 91%. And we did it while keeping our heads above water.

Since that moment in 2021, we’ve seen the following changes:

$3 million+ annual revenue increase
4X employee headcount
Company culture that has earned awards
Minimal employee turnover
Profit goals exceeded

Now, I don’t think the pandemic was the root catalyst for our change. It merely put our deficiencies under a microscope. But any volume increase in our business would have had the same outcome. What had gotten us to where we were was not going to take us farther to where we needed to be. And the same can be said for most businesses, especially a small creative business spreading its wings:

What got you here won’t get you there.

And so, I’m going to tell you and teach you what did get us there, and what we’re doing to get to the next level now. Up first, we didn’t recreate the wheel.