A Belated Happy Anniversary to Us
A few weeks ago, we at The Hired Pens marked 15 years in business. It’s a nice milestone, though admittedly not as sexy as a 10th or 20th anniversary. Something about the number 15 just seems kind of blah.
Nonetheless, it’s a good opportunity to sit back and reflect on the past 15 years. Anna was the one who had the idea of starting a business together. (She also came up with our name, though at least the tagline is my baby.)
When we started out, neither of us had much of an idea what was involved in running a business. Filing incorporation papers, bookkeeping, building a website, marketing, etc. — we learned it all on the fly. Or in some cases, bugged our smart friends until they helped us out.
In the early years, we spent a lot of time just meeting people. Plenty of breakfast meetings at the Boston Chamber of Commerce and cocktail hours at various bars around Boston. Neither Anna nor I is a natural extrovert, so shaking hands and passing out business cards wasn’t always fun. But it did help us build our network, and we’re still benefiting from those efforts now.
Today, I’ve got three kids and Anna has two, so we don’t make many of those pre- or post-business hours networking events any more. We manage to stay busy largely through repeat business from loyal clients, referrals from all the people out there who know our names and those who find us through the magic of the Internet.
Thank you to all the clients who have ever trusted us for their copywriting needs and allow us to do what we love. Thank you to everyone who has ever referred business to us — we truly appreciate the gesture, and we always do our best to make you look good. Thank you to everyone on our great writing team, especially the wonderful Karen Dempsey. And apologies to anyone I forgot to mention.
Incidentally, in case you’re looking for gift ideas, crystal is the traditional present for the 15th anniversary. (Well, the 15th wedding anniversary, anyway.)