One Companies Walk Down Memory Lane – the Victories and Fails

The greatest successes are often preceded by a steady pace of small victories and failures. Some of us might even have collected some really big failures. Together they add up to great success when all are accounted for, learned from and built upon. In reality, failure is subjective. Is it really a fail if we learn from it and grow? OR just a learning tool?

Developing DirectMail.io has been a decade of brainstorming, inventing, reinventing, tweaking, scrapping, losing, winning, and exploding. It has been all uphill and downhill. We loved this picture of success. We want to believe growth is linear, but it’s just not.

We love this visual of success. It’s just never a straight shot up, but that doesn’t mean the incremental growth isn’t powerful and lasting.

Here’s a few things we’ve learned along the way.

• Risk can be costly and rewarding.
• Experts exist. Knowing when you need them and when you don’t is a game changer.
• Embrace technology and changes as opportunity rather than opposition.
• The market isn’t small, your perspective is. Don’t fear if others are taking up space or you are trying to take over their space. Keep your focus on your business and strategy and celebrate other’s successes. Fear will take you out quicker than any competitor ever could.
• Listen to your customers. They may not be an expert at your business, but they are the expert at USING your service and/or product. Engage with them and let their insight be your greatest weapon to low churn and easy acquisition.
• Easy Wins. We didn’t design our platform to be the smartest ever in all of times forever and ever because we know technology will continue to improve and we’ll continue to hone this tool for our customers. One thing we have seen set us apart during the wins or become an obstacle during the fails over and over is ease of use. Creating tools that cater to ease of use and customer intuition is key.
• Keep it simple. In our beginning days we had SO many features in DirectMail.io we found that too much was a inhibitor to success. Agencies were getting caught up with too many options and it was delaying their production. The right kind of simplification allows for focus without losing any impact and success.

We hope our budding business owners can learn a little from our history. We’re here for the long haul and if you are too then it’s inevitable you’ll stack up victories and failures. Not letting the failures take you out, but rather make you wiser and stronger is everything in business today. We already know we’re here to stay, so now we’re focused on helping you do the same.