Wow, it’s hard to believe that In Transit Studios is 10 years old! What a decade it’s been. What started out as a little side hustle turned into a full time freelancing gig, which turned into a small team and now legitimate web agency with an amazing new CEO Eric and a great team in place.
I’ve been reflecting on the many lessons learned, experience gained and amazing relationships formed during the past 10 years and condensed the MOST IMPORTANT lessons here. I also cover these in more detail, along with the story of how I started In Transit Studios in episode 066 of my web design podcast.
Before we get to my top 10 lessons learned, I just wanted to give a big THANK YOU to the amazing clients I’ve been able to work with over the years. This business brought some amazing people my way both to work and partner with, to learn from and to call a friend. Thank you for being an awesome client of In Transit and I hope you’re excited about the future!
– Josh (Founder of In Transit Studios)
An overview of my top 10 lessons learned as an agency owner:
- Mindset and personal development are what’s MOST important
- Constantly learning
- Staying positive
- Focusing on communication “the quality of your life will depend on how well you communicate”
- Marketing and innovation
- You have to keep marketing your business to avoid complacency or getting comfortable
- You have to keep up with the times, trends and innovate your business, your services and your marketing strategies accordingly
- Having a “why” as the foundation
- This can be life/situational or a big mission/goal for the company
- It can be internal or external for clients
- It’s about how much you care, now how much you know
- Helps with sales in the early days
- Will help build trust and longevity
- Value your relationships
- Value your clients and your client relationships
- Investing in current clients > new clients
- Investing in your relationships with colleagues, partners, etc
- Sharing what you know is way easier than trying to sell
- When I began doing trainings for clients, presentations and talks, that’s when things really exploded and I didn’t have to “sell”
- You learn when you teach
- You create content you can repurpose
- Investing in your business is key
- Time working ON your business
- Systems and processes that save you time
- Training and ongoing education
- Focus on what you do best
- Being self aware
- Doing DISC
- Delegating if building a team
- Ignoring the naysayers
- Stay in your lane/avoid comparison
- Sometimes even family or friends will accidentally derail you with their own thoughts and comments, beware of the “you should”
- Sometimes people can plant seeds of doubt “like the dude who said wow that’s risky”
- Enjoy the mundane
- As a business owner, life actually looks a lot more boring than you’d think.
- The day to day tasks can often be boring and repetitive but enjoying those or putting can be the key to a business that succeeds or fails
- This will also help with “staying power over starting power.”
