Today, May 22, 2015 marks the 4th year Express Writers has been around.
Our Stats At Express Writers For 2015
- We create on average about 250 pages in new orders a week. That’s more than 125,000 words between blogs, web pages, marketing material, press releases and more every week.
- For 2015, we have served 913 businesses and consumers around the globe. The US, Sweden, France, India, Australia are a few countries where our clients hail from. Our customer map for 2015 looks about like this:
What I’ve Learned From Four Years of Business
1. It’s actually easier to start a business than you think.
I can’t believe I’m saying this. But really: I believe the hardest part of making a business is the actual doing of it. When you sit down, create your company name, file that fictitious name with the government, advertise and get your first client.
2. The more work you put into the first years, the better.
In 2011, I coded my own website. It took me 12 hours straight and I didn’t leave my office chair that whole time. (I don’t recommend that for health reasons.) That week I hired my first writers, one SEO writer and one marketing writer, after interviewing about 20 people. My standards were that they had to be as creative and talented a writer as I, or more so. (I got lucky—they were more so.)
In 2012, I hit an income of six figures for that year (at a gnarly 28% profit), and I was constantly putting in 50 hours of work plus in a week many times. Some of it was fixing forest fires when I had to write and deliver content myself when half my team of writers disappeared (this actually happened a couple times). I also researched, built, and studied my industry of content marketing, blogging about it.
Those days were the days. They were intensive. My wrists burned at the end of the day. Sometimes I forgot to eat all day. I wrote, delivered. Then I’d cold call and do Craigslist ads to get clients. We survived. We started thriving.
2013 and 2014 were our growing years with a growing team, with some exciting things that happened, like writing product descriptions for Walmart, GAP, Skyping the upper management team in Sweden to discuss writing content for the Bank of Austria. In 2014 Josh built our Content Shop, which we launched this January of 2015.
3. You better hire people, and they better be good.
It’s all well and good to be working hard and doing everything yourself the first year, but if you don’t hire people to work for you, you’ll go under. You won’t grow. Period.
I hired my first manager in 2012, Tamila. She happened to be a driven military officer and was up with me brainstorming and building all hours of the day.
When she left, I spent many hours in prayer on who I would pick. I wanted long term people, as driven as myself, in order for my business to succeed long term. Enter Annie and Alecs. These two sisters reside in the European region. They work together, from home. I hired them initially as writers. They earned the best feedback, client success and retention, and were some of the most creative writers I had ever seen. I asked them if they wanted to be a manager. They said yes, and the rest is history! Annie today is our full time Content Manager, and Alecs is our Client Accounts Coordinator.
In 2013 we hired our first Sales Representative, our Client Coordinator Sarah, from Colorado. She’s a wonderful people person, a great sales lady, and has handled large client accounts very successfully. We’ve seen her experience incredible growth with us, too.
2015 marks the year of the most staffing we’ve ever done. And these people are awesome individuals – we’ve had amazing writers AND staff join our ranks!
4. The more you uphold a standard of quality, the more you will succeed.
My standard has always been only the highest quality. That’s why we hire maybe one out of ten or twenty applicants. I have never invested in things like black-hat SEO tactics, and I’ve only earned my rankings by creating my own effective content. This week, though, I really learned the lesson of upholding only quality. One of our very own Sales Representatives gave me an honest wakeup call last week. “I’m sorry, but I can’t sell this product to clients,” he said. “It’s too crappy.” I thanked him and re-developed the product. Guess what? I can sleep better now. I know I’m offering my clients something that’s way more valuable. Never, ever stop enhancing and prioritizing the value your business offers to clients.
Express Writers Year 4: On To New Things
To each and every one of you reading—I’m grateful. I’m grateful for our awesome clients. Our incredible staff. Our creative, talented writers.
For 2015, we’re working on even bigger things (I probably overuse that phrase, but we really are). A new White Label program and platform. A seamless, custom team room developed just for our own team and salespeople (a cost of $30k and 6 month development). New marketing and lead endeavors to reach the people who need us. I want to blog on Forbes this year. Better standards across the board for creating only the best content. A new product called Storytelling. And many more things. Our team will only grow and increase—with the help of real, passionate, and driven people.
Here’s to many more years ahead of successful business!