Welcome to the New Year!

By: Gini Dietrich | January 3, 2012 |

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I’m baaaaack!

I hope everyone had great holidays. I did…and I’m dragging a bit this morning because of it. I was getting used to sleeping until 7:30 every morning!

Because it’s the first day back for many of us, this isn’t going to be a heady blog post.

I have a feeling. I think 2012 is going to be a very good year. It’s going to be a good year for the economy, for business, and for a lot of us personally.

In October of 2008, the bank called our line of credit without any warning. I remember taking that phone call and I cried. I CRIED! I even said some things to our banker that I still regret having said.

Then, during the holidays of that same year, I received three certified letters from clients saying, because of the economy, they weren’t going to be able to continue working with us.

I spent my holidays with our managing director as we decided who was going to have to be laid off that first week of January.

2009 continued that trend. We lost two more clients, but were able to maintain enough to continue making payroll for a handful of us.

2010 wasn’t much better. Although we had a full year of doing business as an integrated marketing communication firm, business was stable and not growing. We cut as many expenses as we could and continued to survive.

2011 saw something I didn’t think was going to happen: We almost went bankrupt. We did what we could, but most companies still weren’t outsourcing their marketing or communication. So we continued to cut expenses, including my salary and our office lease. Yes, we now are completely virtual, freeing up significant cash flow to really make it work for us this year.

But this year. This year is going to be something special. We won’t hit our 2007 levels quite yet, but Arment Dietrich added four new clients the week of Christmas (it was a little nuts).

The book, Marketing In the Round, that I’m co-authoring with Geoff Livingston comes out in May.

Spin Sucks Pro will be out of private beta soon (very, very soon!).

And being virtual has afforded us the opportunity to really expand our networks, in a way we didn’t know possible because we were handcuffed to our desks.

Just like I know many of you have done in the past three years, the foundation is set and it’s time to begin building again.

We’re going to kick the butt of 2012. Who’s with me??

About Gini Dietrich

Gini Dietrich is the founder, CEO, and author of Spin Sucks, host of the Spin Sucks podcast, and author of Spin Sucks (the book). She is the creator of the PESO Model and has crafted a certification for it in partnership with Syracuse University. She has run and grown an agency for the past 15 years. She is co-author of Marketing in the Round, co-host of Inside PR, and co-host of The Agency Leadership podcast.