Three Lessons Learned During our Third Year of Business

As we look back on Indie’s 3rd year as a business, our latest trip around the sun has been full of growth! The end of 2020 brought a unique holiday season that resulted in families not getting together, but online sales and digital platform usage reaching an all-time high. A hopeful start to 2021 was quickly fraught with uncertainty about what the year would bring. Would we see clients any time soon? Is the concept of the 9-5 office gone forever? As a young company, will we be able to build a foundational culture at Indie through digital communication means alone? And perhaps the biggest question of all: what will the long-term impact of the past 18 months look like on our ways of working, society at large, and future? 

Despite these uncertainties over the past year, Indie has gone from a team of 4 to a team of 11. We’ve diversified our client base and added structure to our service offerings. We’ve spent time together in person and evolved the set-up of our virtual weekly team meetings too many times to count. While this year has been another reminder that nothing in life is certain, there are a few things I’ve learned that I’ve never been more sure of:

What we know is a tiny amount compared to what we do not know. 

As our team and client base at Indie has grown this past year, my awareness of the opportunity I have to learn has never been greater. My desire to experience, absorb, and apply different ways of thinking, leading, and doing is what gives me energy every day. If we are open to it, how incredible is it that we have an unlimited runway for self-improvement and evolution? 

Being consistently uncomfortable is a sign of growth. 

During the first year of Indie, when it was just a meager party of 1, I was massively uncomfortable. Breaking free of the constructs of a traditional job and building the foundation for a vision you’re not fully confident in does not make for a life of comfort, especially while trying to compartmentalize the Big Fear of Failure. While these hurdles have been cleared, others have appeared. There’s rarely a dull moment; however, my state of discomfort no longer keeps me up at night, but rather keeps me confident that what we are building is progressing, evolving, and challenging us to be better. We embrace the discomfort as a signal that growth is inevitable.

Acknowledge and express gratitude towards the people who support you on your journey. 

I’ve often been told that building a business is a lonely journey. While there is some truth in this at times, looking at my experience to date I believe the opposite to be true. As I sat getting my hair cut a couple months ago in Hell’s Kitchen, my hairdresser, a self-proclaimed Wizard of Oz super-fan, was explaining his favorite scene of the 1939 classic. As Dorothy and Toto are leaving Kansas, they’re stopped by a few townspeople who greet them with the same simple advice over and over again, to “follow the yellow brick road”. The purpose of this scene, as explained by my hairdresser fairy godfather, is to show how meaningful it is to have people who simply support you on your journey; that this act of encouragement to move forward is one of the greatest gifts we can receive. 

As I sit here writing this on yet another flight (this one from Denver to New York), I could not be more grateful to everyone who has supported Indie over the last three years, from my incredible Indie team, to my friends, family, and strangers I’ve met along the way -- thank you, thank you, thank you. I can’t wait to see what the next year will bring.