5% More

Chapter 135 Percent More Revenue

My first year in business at Blue Vase Marketing, we did more than $9 million in revenue. We started with credit cards, a little bit of cash, and valued relationships I had developed over the years. Nine million dollars in revenue is impressive considering what we started with, but the following year we doubled the number to $18 million, and our third year we did more than $30 million. Last year we did close to $50 million!

Some look at our growth and think it's amazing and fast. I think and I know it was the opposite. We slowly grew each and every department and added a little more each day, maybe 5 percent, each week, each month, so that we could grow without imploding. These small changes early on increased our productivity and our cash flow and, ultimately, increased our revenue so that we could continue to grow.

When we first started Blue Vase with just a handful of people and practically no money, we had to figure out a way to make all that happen. I mention later on my propensity for wanting to grow fast, but we didn't have the resources, so we slowly grew each week. Each week we grew our customer base, and each week we added more employees. More important, we looked at the business itself and how we could grow the business as an entity. In the beginning we didn't have our own customer service or fulfillment department. We had to use outside third parties to handle our shipping and customer service. For my business and what we do, it was ...