Beating The Odds

While reviewing my 2021 weekly calendar recently, I realized that I had overlooked the 10-year anniversary for Tarheel Communications Solutions.  It’s hard to believe it’s been over a decade since taking the entrepreneurial plunge.  With the exception of last year, the indescribable 2020, which seemed like its own 10th of a century, the time has flown by.

I flashed back to the time we were considering the freedom and independence of having our own business, and remembered Googling the reasons business fail, and found that the Bureau of Labor statistics project 20% of new businesses fail in the first two years, 45% failing in the first five years and 65% failing in the first ten. I’m certain these stats were exacerbated in 2020 by Covid-19 that shuttered thousands of businesses over the past year.  Yet, Tarheel Communications Solutions is still in business, which deserves more than self-centered pat on the back or a cupcake from my favorite bakery down the street.

Unfortunately, in the past 10 years, we didn’t create the next great social media platform, we didn’t find cause to pitch the latest and greatest kitchen gadget on Shark Tank, and we didn’t field any serious inquiries from corporate America to take over our operations, but we are still alive and kicking as a viable small business.  Our success story, besides still speaking to each other, includes wins like having the same anchor clients we started with in 2011, expanding our operations into a separate event company, which owns and operates an airshow and a newly announced Barbecue Festival, and earning a positive reputation built on creativity and a dedicated work ethic.  Like a lot of agencies our general client list has ebbed and flowed over the past several years, and we have never worked harder in our lives, but we are still Tarheel Communications Solutions.  If not always profitable for financial return, then our profits came from the invaluable experience of creating our own destiny.

Tomorrow is the first day of our next ten years.  The statistics on success will no longer be measured by a percentage of failure possibility, but it will be measured by the goals we set and how they are accomplished for the future.  How we get there will be via faith, fate and believing it can be done.  It has been a wonderful journey so far, and we welcome you to come along for the ride.

Happy Anniversary!

-PRS