Eight Lessons Learned in 35 Years (of Something Somewhat like Excellence)

My small business hit a big milestone this week, and my team thought it would be fun for me to reminisce about it here. The theme they suggested was “lessons learned,” in honest acknowledgement of the fact that, every few years, I learn something important – and usually uncomfortable – about how to run a company without running it into the ground.

I love bragging about our team, our clients, and our work. Sharing about my own role in it all, not so much. But this little company is still here and thriving after three-and-a-half-decades, leaning daily into our core values of commitment, precision, balance, integrity, imagination, and zeal. So if you’re curious, here’s the inside scoop of what went down – and what I learned along the way.

1.   Fake it ‘til you make it: 1990 – 95

After graduating with high honors and related awards from the Visual Communications department at California State University, Chico, being recruited by and working for four years in a then-top-tier Sacramento design firm, I quit my perfectly good job in the middle of a recession to launch this company.

In partnership with that design firm’s studio (admin and money) manager, I naively and arrogantly set out to create Good Design my own way, with my own name on it. The internet as we know it now did not exist, and we had neither clients nor capital. Women had only been granted the legal right to business loans without a male co-signer two years prior. But my gem of a brand-new husband assured me there was nothing he’d invest in more confidently than me. So, my business partner and I each borrowed against our respective home equity, and gave ourselves six months to start making money or go look for jobs.

Our first project was a promotional campaign for a local radio station, concepts for which I sketched with my trusty Prismacolors at a drafting table in my bedroom, where I also produced the mechanical art – on hot-press illustration board with Linotype galleys, #11 Exacto blades, Rubylith, Rapidograph linework, and a lot of Spray Mount.

Setting up our first little office, just around the corner from the original Shakey’s Pizza on J Street, was like playing house. We scoured East Sac estate sales and Ruland’s second-hand office furniture for all the essentials, which we then made chic with white marine paint. We clip-framed free promo posters from paper companies for art. We bought one Rolodex to share.

To find clients, we made handwritten lists of prospects from local business reference books at the public library and then called those contacts on a corded, landline phone to introduce ourselves. One of those calls resulted in a portfolio presentation and a small project that evolved into what is today our largest client. Continuing to build our portfolio, we reached out to local nonprofits and offered free design services to promote their fundraising events.

Those first years were equal parts thrilling and terrifying. But we pulled it off.

2.   Stay hungry. Stay humble: 1995 – 99

After five years, things were clicking along convincingly. Our clientele, portfolio, and staff all grew year by year. We bought lots of computers, we learned how to email, and we started helping clients tell their stories in the emerging medium of the world-wide web. To manage our burgeoning workload, we researched and implemented an integrated accounting and project management system – a huge investment, but a game-changer for operational efficiency. Our previous system involved staff members submitting paper time sheets, which were then sliced into cookie-fortune-shaped strips by task, filed in plastic sleeves in their respective job binders, and reassembled with Scotch tape to tally up finished projects.

With two little kids at home and a husband who then worked nights and weekends, I was chronically exhausted, but incredibly proud of our little company. Especially when we finally qualified for funding to buy our first office building. We (mostly my construction-savvy business partner) DIYd its demolition and renovation after work was finished each evening. My three-year-old son helped knock out walls and pull nails, imitating the sound of every power tool with eerie accuracy. One morning we noticed all the tools were missing only to find them in the basement, where he had industriously tossed them through a hole in the floor as he helped us clean up the night before.

Our pride may have been justified, but it did not go unchecked. We were passed over for an important project with an established client who didn’t think we showed enough initiative in our proposal. In another mortifying instance, some members of my large and local extended family happened to overhear a member of my staff discussing my leadership style with friends in a movie theater. It was not a flattering portrait and has motivated me ever since to be more intentional in how I show up to my team.

The learning theme pervaded those leveling-up years like none before or since. We continued to do our concept sketching on paper, while we embraced every new technology. I began managing my home and work with a Palm Pilot. We were tapped to develop a comprehensive marketing program for an international high-tech launch – branding, packaging, 3D user interface, website, booth, consumer and channel advertising – the works. Celebrating with our client at COMDEX in Las Vegas was glamorous and thrilling. But getting to contribute at that level to the full brand experience was the real win.

3.   Remember your why: 2000 – 04

Our second decade in business started off strong. Besides supporting our clients with creative content for print and digital tactics, we began planning and placing paid media, to become a legitimate full-service ad agency. Thanks to a talented and growing creative team, several of our campaigns scored top awards locally and nationally. And – after a real estate industry client wryly commented on the brand impression of our funky, cracked-plaster-filled office building – we sold it and bought another twice its size in an up-and-coming Midtown location.

Those Midtown years were a lot of fun. The local art and food scene was just taking off. We held many “meetings” at Tres Hermanas, just two doors down. Kids and pets of all shapes and sizes were welcome in the office. Our team continued to mature, with advanced back-end web programming added to our strategic and creative capabilities. We now had clients we’d served for years – one for ten years – but we jumped with zeal on every opportunity to create: company names, taglines, campaign concepts, brochures, websites, billboards, and much more. My baby-designer dreams were all coming true.

But there were nightmares. The year after we moved into our Midtown office, the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks dominated the world’s attention. Virtually all projects were immediately cancelled or placed on indefinite hold. With a hefty new mortgage payment and an even heftier payroll to meet, we sweated it out for three months before the painful decision to make our first staff layoff. Our last-hired designer kindly assured me he’d be fine as I explained the situation, choking back tears. I’m regularly reminded now that, if pride or obstinance prevents me taking those tough steps, everyone and everything I’m in this for is on the line.

4.   Taste your own medicine: 2005 – 09

As businesses recovered from the 2001 – 02 recession, clients began turning to us for larger strategic engagements that their in-house teams were too downsized or busy to manage. Getting to wade fully into our clients’ operations to identify opportunities, articulate messages, and draft detailed action plans was the apex of the tactical things we’d been doing for years. Our writing projects became more complex and interesting, too, as I learned how to research and write for all kinds of subjects outside my experience – neuroscience, agriculture, industrial machinery – give me some Google and a bit of imagination, and I’m good to go!

But the massive real estate-driven downturn of 2008 forced our company to focus attention more fully on its own strategic position. We returned reluctantly to our business development roots, implementing a sophisticated Customer Relationship Management (sales! yay!) system to more rigorously track prospects and projects that had grown scarcer in a recession that seemed to impact every market sector. The commitment paid off, as we managed to stay afloat and pay the bills with no layoffs. Instead, we made across-the-board pay cuts, starting at the top, to keep everyone employed.

This period also saw the resignation of two of our earliest and most valued employees, a natural aspect of business maturity that nonetheless stung. They went into business together, which I had to accept as karmically elegant. And our company culture carried on. New team members brought their talent and enthusiasm. Friday production meetings had a party vibe, fueled often by beer and wine, and always by a heaping bowl of fun-sized candy, the wrappers of which piled high as we mapped out the coming week’s tasks. Our account team gradually became a key competitive advantage, bringing the precision of proactive task management and “white glove” customer care to elevate the value of all our work. Today, no matter how proud I am of our creative or technical efforts, I know it’s the brilliance of the Wallrich Account Executives that defines our client experience.

5.   Compartmentalize and keep moving: 2010 – 14

My third business decade brought some of the biggest challenges to date. After a few years of gradually diverging priorities, widened by a nine-year age gap, my founding business partner retired from the company. Having been lucky never to have experienced its marital equivalent, this partnership dissolution was stressful and confusing. A few months of legal and financial wrangling later, I became the sole shareholder, with a lot to learn.

These years also saw both of my children graduate high school and begin their nascent adult lives. Our daughter began studying at CSU Chico, her parents’ alma mater. And our son made a series of unfortunate choices that propelled him into a seven-year spiral of addiction and homelessness.

And finally, three years after my ex-partner’s departure, I made the horrifying discovery that the staff member promoted to take over her accounting duties, as well as the outside controller I engaged to refine and oversee these processes, had utterly failed in their responsibilities – the former by evident fraud, the latter by neglect or possible collusion. I began what would become an eleven-year slog to satisfy every unpaid obligation, while pursuing civil action to enforce some measure of justice that might protect other potential embezzlement victims.

During these difficult years, I developed the habit of mentally boxing and shelving each painful matter in turn, so I could stay present for my team and steer the company back to fiscal health. Daily exercise and regular therapy visits were my mental health lifelines. Thanks to our decades of solid performance, we retained our loyal clients and were grateful for their referrals. And our team continued to create award-winning work, while enjoying Friday afternoon trivia contests and a general atmosphere of good humor. Taking in the caliber of banter that pervaded our office in those years, one of my kids accurately observed that you had to be really clever to work at Wallrich.

6.   Tell the effing truth, pay your effing taxes, never give up: 2015 – 19

In the wake of the embezzlement drama, it should not have been a shock that several senior staff members left the company to form partnerships with our clients. But it was a triple blow to lose trusted staff, lose valuable clients, and be left responsible for unfinished projects I suddenly lacked the capacity to execute. Our remaining team members made valiant efforts to get these as close as possible to completion, but there were a few super-technical gaps we simply couldn’t close. The most humbling moments of my career were meeting with clients to lay out the situation in stark integrity and make appropriate financial reparations.

Meanwhile, having spent five years methodically paying off every liability left by the embezzlement, the tax authorities proved to be the last and highest hurdle. In addition to unpaid taxes, there were interest charges and huge penalties to pay despite clear evidence of employee fraud. Today, I have an excellent outside firm handling every detail of these accounting processes and almost – almost – maintain a steady heart rate when I open a letter with an official seal on it.

These challenges pushed me to reevaluate some of my business practices in the name of balance. The company expanded flexible work schedule policies to include more remote options. We converted a private office in our suite to a furnished nursery and parents’ room. I forged connections with fellow business owners in groups like Vistage and SPAN to become a more capable CEO. And I took some natural attrition and reclassification opportunities to make my job less about business development, and more about the strategic and creative tasks I loved most.

This period also brought one of the most hopeful, joyful, grateful moments of my life, as my son came back to our lives and began regaining his health and purpose.

7.   Buckle up and roll with the changes: 2020 – 24

The Spring of 2020 ushered in the Covid 19 pandemic, clobbering my business along with countless others. With the advantage of remote-readiness made possible by an earlier office move that shifted us to cloud-based operation, my staff took their computers home for what we thought would be a few weeks of cautious isolation. And we all know how that worked out.

Those Covid years now seem like one continuous cliché. We held meetings and happy hours via Zoom, in our comfy clothes, highlighted by pets and small children popping up onscreen. I bought a (zero percent financing!) Peloton bike and swapped workout and progress notes with my professional network. I started working on my – safely socially distanced – golf game, which still sports a dismally high handicap.

But our continued workload demanded that we add staff, even during those weirdly distanced and uncertain years. We hired four employees during lockdown. Two of them exceeded expectations and continue to perform brilliantly today. Meanwhile, I learned some expensive lessons about California labor law, which continues evolving by the minute due to expectations elevated by pandemic policies.

As the infection specter waned, I polled our team and made the decision to stay remote indefinitely. Productivity, mental health, work-life balance and other advantages weighed in favor of letting our office lease expire and continuing in work-from-home mode. I can’t deny that I appreciate the option to blend my work and personal hours together with less rigidity and more efficiency. But I attribute our ability to succeed in this model to the talent and hard work of my team. While part of me misses the organic mentoring and camaraderie of our little office – especially its value for junior staff members – I know this is the right way to respect the people who have made the company successful.

8.   Test all things; hold fast to what is good: 2025

These words, from 1 Thessalonians 5:21, have grown in relevance to my life and work since being bestowed on gawky 13-year-old me at my confirmation in a tiny Lutheran church. They just keep showing up, usually when I least expect them.

My own understanding, which I thought so superior in 1990, has proven repeatedly wanting. Accepting my own ignorance and staying open to new lessons has been a much more reliable strategy. At the same time, my deepest gut instincts have seldom steered me wrong. Even when firmly guided by attributed experts in various business disciplines, ignoring my “Spidey-Sense” about the right way forward has led to my hardest lessons.

Fully investing in the right people, though, has yielded nothing but good. My husband Brad, who bet on my business in 1990 – and our shared lives in 1987 – has been my happiest win. I have a hardy band of loyal staff who have stood with me through thick and thin and continue to trust my simple promise of “if we earn it, I’ll share it.” I have a cherished network of past staff, clients, and other business connections. My closest circle of friends and family affirms daily my belief that human relationships are the key to any success that matters. And I’m fully focused at work on the things I enjoy most and do best: strategy, content, and design – with capable staff and advisors handling the finance, operations, and project management areas that are not my strengths.

I have no idea what 2025 and beyond will hold. But I’m curious about what’s next. I’m willing to learn new things – I have a list of them: Speak a new language! Master a new dance technique! Understand AI! Most of all, I’m forever grateful for the people with whom I hope to travel this next stretch of the journey.