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It has been 367 days since I started this company, Java Social Networking, and I can’t help but think back to everything that’s happened during the past year.  Fellow business owners will probably agree that the first year in any business is much like a roller coaster.  With so many unknowns, we dive in head first with high hopes, while recalling the scary stats that half of small business start-ups don’t make it past year one.  We take it day by day.

I grew up in small town America and come from a very entrepreneurial family.  I attended college in Detroit and worked in local small businesses until I made my way to Santa Monica, California to get a taste of the west coast business practices.  A couple years later, I made that trek back across the country in my Saturn Ion, down Route 66, stopping at Cadillac Ranch heading to “the big city.”  I always wanted to experience the New York City lifestyle, but I didn’t predict culture shock from laid back Los Angeles to corporate America NYC.

I worked as a marketing director in the city for a while before the entrepreneurship craving started to set in.  Growing up in a family of small business owners, I started to realize how all of my acquired marketing knowledge and experience could be valuable to so many other small businesses.  To me, business is an art, and it pulls at my heart strings to play a fundamental role in a company’s success.  With the Internet leveling the playing field for competition within all industries, and social media strongly coming into play as “new marketing,” I saw a need for online marketing services and a desire to provide them.

Those who know me may say I’m a bit of a techie and a workaholic – it was thrilling to get the ball rolling.  However, leaving my good job in the city in one of the country’s worst unemployment droughts was extremely scary.  Social media for business was a new concept, and it was only during a subway ah ha! moment that I thought this might be a good path to take.  I researched the options to create the most effective virtual office I could.  Small businesses are on budgets so I didn’t want to pass down the cost of maintaining brick and mortar offices.  A virtual office gives me the opportunity to utilize employees all across the country.  This provides better authenticity to our client’s brands and a better understanding of their target demographic based on geography.

So here we are now – one year later.  We’re now a team of 11 employees.  We cover the country from California to New York and from Michigan down to Oklahoma.  We build websites, create viral videos, maintain social media accounts, and constantly brainstorm new ways to push our clients to the next level.  Our sales meetings are held through video phone, we have an amazing online project management system that keeps us all connected regardless of where we are in the world.  Though miles apart, we’re all just a Google chat window away, and we love it.

So, I hold up my glass of celebratory wine in hopes that you’ll toast to ongoing success for JSN and our clients.  Hoboken’s very own Frank Sinatra said it best, “It was a very good year.”

Happy Birthday, JSN… Cheers!

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