The day passed virtually unnoticed for me, but, yesterday, my company officially turned one. I’m basing that on when I got my Nevada State Business license. There are other ways to measure it, but this seemed appropriate. So, what did I do over the last year?

Well, I

Filed my state business license
Filed my county business license
Filed my city business license (for Sparks and Reno)
Obtained an antiquities permit from the Nevada State Museum
Obtained a Cultural Resource Use Permit from the NV BLM
Researched and cold called 20 companies
Bought a domain name
Started a website
Got a PO box
Joined ACRA
Joined the Geological Society of Nevada
Joined the Nevada Mining Association
Called 20 more companies
Stole my first job from my last company
Started a business bank account
Set up Quickbooks for accounting
Bought Dropbox space for total cloud storage
Called 20 more companies
Started the CRM Archaeology Podcast
Connected with others on Linked In and got two more jobs
Got a small job from a big company
Wrote the report for my second project from a campsite at Yellowstone
Set my company up in Dun and Bradstreet for my DUNS number
Set DIGTECH up in SAMs
Connected with BLM contracting officers
Connected with a few companies for teaming
Helped develop an archaeology recording application (still in progress!)
Did about $10,000 in business
Spent about $17,000 (you do the math)
Bought a chair from Ikea (hello Markus)
Set up professional liability insurance
Set up worker’s comp insurance
Set up general business insurance
Called 20 more companies
Optimized Linked In and Website for best search engine optimization (SEO)
Received a random call from a company looking for cell tower work because my SEO was effective!
Wrote a book
Published a book (out this April from Left Coast Press)

And most importantly,

Never lost focus
Remained optimistic
And I’m looking forward to Year Two.

Thanks for reading and I’ll hopefully be hiring you soon!