A Decade of Doing the Darn Thing

2026 is LVPR’s 10th anniversary, which is wild. I never stayed at a job for more than 3 years before I started LVPR, hopping from agency to agency, excited by new clients and opportunities. Little did I know, I was an entrepreneur in waiting. Over the past 10 years, I have worked on some of the coolest brands, met amazing founders, industry peers, and colleagues, and finally fulfilled my entrepreneurial itch by continuously ideating and innovating as our industry evolves, starting multiple side projects, and learning how to fail but not quit.

Learnings:

• Operations – Outsource your weaknesses. I like knowing how the platforms work and peeking in on them, but organization isn’t my strength, and my disorganization or procrastination when it comes to things I don’t like hurts the company.
• Finance – I have always struggled to find the right consultant to successfully manage finances and have been unable to relinquish control, as I would see invoicing, reconciling, cash flow management, forecasting, and consistent reporting on the state of the business fall through the cracks. I still maintain majority control of these functions and have spent way too many hours on them with customer support to navigate them. Send any consultants my way PLEASE!
• Marketing – I am a marketer at heart, whether it’s my kids sports teams, school merch, my friends new business idea, or clients. But ask me to market myself and I shrink and become paralyzed. We are trained to be behind the camera, not in front of it, and breaking that mindset has been one of the hardest parts of growing brand awareness and sharing successes.
• Hiring – I usually hire based off energy and how an employee would fit into our small team. I don’t foresee that perspective ever changing but that has also backfired very badly in getting too comfortable with employees and not keeping the boundary between colleague vs friend. I have found that I need to be the last interview vs first – and let my more direct and critical team members vet before me.
• Legal – I have rewritten client and employee contracts annually, if not more often, due to unforeseen circumstances I would never think could happen. I also have signed many contracts without thoroughly reading them or including protective redlines that have cost me a lot of money. 
• Trust – I have always been and will always be someone that trust people are good and will do the right thing. But I have been burned by employees and clients by not putting terms in writing or holding people accountable. 
• Accountability – I am big on karma, and I have had to pay clients back when it wasn’t always necessary, but I felt it was the right thing to do. I also run the business to take accountability personally when I F-up and encourage my team to as well. I have worked at so many agencies where we would never admit fault and always pass the blame and that never works out.

I could go on and on, but plan to share others throughout the year to reflect and hopefully help others that feel just as lost at times as a business owner. LMK if there are other topics you’d like to hear about. Believe me, I’ve been humbled repeatedly.