Having a startup is a lot like riding down a roller coaster on a pair of roller skates.

A 2016 Recap – Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going by Shannon Kinney

Building Dream Local Digital has been a crazy ride full of a lot of ups and downs, and every day I wake up and can’t wait to get back at it. I’m fortunate so many of our Dream Team of #HoneyBadgers feel the same way. As I write this blog post, Dream Local Digital is celebrating it’s eighth anniversary. We started in 2009 in an office I built over my garage, as crazy as that seems. Four of us that are now on the team were here during those early days. This fall, several of us went over there and squeezed in for a quick photo, which is one of my favorites.

We have served more than 40,000 small and medium-sized businesses in workshops, webinars and events; had more than 100 employees, interns and freelancers come through our programs; and run thousands of online marketing campaigns for our clients. We take #HoneyBadgerPride in how high our client retention rates are. That means we’re doing many things right!

2016 in particular has been full of growth, activity and a lot of frequent flier miles. We spoke at more than 50 events throughout the United States, Canada and Germany, conducted interviews with scores of media outlets and podcasts, pitched at several events, and attended industry conferences. We met with our media and agency partners nationwide, and visited with executives at Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and other leading media companies. We launched HoneyBadger TV (#HBTV) and HBLive, several enhancements and additional digital marketing services for our clients, and even lowered our rates in a few areas where we began to see significant scale. We worked with our partners at Facebook and Local Media Association to launch a new suite of Facebook training webinars, created our own monthly webinar series for small and medium-sized businesses, and launched in several new markets nationwide.

In everything we do, our goal is to help our clients’ businesses grow and our partners to increase their revenue. We have a deep commitment to help amplify our clients’ vision, voice and story, to connect and collaborate with our clients and each other, to be creative and innovative in our work, and to continually master our craft in this fast-paced and ever-changing space that is digital marketing. And, a high point of #HoneyBadgerPride for me is to see that our #HoneyBadger culture is thriving. Our team has grown, celebrating some special anniversaries and adding several new #HoneyBadgers, and we have had several events and celebrations of our growth as a team and as a company.

This slideshow shows our 2016 Dream Local Digital Year in Review – full of some of our favorite highlights from the road, and of our team here in Maine.

With deep #HoneyBadgerPride I want to express my sincere gratitude for all of our clients, partners, supporters, industry colleagues, and most of all, our team of #HoneyBadgers for making this dream come true each and every day. It’s been quite a ride. And I can’t wait to see what’s in store for us in 2017.