Celebrating Our Success Story

This week I want to take the opportunity to shamelessly share my ‘success story’ with you—it’s kind of neat, so don’t go away just yet!

Nearly seven years ago, I moved to Bangor from Massachusetts with my family because of a job offer my husband accepted. I resigned from a good job, we packed our bags, and we began a new chapter in our lives. If you remember the economy in 2008/2009, finding a job was a luxury and I was just another unemployed professional in America. My business, Pulse Marketing Agency, was born out of the necessity to be employed and contribute to my family’s income.

With my family counting on me, I pooled together $7,000 to start my business, and Pulse was established with me, an old laptop, and a phone in the basement of the School House on Harlow Street. In the past six years, I have made innumerous mistakes.  Each mistake proved to be an opportunity for growth and I took advantage of every single one—that’s why I think we’re successful. It’s been an amazing journey and I would not change anything.

What started as a need to create a job for me has become a growing small business offering competitive, rewarding jobs for six (soon to be eight) local professionals. What’s our secret sauce? Just the basics we learned from our mistakes along the way—learning opportunities I’ll gladly share with you:

We’re obsessed with our brand. We have worked extremely hard to get where we are and everything we do is focused on building (and maintaining) a reputable brand.  We have four main rules:

• #1 – What happens at Pulse, stays at Pulse. Our clients trust us and we honor their trust at all times.
• #2 – If we’re not proud of it, it’s not ready to show our client.
• #3 – Check, recheck, and check it again. Quality control is a must.
• #4 – Provide outstanding customer service at all times and do what’s best for our brand, even if that costs us money.

We’re resilient. We have taken many punches along the way and we know that it’s part of the game. If we fall, we get up, figure out why we fell, find the silver lining, and continue our journey.  No worries, falling down is part of growing. There’s a lesson and an opportunity for growth every time.

We’re nimble. Marketing has changed quite significantly since I first began my career in the late 90s.  In fact, most of the stuff I learned in my MBA program is now obsolete—kind of crazy considering that I graduated nine years ago!  We know Pulse needs to stay at the forefront of technology and marketing best practices and we don’t rest on our laurels. We understand that there will always be someone out there who will know more than us—so we just focus on striving to do better, every day.

We take ownership of our actions. If we make a mistake (and we do make mistakes), we take responsibility for it and fix it. It’s my perception that mistakes are bound to happen—and we should strive to minimize them—but if we drop the ball, we come clean. This is perhaps one of the most important rules at Pulse.

Happy Birthday Pulse Marketing!