537. One year old 🎈
A little peek inside what it's been like to run a business
Hellooo 👋 So happy to have you here. I’m Kevan. I have spent 15+ years as a head of marketing for some cool tech startups. Now I’ve co-founded a brand storytelling business called Bonfire. We do coaching, advisory, and content. If you identify with creativity and marketing, we’d love for you to join us.
One year ago …
On September 20 of last year, my co-founder
and I told the world (and LinkedIn) about our brand new business.
They grow up so fast! 🥹
Here we are one year later, and we have accomplished so many things, learned so many things, asked so many basic questions, and have lived to tell you all about it. Which is exactly what we did in the latest issue of our newsletter.
I wanted to take the chance this week to draw your attention to our post about one year in business at Bonfire since I know there are so many folks out there who are curious what it’s like to strike out on your own. Every situation is likely to be different, of course, but if our story to date can be at all encouraging, insightful, or validating to any baby-business thoughts you’ve been thinking, well, we’d be delighted to play a small part in inspiring you to go for it. Things are pretty great on this side of things. To get here, I needed a dose of encouragement, some extra brave feelings, and an amazing friend to do this work together, and I couldn’t be happier that it all came true.
Check out the full post for all the details. Here are some of the highlights:
We made almost $500k in revenue in our first year of business
We set out to have four revenue streams, and ended up with one of the four accounting for 95 percent of our revenue
We helped 21 clients with their storytelling (brands, careers, websites, etc.)
We paid ourselves way less than we could have
We read zero business books—in keeping with our ethos of doing things our way
And speaking of doing things our way, one of the big reveals in the newsletter is details about what we’re going to do next. We’re going to have a new line of business in the short-term (a cool online community, which you’ll be hearing lots more about!). And in the medium-term, we want to host in-person experiences like workshops, retreats, and a free artist residency program on a property that we’ll purchase in France. 🇫🇷 ‼️ This part of the business has been in our hearts since Day One. We’ve made good progress to get there, and we’ll be talking lots more about it in the coming year(s).
Got any questions about what it’s been like to run this business? Let me know by hitting reply.
As you can tell, I may not have all the answers and definitely will not have answers that are by the book, but I’m happy to be a resource and an encouragement if business-building is something you’d like to get into.
About this newsletter …
Hi, I’m Kevan, a marketing exec based in Boise, Idaho, who specializes in startup marketing and brand-building. I previously built brands at Oyster, Buffer, and Vox. Now I am cofounder at Bonfire, a brand storytelling company.
Each week on this substack, I share playbooks, case studies, stories, and links from inside the startup marketing world. Not yet subscribed? No worries. You can check out the archive, or sign up below:
Thank you for being here! 🙇♂️
I’m lucky to count folks from great brands like these (and many more) as part of this newsletter community.
