Today, April 22, 2019, is the sixth anniversary of my company Charles Ave Marketing.

Six years ago, I had no idea whether this whole idea would last. After losing a full-time marketing job at a tech startup, I spent almost a year freelancing. During that year, I needed to make an adjustment on my taxes, and I had no idea how to do it. After reading some Yelp reviews, I called a local accountant to see if she could help.

It was this accountant, Vicki Knight, who advised me to incorporate. And thus, Charles Ave Marketing, LLC was born.

Over the course of the next year, Vicki became my business mentor. She taught me about small business accounting, payroll, how to set up my retirement accounts, and more.

Starting a business is scary. It’s a leap of faith. But wow, to think about that moment, and all the moments in between, it’s amazing to contemplate how we got here.

Charles Ave clients are the best

It fills me with pride that two clients, Menuism and MyCorporation, have been with Charles Ave essentially since day one. And both still would be, except MyCorporation was recently acquired by Deluxe (yay, MyCorp team!). After the acquisition, Deluxe brought marketing tasks in-house, so our arrangement ended just a couple of weeks ago. But still! These long-lasting relationships are almost unheard of in the online marketing world.

I’m proud to point to other time-tested client relationships as well. Los Angeles Institute of Architecture and Design began working with Charles Ave in 2014. PickFu and American College of Education started in 2015. dotLuxury has been with us since 2016.

Best of all, proposals go out to prospective new clients all the time. In fact, Charles Ave just began working with a national finance company.

Being busy is a good problem to have

For the past two years, I’ve done something big to coincide with the company anniversary. In 2017, I unveiled a redesigned company website. In 2018, I launched my first self-published book.

This year, I barely made the time to put together this blog post. It’s a constant issue: in the process of marketing for clients, I neglect marketing myself. Since Charles Ave is a service-oriented business, time is a finite resource. And I just haven’t been good about keeping up with the company’s blog, social media, and my presence as a Forbes LA Business Council member. I am trying to be better about delegating tasks, but I haven’t slowed down enough to bring in more help.

As a business owner, I think it’s as important to acknowledge our shortcomings as it is to celebrate our accomplishments. So check back in with me in a year and see how I’ve done.

Until then, back to work!

One more thing

I would be remiss not to mention that while April 22 is one of my happiest days of the year, April 23 is one of the saddest. On April 23, 2017, one of my closest friends, Shirley Weiss, died unexpectedly at the age of 36. Her death, as well as the sudden deaths of Joe Abramo (38) and Kristina Schroeter (34) that same year, has had a profound impact on me. My beloved dog Tucker, who was instrumental in coping with the losses, died the following July at the age of 13.

Grief, depression, and suicidality have defined so much of the past few years. Again, I think it is as important to acknowledge our struggles as it is to tout our successes. As I have for the past two years, I encourage you to read my article How Companies Can Support Employees Coping with Grief and hug someone you love today. Tomorrow is never guaranteed.

Kim Kohatsu
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