Justwords sprang to life in 2010. It’s sort of hard to believe that a decade has passed by since the first website went up. It felt good to launch the website, all yellow and bright (so wrong in terms of SEO today), carrying a pretty image of a piece of paper with punched holes as the background. It felt revolutionary to start a business that was going to be about content – about reimagining content for the digital world. The world felt right and things just seemed to fall together. When entrepreneurs start a company, they do not think of the troubles and problems that lay ahead. They think of victories, and wins, and how they are about to change something in the world – irrespective of whether they can or will ever do. It’s probably this courage, passion, and enthusiasm that led us to win our first big client – Nokia. They were looking for a young company that did good content and could help them execute an ambitious project. A friend had told a friend, who told another friend and that’s how the word got around that there was this startup in the market called Justwords – it did really good content. And that’s how it all started. It was kind of being swept up by a big wave into the sea when you have just learnt to swim. But that’s the beauty of it all. You gasp for breath, you come up for air, you remember what you are supposed to do and then just know what you have to do. And that was it. We were a small team, all sitting in our homes, and burning the midnight oil. We finished the whole project by 2011. It was a success. We had hit the ball right out of the park and got one happy client. Word got around and projects started trickling in. In 2012, we added a new product line, moved to a coworking space, added a tiny sales team. We focussed all our efforts in making that work. In doing so, we ignored what we were already doing well – content. In 2013, we almost failed and shut down. It was a dark phase but we survived. It taught us a lesson – focus on what you are good at. We returned to content and that saved us. Soon we found ourselves fascinated with content marketing. We focussed more and more on the combination of content and SEO and how it could drive up page views and traffic and change a company’s online presence and pull up its bottom line. Our whole business was getting built on one marketing strategy – Content Marketing. Over the years, we have kept growing. We were fortunate to work with some really good brands, who kept their faith in us and allowed us the opportunity to show some solid results. We feel incredibly indebted to all our patrons, especially the early ones who trusted us when we were not even a name. Without that trust, it would not have been possible for us to reach where we are today. So Thank You. Also Read: Why Content Marketing is important for any business? As we turn 10, we feel happy, excited, and humbled by all the love, support, and honour we received over the years. We also feel fortunate since 90% of all startups fail, despite the hard work, passion, right product, and everything else. That has also given us the confidence to say that we are really good at what we do. As a celebration of this decade-long journey, we thought of putting down a list of things we learnt in these 10 incredible years. So here you go. 1. Focus on the thing that you do best – If you play to your strengths, you increase your chances of winning the game. Be committed to what you believe in and make that work. Work on improving the strength of your brand;test it again and again, and make it stronger with knowledge and the right resources. We knew how to make content work and that saved us.Content marketing drove in leads, clients, and revenue. Even to this day, almost all our conversions come from inbound marketing. We offer what we know really well. And that is why we have been able to make it work. We built on that strength and almost closed when we ignored it. 2. Work hard to ensure customer satisfaction- It’s amazing what a happy client can do for your brand. If your customer is not happy, you are doing something wrong – well most of the times that is. Work hard on fixing that. If you have signed up a client, you need to work as a team and deliver on the results. A lot of business comes to Justwords through referrals from other clients. Also, we have a great track record of clients coming back to us for more and more. So work on your clients, and you wouldn’t have to worry about revenue. 3. Turn your failures into learnings- No one likes a failure. But when you fail it’s important to get back on your feet and get ready to start again. If you risk, failure is just something that can happen. Yes it sucks, yes it can be devastating but you simply cannot take failure as the end. Failure, almost inevitably, teaches you something. It tells you that you are going wrong. So you need to tweak that and start again. When we almost failed in 2013, it taught us that we should change our business strategy. If we would have shut shop then, we would never have reached this point. Here is a nice quote that I found recently that drives this point home. It’s from the founder of a company called Stella and Dot. She says “You have to see failure as the
