Wow, 5 years! It has flown by and been a blast.
Seems like a great time to reminisce and take a tour of where we've come from and where we are at now. - Blake
2010 - Grove City, PA - Beginnings
It was a little over 5 years ago that David Kuhta and I were pulling together the business plan for LimeCuda to enter Grove City College's Business Plan Competition (spoiler alert: we placed first!) Before LimeCuda, I was doing SEO consulting under the name Sparkplug SEO.
A bit of trivia... revising the plan during a tight turnaround timeframe was the only time I ever pulled a complete "all nighter". Having enough money to buy an engagement ring was contingent half upon winning the competition and half upon selling an expensive bandsaw. Miraculously both worked out in time.
2010-2011 - Move to Florida - Bootstrapping!
After college I moved to sunny Florida and married my childhood sweetheart.
The first year bootstrapping LimeCuda was tough. Being engaged, working one day a week mowing lawns, getting married - all while trying to also build a business - in short there were some scary months of cash flow and balancing credit card debt.
I had some terrific early clients and projects. Brian Cubarney (President of ClearBrands) and Tim Sweet (Part-time GCC professor at the time) were both very generous and connected me to projects that really helped grow LimeCuda and me professionally. I have no doubt I wouldn't have made it past the first two years without them.
Enter Josh Mallard
Josh and I go way back - all the way to early high school. (See this for a great video of me encouraging Josh to swing on a dangerous vine...)
In 2012 Josh Mallard joined me at LimeCuda. He was working for an accounting firm and started dabbling with WordPress when building a site for his firm. Very quickly he caught the development bug. Since then he has honed his development skills and has the zeal of a religious fanatic when it comes to code and standards. In these 3 years he has built several WordPress plugins, spoken at 2 conferences, and has no doubt become an expert WordPress developer.
2014 - Michigan - A New Season
Summer of 2014 we moved our family up to East Lansing, Michigan. Big adjustment as Florida really only has one season. We're loving it so far and it is nice being around lots of family. I was born here and our roots run deep.
Currently I'm renting office space in First National Bank of America's building in East Lansing. I still work from home most of the time but at least once a week you can find me there all dressed up in suit and tie. If you are in the area I am always game to meet for lunch.
Josh and his family are in Macon, GA and he's now blessed with a wife and two sons.
What Else Has Changed?
LimeCuda's Website...
In 5 years we've had 4 major iterations of the site.
It has been notoriously hard to find time to work on our own site when what we do is help others with their sites.
Oh and two three major logo versions...
What We Do
There have been a couple pivots as we have refined how we can best deliver value
- Started out building websites specifically for Small Business and Entrepreneurs - now we serve all the way to large corporations
- In the early years we were doing everything including in-depth SEO and Inbound Marketing - we still do some of that (particular in build-out and strategy) but we've moved more-and-more to partnering with specialists
- 5 years ago mobile websites were just on the verge of being a thing - now we don't build a website that doesn't adapt responsively for mobile or tablet.
- I never intended to get into website hosting but we've found we can be invaluable by providing a high-grade WordPress hosting and caretaking service
What do our Clients look like?
It always amazes me how diverse our clients are, a huge variety of industries and coming from all over the US and the world - 16 US states and 11 countries. It is so fun to be exposed and learn all sorts of new businesses and deal with people in different cultures and timezones. We have a deep appreciation for how the Internet renders geographic boundaries almost null.
Check out our portfolio for a glimpse of the wide makeup of our clients.
What's Next?
Most mornings I wake up looking forward to my work and truly enjoy it.
I know this post will be read by people thinking about being entrepreneurial or following a path similar to mine so I think I must be frank... the current business climate in the US is tough. Taxes and costs are particularly hard for small businesses. We also pay a ridiculous amount per month for health insurance. I think I am past the really difficult times of growing the business but I am not sure I could wholeheartedly counsel someone to jump right in to the entrepreneurial life. Makes me sad to say that but I don't want to sugarcoat reality or paint a false picture.
That aside, I've enjoyed the ride and hope that our struggles to survive and scale have made us stronger and wiser. We have some great plans in 2015 for better building and maintaining WordPress websites.
We're grateful that we enjoy our work at LimeCuda but more-so that it allows us to provide for our families.
To all our clients, we are very grateful.
- Blake Imeson
