10 Years Strong! Looking Back on a Decade of Growth & Gratitude

How does a business come to be?

It was a cold day in Chicago. There are many of those. I remember my kids playing with their Barbies. Dressing and redressing each one. Each outfit had a theme. Vacation Barbie. School teacher Barbie. Doctor Barbie. Mom with baby Barbie. I remember thinking, "Who do I want to be? What do I want to do?" The horizon seemed open, maybe too open.

When you exit corporate America, a particular vulnerability sets in. My decades in big business were comfortable. I enjoyed climbing the corporate ladder, running the show (at least my corner of it), and making an impact. After over twenty years of schlepping television had finally reached its peak for me, I hit an existential crisis. What’s next? Do I continue as is or try something new? If I try something new, will it work, or will I be like Michael Jordan - at the top of my game in basketball, only to transition to being a mediocre baseball player? I hate mediocracy. It’s so soul-sucking.

Lucky for me, my existential crisis hit a lovely crossroads with my husband’s same wrestling. While my husband and I have some significant interests in common, we have an even longer list of things we don’t have in common. We have very different professional backgrounds. We have different personalities. We even have different nationalities. You name it. We are different. However, opposites attract, as they say, and we have always found a way to make our differences work together as strengths. All that said, if you had told either of us that one day we would own a company together, I’m rather confident we both would have had a hearty laugh.

It was yet another cold day in Chicago, sitting on our couch in our living room with our computers perched on our laps, that Tom and I decided merging our many differences into a company may make the most sense of all. I left HGTV with an enormous amount of business experience, along with a Master of Professional Psychology. People were calling me for executive coaching without me even hanging up a shingle. Tom had pivoted from a career in the corporate business world to a career in nonprofit leadership, where he discovered what he was most passionate about and best at - facilitating teams through strategic planning processes. What if we came together and became a one-stop shop for businesses that want to scale in size, health, and impact? We seemed perfectly positioned - two people with an immense amount of complimentary professional experience who had recently passed into midlife, armed with some personal wisdom and filled with a huge desire to help others. We felt purpose-driven at the same time and in the same way.

What if we help others successfully navigate their journeys?

Hey - that sounds like an excellent name for our company! Does anyone own that URL? Purchased and filled with a million ideas, we Squarespaced our way into reality.

That was 10 years ago. In some ways, it feels like a blink of an eye, and in another way, it feels like a long slog. A decade of ups and downs, trials and triumphs. We’ve managed to build a business that has not only sustained our family but has helped so many people. And best of all, we’ve stayed married! That may sound weird to note, but anyone who has run a company with their spouse or any relative knows many a relationship has fallen prey to the real struggle of trying to keep a business afloat.

They say that 90% of startups fail in the first year, and of those that do survive, 50% will fail within the first five years. They also say that only 9% of businesses surpass the $1 million mark.

Given that we defied all of those sad statistics, we have decided to celebrate.

Happy 10-year anniversary to Navigate the Journey!

While every entrepreneurial journey is unique, we’ve learned a few universal lessons along the way. We will share some of those insights with you over the coming weeks and months.

If you have been a partner, client, vendor, or friend of Navigate the Journey over the past 10 years, we want to say THANK YOU. We are so humbled and grateful to do this work every day, and none of this would have been possible without all of you.

It’s been an exciting ride, and we look forward to decades more!