Five Years in Business: Trust, Patience and Gratitude

John Walker

April 2, 2024

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5 min read

Five years ago Meta was called Facebook, the pandemic hadn’t happened yet and I lived in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. April 2019 was when I started J. Walker Marketing with one client and high hopes.

Today, five years later, Meta is still called Meta but we’re not all wearing virtual reality headsets (yet), Google Analytics is called GA4, and I live in New York City. Also, J. Walker Marketing is different and better than I imagined it would be. With reflection, there are three guiding principles for me so far. They are trust, patience and gratitude.

Trust was what got me started. Having the trust of my spouse to get going, and having trust in work I’d done with past clients- trust that it was good enough that there would be clients who needed more of that type of work. The other thing about trust is that it’s the lubrication that makes relationships start and grow. If you think about it, trust is what really makes business possible right down to the idea that a piece of paper is worth a dollar. That’s trust.

Patience is the next principle. It’s something I’ve never been good at, but I’m learning it gradually because it is precious. Patience is taking the long view; it’s sticking in relationships that are hard and working on them until they get better; and it’s letting bad days happen and then closing them out at sundown and waiting for another day that will probably be better. It’s a lot of other things too but mostly, it’s just a way of taking each day moment by moment and letting things happen as they’re supposed to. But I’m still a work in progress on this one.

Before I get to gratitude, and that’s really the most important one, let me share some changes that have happened in the last year- maybe they’re small things, but life, and business, are just a lot of small things that add up to big things.

I started working at a co-working space in Harlem several days a week. It’s a new neighborhood for me and gets me out of my home office to see new things and new people. It’s been invigorating.

I’ve leaned into SEO and started doing a lot of it for clients. It’s dense, complicated and fascinating. It’s like doing a crossword puzzle or what I imagine detectives do. I’ve really enjoyed it.

I learned to use the new version of Google Analytics, GA4. I was concerned about learning this new version because it’s so critical to my clients and this version is so different from the last one. But I did it and now I’m as comfortable in it as I ever was in the old version. Old dog. New trick.

So on to gratitude- being thankful. (It’s good for the heart, by the way.)

There are many things I’m thankful for and here are a few of them.

I’m thankful that I get to have flexibility in my work days.
I’m thankful for the easy projects because they’re fun to do like riding a bike.
I’m also thankful for the hard ones that stretch me uncomfortably into places I need to go.

But most of all I’m thankful for my clients and colleagues who trust me, treat me with patience and put the work in front of me that makes my days so interesting.

So with five years under my belt let me end with thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You know who you are.

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