We just wanted to write a little personal note to say how much we’ve appreciated everything 2016 has brought us this year. Some people think that when you’ve been doing the same job for 20 years, that you’ve really got one year of experience 20 times… but that is not the case when you’re running a business. The job continually evolves, and you learn more about yourself and how to break past plateaus in your thinking and growth. Here’s what 2016 brought us this year at Tenato:

• Our creative coordinator, Samantha Boone had her first full year here at Tenato. Her multi-disciplinary talents of writing, graphic design, research and analytics pulled through so much value that we were able to exceed our growth from last year, and continue hiring.
• Jacqueline’s husband, Gary Drew, joined the company full time, handling financial, systems, and process development. His work streamlining and systemizing what we do is creating consistency that will allow the rest of the team to work much more efficiently, and make us capable of greater growth and more precise, consistent tracking.
• The Three Marketers has re-partnered with Tenato after about a 5 year hiatus. We worked with this very capable contractor for several years before we rebranded, at which time we put their service on hold until we could figure out how to change our firm/re-brand (which we did in 2011). In 2016 we were thrilled to re-align, as they had a full roster, and were then able to move all our online marketing business back to them. This is already having a great impact on our results. It was also serendipitous, as they were awarded a Google Premier Partnership just a couple of months later; a designation Google only awards to the top 3% of its Partner companies. This is a remarkable achievement, gaining premier-level service from Google for all of Tenato’s clients.
• We found three great new Associates – Christina Rowsell (Media Relations), Marj Smith (who just completed her APMP and will be our Proposal/Bid Management Specialist), Ginny Holtby (Tourism Strategist). All are very competent women who are helping us expand in new ways. That’s some great marketing muscle!
• We’ve just hired a new Senior Editor/Copywriter – Richard Erickson. Richard is a fantastic wordsmith and grammatical whiz. He’ll soon be blogging for us; but as he’s the newest recruit (just this month), I want to write a whole post just about/for him, so watch for that, coming soon!
• We gained several wonderful new clients this year… and I’m NOT going to name them here, as I’ve always vowed to protect confidentiality unless the clients pre-approve (and who has time to do that right before Christmas?) so for now I will say this: We dearly appreciate you all. You’re living proof that the good guys can win, and we’re so happy to be a part of your success.

So, we have much to be grateful for here at Tenato! Here’s to an even better 2017 with the help of all of our excellent clients and the expanding team at Tenato. Merry Christmas!