On March 2nd, 1998, the day after my daughter Marissa was born, we introduced StudioPlus Version 1.0 to the world at a small trade show in Iowa! Not only will we be celebrating my baby girl’s 20th birthday next week, but we’ll also be celebrating the 20th anniversary of StudioPlus. Time has passed so fast and both the software and my daughter have grown up!

Over the past 20 years, we’ve seen thousands of clients in over 100 countries choose our software to help grow their business. To this day, I’m humbled that a small business owner or large corporation would place their trust in our company, selecting our product as the platform on which to build their business.

Statistics show more than 80% of small business start-ups fail within the first 5 years. Even more discouraging, more than 80% of those remaining fail during the next 5 years! For those that remain, it’s a journey filled with daily struggles to just survive. The average small business owner is discouraged by the amount of time that their small business is ever-consuming from personal and family lives. Stressed by the disorganization that often envelopes small businesses. Fearful their dream of running a successful business may come to an end, they wrestle with a sense of failure that their plans for running a successful business have not materialized in the way they once imagined.

I understand these struggles, because I’ve gone through all of them myself over the past 23 years as a small business owner. And that’s why our company mission is NOT to sell products and services to clients like you. Instead, our mission is to help every client succeed in building a healthy, thriving, and profitable business, whether small or large.

Our company is not perfect, nor are our products. Occasionally, someone even finds a bug in one of our products!!! I wish I could promise perfection in our service and promise defect-free products, but I can’t. However, I can promise the following:

Customer Focus – Our customers are the foundation of our business. We are driven by one relentless pursuit: Helping each of our customers build a successful business. It’s our goal to serve with excellence, and to treat everyone with the same diligence, courtesy, and respect we desire for ourselves.

Constant Innovation – As a technology company, we recognize that greatness today becomes obsolete tomorrow. In today’s changing world, continuous, creative, outside-of-the-box product development is key to ensuring our customers’ ongoing success.

Highest Quality – We are committed to excellence in the products and services we provide. We continually strive to exceed our customers’ expectations by setting the highest possible standards, measuring our progress, and holding ourselves accountable for any shortcomings.

Utmost Integrity – If our customers are the foundation of our business, then integrity is the cornerstone. Everything we do is guided by what is right. We live by the highest ethical standards, treating our clients, partners, competitors, and coworkers with fairness, honesty, and respect. Regardless of the outcome of our business, we WILL remain positive influencers in our world.

As we rapidly approach the General Availability (GA) of both Spectra 2018 and myStratus 2018, I wanted to take this opportunity to pause and personally acknowledge with gratitude each of you for placing your trust in our company over the past 20 years. We’ve been truly blessed by the best clients in the world, so “Thank you”!

Stay tuned for the general release announcement of Spectra 2018 and myStratus 2018 in the coming days!!!