In 2001, I founded BlueModus to bridge the gap between the experiences marketers need to meet their goals and the technology that enables them. Over these past two decades, BlueModus has grown into one of the top .NET Content Management development agencies globally fueled by a few fundamental principles:

• Be transparent to our clients and colleagues.
• Provide an environment that supports Mastery, Autonomy, and Purpose for our colleagues.
• Find efficiencies wherever you can, and deliver excellence.
• Build partnerships first.

Looking back at the last 20 years, I’ll never forget the first time I went into the office for an official day of work. It was exciting yet scary taking that first step. However, that mix of emotions was quickly replaced with a similar mix of excitement and fear when we closed our first big client, Bacardi. That account would become 50% of our revenue until nearly 2014. Despite the risks, we proved ourselves and provided excellent work, which allowed their investment in us to grow.

Some of the highs (and lows) of the last 20 years have included (but are not limited to):

• Bringing on our first hire, Nick Bushnell, our first COO/President Dave Baumgarten, and a Sales/Marketing lead, Marc Maassen.
• Opening our first large office during Christmas 2004, which we would occupy until designing a new office in the Cable Building in 2012.
• Running a digital summit for over 100 attendees in London for Bacardi’s agencies
• Developing our first massive product - the employee training system for a major retailer and then our first large eCommerce product.
• In 2014, we faced one of our most challenging years in business when our COO/President Dave Baumgarten passed away unexpectedly. That same year, we lost our largest account, Bacardi. This was the biggest challenge we ever faced, losing 50% of our revenue, and our beloved President at the same time tested BlueModus in a lot of ways.
• Marc Maasen took the reigns as CEO and eventually Chairman.
• Bringing on Tom Whittaker as COO (and eventually President) in 2016 and Becki Dilworth as VP & CSO in 2017.
• Watching in amazement at our growth averaging over 50% for four years straight while keeping our culture.

It’s clear that the environment we have here, one of transparency, respect, and support for our colleagues, is the main reason we survived all the challenges and continue to see success.

BlueModus is our exceptional people. This is the best team I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot.

While there are so many more milestones and memories to recount, after 20 years, it’s most exciting to think of where BlueModus is heading.

We’re now a full-service digital agency, and we’re growing rapidly in eCommerce, enterprise content, business intelligence and data, and consulting. As the web continues to evolve faster and faster, we’re finding opportunities to help our clients move to the next level.  Helping clients with their digital transformation 2.0 and 3.0 is exciting as it directly impacts their ability to be successful in the long-term, something we take great pride in being part of.

Alongside digital transformations, new advances in machine learning and multi-platform delivery are among the cooler things that we’re focusing more on and something we anticipate becoming a more significant part of our focus in the coming years.

But at the end of the day, the most exciting thing is that we’re building teams that can act as full-service digital partners for our clients, which is so much more than just a build partner. We’re helping many companies revolutionize their entire business for the years to come.