I’ll be the first to tell you, 2022 was a hard year for me. We had many changes at Vitality South in 2022 that necessitated new processes. Luckily for me, I’ve never been afraid of hard work.
One of those changes was the addition/expansion of our IT team to compliment our Marketing and Software teams. We technically did IT (information/computers) support in 2021 also, but we didn’t have a whole team dedicated to this alone. We had our Software team double-timing to meet these needs. We had reached the point of full capacity where we needed to get all in or get all out. We got all in! In addition to our faithful Sheila that many of you love and call the GOAT (greatest of all time), we’ve added a full time IT director, Jayme Bennett. He came on board in March and really embraced improving our support, improving our team, and expanding our services. We’ve since added yet another IT support team member (Bryant) and we’re truly unstoppable in this department. We’ve walked into multiple businesses in the last few weeks that had complex issues that had requested support from 1-3 other businesses who left throwing their hands in the air – and we solved it that day. Wow! That’s amazing. That transformation didn’t come easily though. Transformation is hard.
In 2022, we lost a few employees that we had put a lot of trust in. While this could have been a blow, it was a really good thing in retrospect as it allowed us to re-align, re-synergize, and re-choose our team. It was hard work keeping everything afloat and our customers happy with a decreased headcount of team members and transition of contacts. But this ultimately gave us the opportunity to promote internal talent (Dacey Shands – who’s killing it!) and welcome a new member to our leadership team – Carolyn Brownson, who has brought so many new things to our business. Our team of employees are happier and better than ever before – and this difficult change was part of the necessary process to make this happen.
Another change we experienced in 2022 is growing pains. We completed more projects (while still supporting our current clients) than ever before! That sounds like a brag, but it’s seriously hard to execute! Out of sheer curiosity, I just counted, and we added the following new clients: 10 SEO , 25 IT, 18 Logo/Branding, 2 Digital Signage, 15 Social Media, 9 Digital Ad, 4 Marketing Consulting, 60 Website, and 9 Custom Software to the Vitality South family in 2022! Wow. And every single one of those projects were fulfilled in-house by our team! While AMAZING, this was hard to build out the infrastructure to support this kind of progress.
All in all, I’m super proud of our growth in 2022. It was our best year ever -in regards to finances, growth, and morale . And with all that being said, I’m looking forward to another HARD year for 2023. I want growth. I want improvement. I want progress. And we’re willing to GRIND to achieve those things. I’m so thankful for the customers that trust us to help their business. And thankful for the entrepreneurs and business partners that support, refer to, and encourage our team. Wishing a successful (and possibly hard) 2023 to us all!
