If there’s one thing that the team at Reunion Marketing loves, it’s hitting milestones. Today, we hit another major one as we officially turn 5 years old. As a company, we are always looking toward the future as we set out to better accomplish our Core Focus, Creating an Environment that Positively Affects the Lives of Our Team and Clients. I am so proud of how much we have accomplished during this time through our Niche, Unrivaled Customer Service, and through powerful goal setting and regular demonstrations of the Core Values that speak to the culture of Reunion Marketing. Grit. Elevate Others. Comfortable Being Uncomfortable. Continuous Improvement.
What I love best about reaching goals or hitting milestones is the opportunity to celebrate the accomplishments and to reflect back on the many lessons learned and reasons we are able to celebrate. There have been many. Just as important are the memories, friendships, partnerships, career and growth opportunities, and positive outcomes that have happened as a result of 6 folks coming together 5 years ago. Over that time we have become a team of more than 50 amazing people working together to create results and build relationships with the hundreds of partners we have made along the way.
Reunion Marketing is named Reunion because of the way we come together as a team. The original thought, as we began our journey 5 years ago, was that 5 of the 6 Founders worked together for a 33-store automotive group, and we reunited to create the same kinds of successes for more dealership partners. The reason we are here today is largely because of the conviction of those that have been there since day one. Chad. Matt T. Ryan. Andrew K. Dane. Thank you all for being owners of this dream with me from the start.
I will never forget the minutes before every sales presentation in the first several months when we would blast “Take It to the Limit.” We knew that every new partner brought us that much closer to adding another team member and made our dreams that much closer to reality. Partnerships that have persisted to today meant that another piece of the puzzle could be inserted. Some industry friends helped us with passes to shows, and we did everything we could to stretch a budget to make sure we could stay on track, even if it meant a few times where some of us had floor cots in hotel rooms as we built up Reunion’s foundation.
I will never forget working out of apartments after starting the company with far less funding than what most people looking at today’s Reunion would ever guess. Our office was at Chad’s apartment. Or Matt’s. Ryan’s. Dane’s house for 2 months. I exhausted my retirement and didn’t take a paycheck for nearly 8 months. At the time, bank loans were not realistic for us with so little capital, and we weren’t comfortable with what we would have had to give up to outside entities. For that, we are all so thankful for the few people who believed in us and wanted to help us with short-term loans that first year. Steve and Karen. Edie. Robin. Jason. Bryce.
I will never forget moving into our first office. Several more members were on or joined the team during our year in that office. Many are still here to this day. William. Sandie. Mike A. Mike B. Chelsea. Nicki. Sarah M. Without outside investment, it was our own work and successes that drove our growth. We enjoyed our hodgepodge furniture, our self-painted office, and most importantly our time with one another as we continued to grow and dream up bigger and bigger goals.
I will never forget outgrowing our first office and moving into our second office. It was an old mansion with a warehouse added in the back. One of Raleigh’s former mayors even called it home at one point, and it was ours for 18 months. Several more people joined the Reunion team, and we continued to grow. Lauren. Chris. Tyler. Amanda. Matt S. Brian. Evan. Jack. Will. Danny. During this time our growth continued at an even greater rate. By the time we left we had more than 30 people on the team and were beginning to understand the need for greater company alignment and unified direction toward our goals. It was at this point we implemented the EOS model for goal setting and company-wide alignment. This was perhaps the most important decision made since our launch. We re-organized the company and began to focus on our ability to scale.
I will never forget the move to our new office, just a month shy of 3 years into Reunion’s history. Our current building was a Dr. Pepper factory once-upon-a-time in downtown Raleigh. Here we have added several more team members that make up Reunion Marketing’s whole team. Brad. Emily. Kyndall. Laura. Amy. Darci. Eric. Nicolas. Courtney. Lucas. Cassidy. Sarah T. Haley. Andrew Ka. Olivia. Faith. Joe. Kayla. Jacob. Morgan. Julia. Shelbe. Mario. Jamie. Stephanie. Ava. Craig. Natalie. Dan.
I will never forget the many industry events that we have participated in over these past 5 years. At first we learned who our true friends were from our dealership days. We cultivated new friends as we continued to grow, many of whom are competitors but are incredibly high quality people and companies. Through the hard work of our team, our goal setting, our commitment to our partners, and with solid friends, we have built a strong reputation of performance excellence and Unrivaled Customer Service. “Data Beats Intuition.” Thank you to all of our friends and partners who have been such a part of our success and our memories as we celebrate our first 5 years. You all know who you are.
I will never forget the many projects and goals we have achieved to this point. From launching and developing one of the industry’s most robust paid search frameworks. Then achieving all-time in-market organic traffic highs for nearly 9 client websites out of 10. To our Intelligent Social product that combines ad variety and data-driven audiences for industry-leading results, an innovation that won second place for the best new innovation in the industry at this past year’s Driving Sales Executive Summit. And of course, to being industry thought leaders in teaching about conversion, data collection, consumer trends, and more. We’re just getting started.
There is so much to look forward to — triumphs and challenges that we will never forget when we look back on the previous 7, 10, and 15 years. Our Culture Committee has been formed to uphold our Core Values and build upon the workplace environment for our team. We continue to innovate at a faster and faster pace as we become more agile and better in our project prioritizations. We have big announcements coming in the next few months, so stay tuned for those!
As I near the end of this reflection, I want to specifically express my gratitude to all of Reunion’s employees. Thank you for believing in Reunion back when we were working out of apartments and were too young for any serious benefits. Thank you for believing in Reunion when we were manually entering every bit of data into each and every web report for our partners. Thank you for believing in Reunion as we implemented EOS, set goals far into the future, and began working on a scalable foundation for growth. Thank you for believing in Reunion by offering valuable feedback to leadership and the Culture Committee so we can keep culture top of mind as we continue to grow. Thank you for believing in Reunion to build up the safeguards to withstand Covid-19 and for working together as a team to persevere through the inherent challenges we face as we celebrate 5 years today. Thank you for believing in Reunion as we move into our next 5 years of memories, growth, and excellence together.
I’d like to close by restating our gratitude on behalf of the entire Reunion team for our partners. We start nearly every presentation saying that “The success of our clients is what creates our company’s success.” This is so true. I am so proud of how our team has created such amazing relationships with our partners over the years while we continue to create new and innovative ways to generate greater levels of success for them. To all of our partners: Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Cheers,
Dave Spannhake
Founder | CEO