10th Birthday

10 years ago today my wife and I started Waterfall Way Designs. We started working from home in a little rented duplex in Armidale. We got a few clients in Inverell and fell in love with this country town. We moved here 8 years ago and worked from home again, travelling to client’s offices and worksites and maintaining our website to represent us well online. 2 years ago we rented an office downtown, we bought signage, flyers, desks, computers, we have hired two staff. This was a big change to what we were used to, we had to write documentation and put policies in place for our staff, their activities and how to treat our clients. We continued to grow and moved into more of a management role for our clients online marketing with ongoing monthly fees. This stabilised our income and allowed us to budget and plan.

In late 2018 we noticed the drought biting our small business. Less people were walking in off the street, less people were spending money. We had noticed it ripple through our client list over the last few years. People were hunkering down and trying to wait it out. In this environment we thought the expenditure on a shop front and staff were not warranted. Particularly with the type of business we were in.

Tough times are a great way to rationalise your business. Being so small we were able to change quickly. We are now set up at home again, reducing our costs but providing the same great service for our clients. Concentrating on retaining our existing clients and benefitting their business. These conditions have given us an opportunity to speak to our clients on how to drought proof their business and ways to let online reduce their stress. Bringing in leads and sales as people research online and expanding to markets not effected by the drought.

We are continuing our work in business process software, where we custom make systems to manage businesses, to assist them with data flow and reporting. This is an area certain business are willing to spend money on as it reduces workload and creates efficiencies and opportunities from the data.

We are back to a lifestyle business again. I don’t think massive growth or massive profits are in our future. We are happy paying the mortgage and helping people out. It is really satisfying to have our efforts result in our clients getting a sale or a new job. We will continue to grow and look for opportunities, we are in an industry that has a bright future.

Thank you for your support of our family business. Here's to the next 10 years.