2011 was a wild ride for Gainlight and both Derek and myself had an unreal time riding that coaster.  At the beginning of 2012, we are in our new/old office meaning we are in the Conductor’s Quarters to start the year once again…but this time it is different.  Gone are fluorescent lights sounding like a bee hive above our heads and lighting up our office obnoxiously. Gone are the sea foam green walls that dulled anyone who walked into the space. Gone are all of the other tenants.

What has taken their place?  Brand new track lighting purchased and installed by us lighting the place up with a classy look, walls painted in colors that suit both of our personalities (you will have to come in to find out what colors exactly!), and most importantly the only ones in this building are Matt and Derek! Two years into business and Gainlight has its own building with our own offices, own storage, our own bathroom, and our own common areas.  I can play my music as loud as I want and we can have interns through and not be bothering other tenants.

Although we enjoyed being down off of Adams St, being in our own building is better than I could have ever imagined.  Things are starting to come together and when we find some time outside of doing work for our clients, we will finalize the space and have an awesome new (or old) change of scenery.

-Matt

It’s time to crack out the champagne and celebrate! Gainlight has officially entered its third year of business while putting the roller coaster year number two behind us!

The path we have been fortunate enough to travel has all the makings of the cliche struggles of any entrepreneur. You know…close calls with money, growing to fast, not growing fast enough, eating ramen entirely too much (or in our case, chicken and pasta), monumental successes, monumental failures, happy clients, angry clients, a few timely arguments and a whole heck of a lot of lessons. Lots and lots of lessons.

Yet here we are.

We’ve seen our creative business find a home outside our home. We’ve moved from our first office outside our home, to a new, breathtaking space in the Warehouse District in Peoria. We’ve taken a 2AM brainstorming session about selling apparel on Bradley’s campus to 5 campuses through the state of Illinois, hiring over 15 campus reps as interns in the process that keep us humble and motivated daily.

This is all a journey, folks. A roller coaster we’ve elected stay on for over 2 years now. All the sleepless nights, all the ‘Oh Sh*t’ moments later…like sadistic madmen, we are looking forward to many, many more.

To our clients, our employees, our vendors our family, and all of our friends, we can not tell you how incredible fortunate we have been to have each and every one of you in our lives to help us along this path. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

Here’s to a huge year three!

Derek and Matt