Needless to say, those aren’t odds that inspire peaceful sleep. Yet here we are, one year later, mostly rested, with a few more gray hairs, and perhaps most importantly, genuinely still excited about what we’re building. 

Here are the lessons we are taking into year two. 

Leadership is not for the faint of heart. Neither is starting your own business. You can be incredibly organized, hardworking, creative, and technically skilled. You can be the person everyone depends on inside an organization. But leadership asks something entirely different of you. It asks you to make decisions without perfect information. To carry uncertainty without passing it on. To inspire confidence when you’re figuring things out in real time. 

During an episode of the Stay Current podcast, Kirsten DePersis, Director of Facilities, Security and Emergency Operations at SMUD, shared a perspective that has stayed with us: “I think a lot of times, people don’t understand what comes with leadership.” 

She couldn’t have been more right. Leadership isn’t just budgets, proposals, client meetings, and project plans. It’s the emotional weight that comes with wanting your team to succeed. It’s worrying about clients, protecting your team’s time, making difficult decisions, and constantly asking yourself if you’re making the right ones. It’s incredibly rewarding. It’s also incredibly heavy. 

The average person spends roughly one-third of their life working. That’s an incredible amount of time to spend with people who drain you or, if you’re lucky, people who match your energy.  

Don’t underestimate chemistry. Find partners who challenge your thinking without challenging your motives. Build a team where roles are clearly defined, strengths complement one another, and everyone genuinely wants the others to succeed. 

There will always be disagreements. There should be. Healthy debate produces better ideas. But there’s a significant difference between debating ideas and competing for control. 

The best partnerships remove ego from the equation. Life has plenty of peaks and valleys. Having people you trust, who revel in your success and laugh with you when you make a mistake, makes each challenge a little easier to navigate.  

What’s the name of your company? How is it pronounced? What do you actually do? Those sound like simple questions. They’re not. 

One of the biggest surprises of our first year was realizing how easily messaging becomes muddled. The more conversations you have, the more marketing you produce, the easier it becomes for everyone to describe your business slightly differently. 

Eventually, those “slightly different” versions become completely different stories. Consistency matters. Your mission should be recognizable whether someone reads your website, follows you on LinkedIn, or speaks to anyone on your team. 

When you know exactly who you are and who you are not, it becomes much easier to decide which opportunities to pursue and which ones to decline. A clear narrative isn’t just good marketing. It’s the internal dialogue of your company.  

There’s always one more email, task, or phone call you need to make. Work can expand until it consumes everything else. One minute it’s 9 AM and the next you are still sitting in your desk chair, wearing your completely sweatless workout clothes, completing your 40th task of the day.  

One of our favorite podcast guests, John McDonald, shared a reminder we think about often: “You can always get another job, but you can’t get another body.” 

Success isn’t sustainable if it comes at the expense of your mental or physical health. Get in your workout, get some sleep, and take the vacation. Sink your feet into the grass/sand/ocean. Be present with the people in your life that you care about. Work is infinite; time, on the other hand, is a thief.  

Artificial intelligence isn’t coming; it’s arrived. Today, more than 70% of businesses use AI in at least one business function, and that number continues to grow. Ignoring it won’t make it disappear. But embracing it blindly isn’t the answer either. 

The best use of AI isn’t replacing people. It’s removing repetitive work so people can spend more time doing what humans do best: solving problems, building relationships, asking better questions, and creating ideas worth sharing. 

Use AI to maximize efficiency in your day-to-day. Never let it make your work forgettable. Because the moment every company sounds the same, authenticity may be the only way you stand out. 

Do not fear what you do not know and ask for help. Eventually you will stare down something you’ve never done before and wonder if what you are reading is even in English. On that day, I hope you are as lucky as we were to have partners and mentors to translate for you.  

Take all the free advice you can get. Find partners that complement not just your services but your vibe. Join forums, read everything! Find the passionate people who are doing work you admire and pick their brains.  

Every successful business is supported by mentors who bestow their wisdom, partners who fill skill gaps, clients who take a chance on you, and peers willing to share lessons from paths you haven’t trodden on just yet. 

One of the best parts of building a business is realizing how generous people can be. Someone answered our questions, made an introduction, or gave us feedback they didn’t have to give. Someone believed in us before we had much proof they should. We owe a great deal to those people. Which means it’s now our responsibility to do the same. 

Be the beta tester. Review someone’s website. Connect your peers. Offer an hour of your time. The business community becomes stronger every time someone chooses collaboration over competition. 

When we started The Current, we knew we wanted to create more than a marketing and events agency. We aimed to build a company that helps the utility industry connect, tells meaningful stories, creates memorable events, and leaves people a little better than we found them. 

One year later, we could not be prouder of what we’ve accomplished. In our first year, we: 

• Partnered with eleven clients and partners across the utility, energy, and technology industries. 
• Recorded eleven episodes of the Stay Current podcast featuring leaders who continue to inspire us. 
• Attended four conferences and industry events, collecting ideas, stories, and plenty of miles along the way. 
• Created our very first Southern California Utility Technology & Solutions Group Conference, bringing together utility professionals to have the conversations that usually happen between sessions. 
• Most importantly, we learned… well, a lot.  

To our clients, partners, friends, podcast guests, mentors, advisory board members, and everyone who trusted us enough to say “yes” this past year: thank you. You helped turn an idea into a company. We can’t wait to see what year two has in store.