Part Three: Dashboard, then and now.

As Dashboard turns 10 in January of 2011, Barry Hillier, our CVO, looks back at the company on where we were and where we are going.

It’s good to have friends and ending the year with a bang

Having projects due within weeks and finding yourself with staff that are MIA aren’t exactly what you envision when you think of starting your own agency. You kind of envision how great the culture will be because you’ve been in the trenches and you know what it’s “really” like and how things can be improved. That is true; it just takes some time to work through the new “learning” that comes from becoming an entrepreneur. Culture isn’t overnight, its’ nurtured and it evolves with time. Regardless, there was no time to think about what could be for the company. There was a need to service the clients and make sure that we exceeded expectations at that very moment.

Just as things looked bleak, the light at the end of the tunnel grew brighter. Phone calls went out and colleagues and friends came to the rescue immediately. We had creative and we had programming and most importantly, we were back in production and on a roll. All projects were completed on time and our clients were not only happy, but wanted us to work together on additional projects. In spite of everything, Dashboard turned a rocky start into a solid footing.

The summer passed without much further turmoil. In fact, we were moving ahead and gaining more work each month. The mood was high and the future looked bright as fall approached and I walked into my office to hear my phone ringing. It was September 11, 2001 and my Dad was calling me in the morning to ask if I knew what was happening on TV. After telling me that a plane had hit the first world tower, he suggested that I may not want to be downtown that day. I started walking down Yonge Street and eventually headed down Queen Street to find myself standing in front of the Citytv building with a group of bystanders watching the television screen as the second plane flew into the second tower. That day affected not only Dashboard, but changed the next decade to come. Recession was one thing, this was unknown and far more ominous. I continued home, not knowing how the rest of the year was going to play out.

Well, the remainder of the fall was both good and bad. I took on a new business partner, Chris Grande, who managed to get us the Ontario Toyota Dealer business that we still have today. It has been a great relationship and we truly treasure the past ten years on their business. We certainly wouldn’t be where we are without them. The bad turned out to be a quick conversation with the owners of the IT recruitment firm that we had sub-let our office from earlier in the year. Given the .com crash, IT recruitment wasn’t quite what it had been in the past five years and in spite of paying our rent, the owners decided to do a midnight dash just before Christmas and close up their business for good. We were told that if we didn’t want our equipment locked up, we should get it out right away. Our first year ended with the .com implosion, the Montreal fiasco, 9-11 and our landlord running away in the middle of the night just before Christmas. Luckily, this was the worst it would get, although I didn’t know it at the time.