The overview?

1. Define your own success
2. Pick the right people
3. Diversity is essential
4. Community first
5. Don’t reinvent the wheel
6. Communicate, communicate, communicate

Full article here. Thanks Allen!

In his post, he writes:

It’s been a difficult decision to take, especially as I love Chris and Tara and have enjoyed working with them so much. Their genuine passion for putting the community first has been inspirational.

However as time has passed at Citizen Agency, it has become clear that my views as to where I would like to see the business headed differ to those of Chris and Tara. Obviously there can only be one long-term direction in a company, and so after much head scratching and deliberation around the table I’ve decided to make a move sooner rather than stick with something which is not going to work out for me.

We’ve really valued Ben’s contributions but also recognize that our future paths diverge. As such, we agreed with Ben that he should pursue opportunities that give him a chance to do what he loves most.

He’s posted a list of his credentials and a link to his CV and LinkedIn profile, so if you’ve got open opportunities for someone with Ben’s experience and talents, drop him a note. We wish Ben the best of luck and support him as he seeks out future endeavors.

2006 was a pretty awesome year…launching CA in June, filling up our client roster in July, expanding to a team of 3 in October, getting our first office in November, with all sorts of little amazing things weaved in between all of that: travel, presentations, events, revelations, etc.

Of course, there are also the hard parts that come with a business: clients who don’t pay and make you feel crappy, all of the paperwork and accounting stuff, the IP legal threats, the insanely long hours and melting away of free time, etc. But these things are the exception, not the rule and we are learning to deal with these as they come, and, really, the downs only make the ups seem that much uppier.

Looking over the horizon of 2007, we got really introspective. During xmas and right before NYE, Chris and I spent some time on the east coast at his parents place in New Hampshire. We were offline and had lots of time to talk and hear ourselves think. And, I’ll tell you what:

It was amazing.

At one point, we were sitting back, taking in the quiet and I thought to myself, “I want more of this.”

Getting back to San Francisco was good. We were ready to come home and missed the energy here, but as the plane neared the city, we started stressing again: “Did you get those mockups done for so-and-so?” “We need to finish that research on blah!” “We should schedule a conference call to deal with yadda yadda.” I could feel my stomache getting tight and that feeling of open-aired creativity was gone. I was forcing square pegs into round holes again just to get things done.

So, when Chris said to me on New Years Day, “Lets get off of our computers and go down to the coffee shop…with books and magazines…no computer,” it all melted away again. I grabbed my copy of The Economist and the book I’m enjoying right now, Small Giants, and we spent 3 delicious hours just reading and talking about what we are reading.

Consequently, The Economist this month is all about Happiness. Maybe that should be part of my predictions for 2007 as well. Happiness is going to be re-examined. TED looked at it last year. The Economist has a whole issue looking into it. Economists around the world are starting to measure happiness itself, since they have found:

Happiness, as measured by national surveys, has hardly changed over 50 years. The rich are generally happier than the poor, but rich countries do not get happier as they get richer. The Japanese are much better off now than in 1950, but the proportion who say they are “very happy� has not budged. Americans too have remained much as Alexis de Tocqueville found them in the 19th century: “So many lucky men, restless in the midst of abundance.� from Economics Discovers its Feelings in Dec 19, 2006 Economist

Which made me think of our good friend, Evelyn Rodriguez, and the day she came into our office and drew for us this amazing diagram of how happiness plateaus…something like this (sorry Ev if I butchered it):

…and she talked about the need to reconnect to amazing offline things like art and salons…and we loved her ideas, but kept fretting about how darn busy we are…

But are we getting happier? We have more money. We travel more. We have total freedom. We have loads of choice (we still have more people wanting to work with us than we can take on, so we get to choose our clients)…but where do I find myself happiest?

When I’m doing my research. When I’m brainstorming one on one with a client. When I’m talking to people about their passions and getting their ideas for the future. When I’m talking to an incredibly passionate developer or designer or the like who wants to change the world.

Do we need to expand? Take on more work? Make more money? Grow the business? Save more money? Buy more stuff? Travel more?

No.

We need to make more time for our community projects. We need to read more blog posts and articles and amazing books on and around these subjects. We need to be talking to brilliant people who have been part of this and write about them. I want to have more time to blog again and carry on more conversations online and offline. I want to take weekends off and go to events and spend more time with the people I love (including my son).

So…as a promise to ourselves in this new year, Citizen Agency will:

1. Follow the lead of our good friends at Carson Systems and work shorter weeks. We’ll start out with 5 days – 8 hour days only. We will work towards the 4 day work week by June. “Work” being client stuff…not our community stuff
2. Pay ourselves a decent wage. This wisdom came from Lane, who told us one of the first questions they asked themselves when forming Adaptive Path: “What do we want to make?” Pay yourself that. Don’t sacrifice your comfort for your company.
3. Always put people before $$. We mostly always do this…but we fail in the area of counting ourselves as people.
4. Say NO more so we have time to say YES to the things we care about.
5. Work exact and specific hours allotted to projects…and stop ‘overgiving’. Our time is valuable. If we don’t remember that, nobody else will.
6. Allot time to do research – that means reading, recording, testing, surveying, interviewing, understanding, crunching, exploring, discovering, thinking, etc. I need to talk to Austin more about this. He has some ideas on how this part of our work can be funded so we can put more time into this.
7. Hire an accountant so we can ignore that stuff.

I’m really excited about the year ahead. We are thinking about bringing on others to CA, but we know we aren’t totally ready for the big leap into hiring…it would mean growth faster than we are organically meant to grow.

Ah…work/life balance. Seems like a cliché, don’t it?

Well, as of yesterday, really, we were (mostly) moved into Citizen Space: our new offices + the newest family member of the SF coworking spaces (The Hat Factory as well). There is still a wee bit of work being done on the boardroom tomorrow, but we have already had all sorts of awesome people stop by, like Evelyn Rodriguez, Tom Conrad, Alicia Preston and Chad Dickerson.

Current residents of the space include Chris, Ben, Ivan Storck and myself…with two others who we think are going to take residency, but they’ve been too busy to even come down and confirm (hint: they are way rockin’ Mac developers).

But that’s not even the best part. You see…the best part is what we plan to do with the space. Yes, it’s going to be an open fabulous drop-in and get creative type space, which is awesome, but what we started thinking about as we were building this baby, was, “Holy begezus! We have our own space! That’s like…power!”

Yep. A room of our own, folks. And what does one do with a room of one’s own?

Anything s/he wants.

So, here is what we are going to do: have as many amazing gatherings in it as possible…AND open it up to the suggestion that anyone out there who is doing something that is worth a damn in this world can have amazing gatherings in our space. Really. It’s yours. Let’s make some beautiful energy.

So…event #1 will take place next Friday (November 10) from 5-7pm…it’s our Open House and we will have food and drinks and music and a bevy of fine, interesting folks to mingle and mix with. We want to show off our new digs and let everyone know what a kickass space it is for such gatherings.

Another great event coming up in the space will be Net Tuesday on November 14. We hope they love it so much that they make it their permanent home.

There will be much more, too. We plan to have Mashpits (probably once per month or so), movie nights, Salons, wine tastings, art shows, meetups and DemoCamps there regularly as well as upcoming seminars, workshops and summits. Mostly small stuff, since our space could hold about 50 people max. (1350 ft2)

But…if you would like to suggest anything, throw anything or be part of anything…please do contact us. We’d love to be your hosts. I mean, really, we have a frickin’ space. (oh man, a space! we are so excited) If nothing else, you can drop by to work starting next week (the wifi is non-existent right now…waiting for Speakeasy) and for just saying hi anytime.
Here is the venue listing on Upcoming.org.

That’s less than the cost of 3 Aeron Chairs ($2697). What did we get for $2672? This is what makes it really awesome:

• 10 desks with ample workspace
• 20 boardroom chairs (stackable)
• 4 movable boardroom tables (small, can come together or pull apart)
• One Coat rack
• 4 File boxes
• 3 perfectly awesome adjustable ergonomic chairs
• 2 bookshelves
• 5 waste baskets
• One beautiful black leather sofa (new)
• One coffee table (to go with the leather sofa)

…and some other stuff, too. Of course, we have to put it all together ourselves now, but isn’t that half of the test of whether a team can work together?

We looked at all sorts of options, even buying used furniture from former startups gone under…loads of Aeron chairs and fancy modular units. All still very expensive (fyi…Aeron chairs second hand don’t lose much value…which I suppose is important).

We even talked about making it all ourselves from scratch, but a trip to home depot to work out the costs proved that Ikea (we don’t know how they do it) is only marginally more expensive – and it all sort of comes together, so no major labor.

We started out four and a half months ago, no savings (not even personal savings), no funding and no clients. Today, we have 10 clients, an office (we are sharing Citizen Space btw), ability to eat and now furniture! We are still fumbling through much of this business stuff and definitely behind in our own promotional materials (like the website, etc. – but we have so many requests for work that we haven’t had time to promote…wait…um…).

We are learning, too. Things haven’t been all sunshine. There are rough moments. Months we couldn’t pay ourselves. Scary moments when you question everything you are doing. Sad moments when a relationship doesn’t work out. Unfortunate moments when someone wishes you ill-will. Most of these moments are when we have to get a little real, put down our ‘embrace the chaos’ banners and think of real ways to move forward (which are still about embracing the chaos, but add a little ‘protective’ layer so that we don’t end up being taken advantage of by the self-centered interests that exist).

But, we are proud of ourselves for working hard and pushing through…and especially that office full of furniture that is being delivered this Friday for under $3k.

Folks subscribed to our blog who haven’t checked out the solid state version at citizenagency.com/blog are in for a surprise.

You see, we’ve been trying to get our website done — designed from the ground up — covering our services and generally providing a more meaty answer to “who are you and what do you do?” I mean, both our future landlord and insurance-quote-maker-dude couldn’t figure out what, for the life of them, we did to make money (which is, rightly so, of some concern to them).

So I did a couple designs, Ben did some designs and Tara did a layout or two. And the image above is kind of the takeaway from all that work… So far I’ve implemented the design on the blog — starting with the excellent Sandbox WordPress theme — in a 6 hour, all night hackfest that resulted in what you see today. It’s not cross-platform and there are bound to be bugs, so if you find any, do send them our way.

I’m far from finished with the design, but this way, hopefully, with the in-process design out in the wild, I’ll be incented to push through subsequent improvements to something that we feel pretty good about.

And if you have ideas for color… please let me how we might liven things up!

Another brilliant post at Signal vs. Noise…this one on fear and scaling…

The flip-side is that you need to recognize genuine threats — even if they’re “boring� issues. Things like these are a lot more likely to actually cripple your chances of success:Taking forever to launch
Running out of money
Not solving a real problem
Designing a confusing UI
Obsessing over the wrong things
Trying to do too much at once

Never ignore real here-and-now threats in order to focus on maybe-in-the-future threats.

It’s the kind of thing we are trying to teach with our Embrace the Chaos theory with our clients. We’ve watched so many startups spend so much time, energy and money on preparing for the MySpace-like onslaught of users. Having so many people loving your product that you had to start worrying about scaling would probably be a good problem to have, methinks.

I also think that if you think you think you need to scale before you put time and money and effort into making your product delightful and amazing, you really needn’t…

To go along with Citizen Agency’s emerging French classic (colonial?) brand, we purchased this chandelier to become the centerpiece for our soon-to-be-complete ‘Conversation Room’ in the Citizen Agency/Coworking South Park offices.

Our new landlord is totally rockin’. The building is being slowly renovated, so we get to personalize our office. With the help of our good friend and co-tenant, Ivan Storck, we are making the office, not only gorgeous, but GREEN! We are getting bamboo floors laid (by far the most sustainable man-laid flooring, because it takes merely a year to grow this strong, beautiful material), we are painting the walls a light, olive green and our ceilings a deep slate grey. We will be recovering and reusing as many pieces of furniture possible.

Our conversation room, we’ve decided, will be sans conference table. We want anyone participating to be able to walk across the room easily to present, write on that white board, etc…mobile chairs and small tables will replace the heavy conference table obstruction that separates people to allow as much collaboration as possible (whilst small moveable surfaces still allow for laptops and note taking). Gone are the days of the head of the conference table. This is a Starfish organization.

Ben has made some amazing cost-cutting (as well as aesthetically brilliant) suggestions, such as:

• Purchasing large sheets of glass with drill holes to paint the back of an mount in lieu of buying white boards…these will not only be less expensive, but less intrusive and far more beautiful, we think.
• Making our desks ourselves out of either recycled doors or inexpensive sheets of wood, fastening simple chrome legs. We can, then, match the color of the ceiling to the color of the simple desks.

We have an initial budget of $1500. Seeing that the lighting costs were $800 (we took responsibility for all of the fixtures themselves, though the landlord is paying for the wiring and install), we have to really tighten our budget for the furniture (which includes 8 desks…people have their own favourite chairs to bring…I like sitting on a yoga ball). The ‘Conversation Room’ chairs and tables as well as the relaxation area sofa, bookshelves and chairs will have to wait a few months…we want to find the right pieces anyway and that takes time.

Yes…the chandelier, even at the great deal we got it at (Froogle listed it as $600…so we saved 50%), was a splurge…but what a splurge! She is over 4 feet tall and 40 inches wide. We think a grand Baton Rouge chandelier is guaranteed to incite great thinking.

It looks like November 1 will be the move in date. The space is 1350 ft2, has a sound separated conversation room (with large windows to keep the space opened up), 12 ft ceilings, in a great location (halfway between OSAF and Ruby Red Labs) and totally open to people dropping by. The permanent desks are all filled, but we will have at least 2-3 open desks, plus the relaxation area (when we can afford the sofa and chairs) and the conversation room for people to drop in and collaborate with us.

If nothing else, you’ll want to come for that chandelier.

We don’t want to disappoint anyone.

My biggest issue: I can’t say no. I mentioned before that we are all filled up client-wise. We are, at this time, working flat-out for the clients we have. Anything else could compromise that or our own sanity. However, I’m having such a difficult time saying no to people approaching us. I try, then I concede. I think, “Gosh, that sounds like a great project. And they have so much passion. I wish we could help. Maybe…” And I end up wasting our time and theirs because we know we can’t do the work right now.

Our other issue: charging people. I know. It’s the basis of business. Tonight I scolded Chris for offering to discount our regular hourly rate because it seemed like a ‘quickie, simple job’. We have to keep reminding ourselves that our time is our time and, being very very sandalstrapped, we need to charge a set rate (and we’ve been told by our business advisor it is actually too low, but we are starting there to be accessible to startups). It isn’t just the work we are charging for. It is a long term business that will thrive and continue to serve clients. The eventual developers network. The dream of the Citizen network. The possiblity of creating a fund for open source projects. Etc. etc.

So…going forward it isn’t that we won’t be nice…it’s that we need to think like business people. We are, after all, running one of those.

So…here we are at the end of, what? Like just over a month in bidness and we’ve maxxed out on clients. We’ve signed all of our ‘willing to do client work time’ (as opposed to volunteer, community, development and business stuff work) and signed all of the contracts related to that.

We have deposits in the bank. We got a nice cushion-y business line of credit (hope to never use it, but it’s nice to have it there). We can stop going to 5 meetings a day + having 3 more conference calls. We can settle in and get to know our new clients:

People Aggregator – Ma.gnolia – Mozes – Jeteye – Inspiration Festival

(and a couple more we can’t mention yet) Scrapblog – Tangler

And finally catch up with our ‘old’ clients: Riya & Flock.

Yeah, Chris is being a little dramatic as is his ‘schtick’ (remember when people thought Flock was folding?) – but we are what I like to refer to as ‘sandalstrapping’ this company. No savings. No funding. Totally, 100% people powered – meaning that we get clients and become profitable from day 1.

And the day I posted on my blog that I am a free agent, I started getting phonecalls and emails. We have been keeping track of leads and …wow… there is a demand for what we do (even if some people ask, “What is it you do, anyway?” and we answer, “Um…?”).

Steve Jobs said to a hopeful class of graduates at Stanford last year:

‘Keep hungry, keep foolish.’

Heh. We’ve certainly got that foolish part down pat. Hungry? Well, I’d like to be all romantic about this like Chris, but I’ve been way ‘broker’ than this (remember, he’s a fancy white boy from New Hampshire – this is good for him).

I’m actually exceedingly excited about the future of Citizen Agency. Between the number of people approaching us to want to be part of it (from investment to partners to loosely joined citizens to advisors, etc.) and the amount of demand there is for the type of work we do (which is community building, user experience product design, developer networks, general marketing, design and development consulting, teaching people to dream bigger and think longterm, etc.), I’m blown away by the support.

And, so I read Chris’ post and felt nervous. “What are people going to think?” was my first reaction. But then I thought about it. Transparency is what we preach to our clients, so why shouldn’t we follow our own lead? I mean, really. We can show that sandalstrapping is possible. Build cheap. Be profitable early. Failure (and success) is cheaper than ever, so fail (and succeed) often.

We want other people, dreaming about going independent to know that starting a business is effing tough. We haven’t slept properly in the past month and a half. We don’t get to join our friends for drinks. We are constantly confused over forms and steps and laws. You need a lawyer, which costs money. You need payroll (still in the process of setting it up – which is why Chris is broke – he’s paid for lawyers, travel, etc. out of pocket while the CA account has $$ in it we’ve been told to not touch until it’s done legit…by an accountant who costs money, too). You need a gazillion things that cost money and that take gobs of time and mindspace. At the same time, you need clients, so you have to meet with 50 potential clients to find 5 that are a good fit. Each meeting lasts 1-2 hours, which also requires travel time.

And more and more…but we love it. We are getting a total high off of this. We are meeting some amazing people and getting a glimpse into a world of bootstrapped, passionate entrepreneurs that very few people have the priviledge in doing. We now get to partner with some of these entrepreneurs to try and make history. That is effing amazing.

Besides, it will be a great story to look back on a year from now, when we are all sitting on our yacht feeling good and money is in the bank and laugh about Chris having his bank card declined when trying to buy a comic book. Seriously. It was a Superman comic book.