On January 6 it was 60 degrees, blue skies, and just perfect. Aside from having great ice cream, I really admire Jeni's Fellowship Model - "It takes a community of people to build ice cream from the ground up..." - from their website.

I like that idea. Community of people. Its not an exact corollary, but it seems like that's what we've been doing for the past six months. I never liked the idea of calling a company a family. I actually really loath it. Every time I hear it my eyes roll to the back of my head.

• You don't get to choose family. You definitely get to choose your company.
• You don't layoff family. You definitely have layoffs in companies.
• You have to suffer Thanksgiving family banter. You...well, I guess you do have to suffer coworker banter.

Anyways. Thinking of a company as a community suits me better. Its a group by association and desire with a common goal. Free to come and go, but bound tighter by a sense of common cause. I'll come back to this.

We ended the year with two partners and five employees. I get giddy writing that. How did we do it? With stomach's of steel. Its a gut wrenching thing starting a company. Between cash flow, project pursuits, insurance, marketing, and then just producing the work - everything makes your stomach churn. But the hardest by far is assembling the Community.

Selling work to clients is easy in a way. You're selling your work history and your reputation. Selling an idea to someone to join you, in my mind, is a whole other ball game. How do you convince someone with a steady, well paying job, with benefits, to give up all of that and come join you? Honesty.

Just be honest with people. And make damn sure you follow through. Just because someone replies to a job posting doesn't necessarily mean they're going to accept the offer you send their way. I mean, six of us definitely used to work together before, but that doesn't mean we worked together. It still takes a lot of honesty to convey the underlying ideas of the company and community we're trying to build - and take a pay cut to do it, and lose their benefits, and join a startup...

But we did it. You cant choose your family. We have five staff that choose the ideas of the community we're building. Best. Christmas. Ever. And we're growing again!

A couple of highlights from the year.

• We did our first multi-family high-rise study for a major developer
• We opened offices in San Antonio and Santa Monica with active projects and pursuits in both locations
• We received our first MWBE registration with the City of Austin (shh...I don't think we've announced that yet officially, but its a huge milestone).
• We won our first public municipal contract with a great set of consultants who believed in us to bring home the win!

Not a bad 2021 in my mind. Not bad at all. A special thanks to everyone who has supported us through this process. No doubt that this great adventure isn't ours alone, and that those who keep pushing us in the background to do great things are the most important of all. We're looking forward to a great 2022!

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