We live and work here. Our clients are here, our colleagues are here, and a lot of the people we genuinely admire and respect professionally are building something here too. That's not incidental to how we run our business. It actually shapes a lot of the decisions we make day to day.
One of those decisions is something we don't talk about enough, mostly because it doesn't feel like a big deal to us. It just feels like the right way to operate.
There are times when a project comes our way that isn't quite the right fit for us. Maybe the budget is better suited to a freelancer than an agency. Maybe the scope calls for a specific skill set that someone in our network does better than we do. Maybe a client's vision is just more aligned with another creative's style, and we know exactly who that person is.
In those moments, we refer. We make introductions. We pass the work along to someone we trust.
This isn't charity and it's not strategy. It's just how we think a healthy creative community actually functions. There's enough work to go around, and the people doing great work around us deserve to be part of it.
There's a version of the agency model that sees independent creatives as competition, as people undercutting rates or taking clients that "should" be going elsewhere. We've never seen it that way.
The freelancers and independents in our community are some of the most talented people we know. Photographers, copywriters, illustrators, videographers, designers working on their own, building their own thing. They bring a different kind of focus and craft to their work, and there are projects where they are simply the better choice for the client.
We'd rather send that work to the right person and have the client come back with a great experience than hold onto a project that isn't the best fit for us. Everybody wins in that scenario. That's the kind of ecosystem we want to be part of.
It's easy to talk about supporting local businesses when you're asking people to hire you. But we think about it the other direction too. When we have the chance to bring in collaborators, contractors, or specialists, we look close to home first. When we can recommend a local printer, a local photographer, a local production company, we do.
None of that is performative. We're not keeping a tally or putting it in our pitch decks. It just makes sense to us that if we're asking our community to invest in what we do, we should be genuinely invested right back.
We say this genuinely: we are not the right fit for every project or every client, and we're comfortable with that. There are budgets we can't work within, timelines that don't suit how we operate, and creative directions that belong with someone else. Acknowledging that isn't a weakness. It's just honest.
What we care about is that whoever does end up doing the work does it well, and that the people and businesses in our community are being served by someone who's actually right for the job. If that's us, great. If it's someone we can point them toward, that's a good outcome too.
We're not trying to be heroes here. We're just trying to be a business that operates with a little integrity inside the community it's part of. That means not hoarding opportunities that belong elsewhere. It means knowing our lane and respecting other people's. It means showing up for the people around us the same way we'd hope they'd show up for us.
A rising tide and all of that. We believe it. We try to live it. And we think the work is better for it.
