We wear our hearts on our sleeves by posting our business plan online. We feel this helps our company in a number of ways. If you feel like commenting on it, you can contact us here. It's covered under a Creative Commons license, so feel free to copy and make use of it.

Opening

Boring is Bad. Boring saps energy, drains ideas, crushes spirits and won’t do a thing for anyone’s long-term happiness or success. It isn’t creative nor interesting, it creates no lasting value. And while life doesn’t always have to be a carnival, it sure doesn’t always have to be boring.

Poor design is also Bad. Poor design (or a lack thereof) doesn’t inspire, wastes energy, kills time, and does actual damage to everyone’s long-term happiness and success. It isn’t reasonable or sustainable, it creates no immediate value. And while everything can’t be perfect, it certainly doesn’t have to be poorly designed.

This is where Because We Can comes in. Because We Can is a Design-Build Studio. That’s a mash-up of designers, artists, architects, fabricators, and builders. We leverage big technology and big ideas to deliver totally original, interesting, sustainable, and well-designed buildings, interiors, furniture, and products for a wide range of budgets and timelines. With a combination of raw creativity, computer-automated tools, modern design software, and ‘lean’ modern management ideas, we are unique, agile, award-winning, and very competitive.

Our process, our people, and our tools allow us to profitably deliver a whole lot more to our customers and clients in terms of creativity, value, and quality. Our small team size allows us to directly connect and collaborate with our clients, and really understand their problems and dreams. All this lets them choose the not boring, the more productive, and the more sustainable options that really match their tastes, needs, and desires. By doing great work we’re profitable in the short term, and we get better and bigger projects over the long term as our reputation grows.

Additionally, because of our tools and process, the custom designs that we develop for today’s projects become tomorrow’s configurable products. Those products form the basis for an online webstore, creating a market and retail channel that we’re in control of. And the act of developing and refining efficient tools and process teaches us valuable insights and knowledge we can share with the rest of our industry via consulting, lectures, and books. So as a byproduct of our design work we gain valuable intellectual property over the long term as well that could be spun-off, sold, or create interesting partnership opportunities with larger companies.

Because We Can, as a great design firm, gives it’s founders and employees a decent living well throughout their lives, acts as a vehicle for their freedom and creativity, and then in turn makes the world a more interesting place.

The Market

It’s true that the building, interiors, and retail furniture markets are rather terrible right now. Especially so in California. Architects, interior designers, and contractors have all had stunning layoffs and shrinkage in recent years. So conventional wisdom would deem it insane to be servicing this industry currently, let alone try to grow a business focused on this area.
However, when everyone ‘knows’ something, everyone tends to be wrong. If we look at the numbers, there is currently over $610 Billon (yes, that’s with a ‘B’) of current projects within the California building industry alone according to RS Means construction data. While the market is recognizably bad, there still is a market there, and a large one at that. And while some within that market are certainly shrinking and/or failing, others are still surviving. A few are even thriving. So this brings to mind two very important questions:

First, is all the doom and gloom really an opportunity? While it’s true that the market shrank in the last few years, much of that boom development was unsustainable anyways, and much of it done in inefficient ways because almost anyone could make money during the boom. It’s well known that the building industry is one of the last ones to adopt new technology and ways of working. From our personal experience, we estimate that this presents at least a 20%-35% inefficiency in the ‘traditional’ ways of working, and in some instances even higher than that. If a company could serve the core market efficiently and effectively, without these wasteful traditional methods, there is still plenty of money to be made. We should be grateful, actually, for we’re in a golden era in terms of personal empowerment via technology! Obviously shrinking minimizes competition within the market too, but now that times are tough, existing companies are facing difficult changes, cultural shifts, and learning curves to work in these new, more efficient and profitable ways. So we feel a new kind of company, based upon more efficient and effective ways of working and using the latest in innovation and technology from the very beginning, in combination with raw creativity, intense collaboration, and a sustainable mindset, could not only survive within this market but thrive.

Secondly, what can we offer the market that no one else can, or expand that market into new areas? Based on our personal and direct experience, we feel that there is a vast, untapped ‘middle ground’ who want more creative, sustainable, higher-quality and/or customized buildings, interiors, and furniture, but had to settle for more traditional or mass-produced items due to unavailability of better options, cost, or timeframe. By offering a more creative, sustainable, and customized alternative, we’ve found that we are expanding into new markets. Clients who wouldn’t have considered going with a designer or custom solution before are not only hiring us, they are engaged, excited, and very satisfied by what we can offer, and even willing to spend a little extra to get something they love.

So by offering more creative, sustainable, and customized products, and doing so in a more efficient, effective, and innovative way, we believe that we can re-segment the existing building, interiors, and furniture markets to create a new niche that we can profitably fulfill and control.

The Competition

We’ve got to be better than other design firms. Our customers can hire any company. So why would they hire us instead? First off, we can offer more value than other designers because of our in-house shop, experience, & skills. Secondly, we’re more creative than most fabricators / contractors and some designers. Third, we’re way more collaborative and engaging with our customers than most design firms. Last, we focus on being great to work with so we get referrals rather than focusing on just the final images of the project (like many design firms).

We’ve got to be better than mass-produced options. Our customers can simply go to Ikea and get everything they need, and many furniture vendors will do space plans for free. So why would someone hire us instead? First off, we can often make things that are much better, more interesting, more custom, or at least very different, from what’s commonly available. Secondly, we can do a better, more personal job, for we can pay attention and respond to our customer’s needs much better than a bigger company. Last, our options are sustainable and local, while mass produced options are not.

We’ve got to be better than free. Our customers are more empowered than ever. The internet makes it such that anyone can research and order well-designed furniture and interior elements, and anyone can get design help and information for nearly free. It even makes it possible to ‘roll your own’ custom elements via services like Ponoko and Shapeways. So why would someone hire us instead? First off, we’re licensed Architects, which lets us do things they can’t legally (or at least easily) do themselves. Secondly, we’re great at what we do and know, so we can offer better solutions in significantly less time than it would take them to do it. Third, we’ve got the experience to know what’s possible, rational, and how much it’s likely to cost. Lastly, we’re local, so we know the local market, resources, and have connections that allow us to deliver at a higher level than they would be able to do solo.

The Marketing

While we can build anything, not everything is profitable, and not everything makes us happy to have built.
These various things we can do were made into a spreadsheet, and each were rated one-through-five within various positive and negative categories, with five being a big impact and one being a little impact. These ratings are from the gut and experience, and help measure more tangibly how ‘good’ a particular project type is for us overall. When tallied up and sorted, these four things floated to the top:

So that then gave us what to focus on: interiors, predesigned furniture, custom furniture, and consulting. The middle ones are good to do if we’re not busy with the top three, and the bottom three should only be done if there is some other compelling reason to do them (or we’re totally starving).

From that, we then created mock profiles of each of our typical past customers, and then plugged in the ‘goodness’ values from the first chart into each thing we could do for them. This gives us how ‘good’ each of these customers are for our business. Again, totaling and sorting this list, we can easily see which of these customers we should focus more on:

So we should spend most of our time talking with business owners, facilities managers, and developers. The middle people are good to talk to as well, as long as it’s not interrupting talking to someone higher up.

Finally, we took each of the ways we’ve typically reached out to each our customers, and scored where they are likely to be.

Multiplying the ‘client goodness’ values from above against those ratings, and then again sorting that list, we quickly can see what marketing activities have the highest return overall for the business: Our website, word-of-mouth, and social meetings.

From this, we decided that our marketing strategy should be threefold: make our website really great and google-friendly, be a really great design firm doing great work so we’re recommended a lot to others, and to get out more and meet more interesting people. Getting press and going to conventions are things we should do, but in moderation and not to the interruption of the top three. Events & Giving Talks should only be one when there is some other compelling reason to do them, otherwise they aren’t worth the time taken. We’ll still go to Maker Faire, because we dearly love it, but we won’t throw a ton of energy into it. Clubs are Right Out.

So by using a powerful & Google-friendly CMS, Drupal, we’ll make a website that drives attention our way and clearly communicates what we can do and what we offer. By being a great firm, focused on our clients and the quality of the end results of our work, we’ll gain a reputation such that we get lots of return business and are recommended by our existing clients to new clients. By being more sociable, and getting out more, we’ll meet more people who are likely to hire us for their business or personal needs. Finally, we’ll keep doing our monthly open houses and giving talks, but only because it has secondary benefits (such as getting us to clean the shop!) and not because it directly leads to work. We’ll also spend a minimal amount of time and money on these activities.

Finally, in order to properly focus on our core business, while allowing us to do great work and be that great company we’re striving to be, we only take on projects and develop products that we feel meet these four criteria:

1. Interesting. There has to be something fundamentally interesting about doing the Project, or the Project itself will be generally interesting to others when finished.
2. Reasonable. The Project has to have a reasonable budget and a timeline, as well as not being too much of a challenge or involving too many unknowns.
3. Creative. There has to be elements to the project that allow us to be very creative, or the Project itself will be very creative when finished.
4. Sustainable. The project cannot put us our of business, be harmful to our health, our client's health, or to anyone else's for that matter. We have to be able to do this sort of project, or make this sort of product, over and over, without growing to hate it. The project must be made out of recycled or sustainable materials and/or be something that will be used for many many years and loved.

If it doesn’t meet these four words, we don’t take the Project, simple as that. Otherwise we either won’t do good work, or the Project in the end won’t be good for us to have done.

Keys to Success

We keep talking about how we’re different from other firms and fabricators. Let’s dive into that more, with these six factors of where the rubber really meets the road:

1. Agile Management and Process. In the end it's really all about people, not tools or technology. We use modern management ideas borrowed from the agile software development & lean manufacturing worlds to quickly deliver on the challenges our projects bring to us. This allows us to get the most from our teams, and to move fast on many issues at the same time, while keeping the clients involved, in control, and informed at every step of the project.
2. Building Information Modeling and Integrated Practice. A major part of any project is managing all the information therein. We use the latest in Building Information Modeling applications along with project Wikis to increase efficiency, reduce errors, and encourage tight communication within the team. This allows us to welcome changes, move quickly while keeping everyone together, and it allows our clients to know exactly where things are and what's going on within their Projects at any time.
3. Automated fabrication and mass customization. While we might not have flying cars and jet packs in the 21st century, we do have big robots that make things. We use computer automated tools to directly produce parts for the project right from the same design files we're using to generate the presentation, shop, and contract drawings. This automation reduces the price of custom work into the range of more typical mass produced work while retaining all of the design intent and creativity.
4. Sustainable materials and building practices. Building something always means something else is destroyed. We're in it for the long haul, so we focus on using sustainable, recycled, and/or local materials and labor. We don't want to work with toxic materials or in a bad environment and our clients shouldn't have to live with such things either. We also try to make our projects in the most efficient way possible, and make them to be as effective as possible, so that they will last a long time and be gentle to our world.
5. Collaborative efforts in a passionate environment. We want to keep working for the rest of our lives. And just because we have to die one day, does not mean Because We Can has to die. We not only work with sustainable materials, but with sustainable methods. Creating a collaborative atmosphere with creative ideas and passion for what we do is what will lead to our success, and allow the business to live beyond it’s originators.
6. Open business. We've got nothing to hide. Our business plan, schedules, and even financial reports are open for any to review. We release most of our work under Creative Commons licenses as well. We feel that this builds trust with our clients, collaborators, and employees while contributing to our industry.

How we do that voodoo that we do so well

We also work rather differently when it comes to project management. This is how we’re currently doing things:

Things rule everything around us: our highly specialized in-house wiki helps run our business.

• Clients are added to the Wiki.
• Anything we’re doing for a Client gets a Thing page if it’s physical or a Design page if it’s not.
• Thing pages help us track the needed steps to efficiently produce the physical parts of a project.
• Design pages help us track the needed steps to efficiently produce a design for a project.
• Anything that needs to get done is a Task. Tasks are usually single things that have to happen.
• Tasks live on the shared iCal Calendars as To-Do's or Events.
• Projects are collections of Tasks in an iCal Calendar.

At the start of each week, the Weekly Planning meeting happens, or as it's known "The Coffee Talk".

• Each Project’s Tasks and Things are reviewed, new Tasks and Things are added as needed, and existing Tasks and Things are marked completed or revised as needed.
• Then priority and scheduling for all the Tasks is reviewed, discussed, and decided upon. The Things on Deck are set.
• For projects with elements in the fabrication or installation stages, Fabrication or Installation Time is estimated and then scheduled and blocked out on the Calendar.
• Staffing for the week is also decided upon at this time, with Tasks being given to specific people as seen fit in the meeting.
• Cash is then reviewed, with any pending payments or invoices quickly reviewed.
• Last, a word for the week is decided upon to set the theme and tone of that week (such as “Be Big” or “Only Do One Thing at a Time” or “Laugh when things go wrong”).

At the end of each week, the Weekly Review happens, or as it's known "The Wrap Party".

• Everyone discusses what Tasks they did that week, shows off anything cool or great that happened, and brings up anything that didn't work so well or could be better.
• Everyone talks about how well (or not) the theme for that week fit for them.
• Ideas for future Tasks, as well as more immediate optimization Tasks, are added to the Wiki or Calendar as seen fit, while everyone enjoys a cocktail.

At the start of each Quarter, the Quarterly Review meeting happens, or as it's known "The Dinner for the Season".

• First, we do some housekeeping on the Wiki, Calendar, and file cabinets. We file our quarterly taxes.
• Then we make a big fancy dinner. We review the last quarter, how we did, how things worked, and what could have been better.
• We look at the Yearly Goals, and talk about how we're doing.
• We re-read the business plan, and make notes to make whatever changes are needed.
• New Personal Goals are decided upon, put on the Wiki, and then toasted to the table.

At the start of the year & halfway though it, the Yearly Planning and Review meeting happens, or as it's known "The Splitter".

• We go out to dinner at our favorite Oakland pizza restaurant with the notes from last year's yearly planning meeting and the list of Yearly Goals that were set then.
• We check off any that were accomplished with a big red pen, talk about the ones we still want to do that didn't get done, and laugh at the ones that now seem very silly indeed.
• Then we make a new list of Yearly Goals for the new year: we come up with great things to try to make happen, and write then all down.
• Then we celebrate the start of another year working the best job's we've ever had.

Design Quality Factors

We’ve found that when we do mess up, it’s usually related to one or more of the same five issues. So we created these five Design Quality Factors, otherwise known as 'The TIKIS'. Failure to respect and pay homage to the TIKIS leads to bad designs, delayed projects, and general unhappiness.

Tolerances. Tolerances are time & money. We need appropriate tolerances certainly, but what's better is to design in a way that's forgiving of them.

Integrity. In order for something to be great, it has to work well.

Konstructability. We want to design things in a way such that they 'want' to be built.

Ingenuity. Brute force is for dinosaurs, we need to be the smart monkeys we are instead.

Shipping. Everything we make goes somewhere else. We need to design with that in mind, and to make it as easy as possible to get there.

Seven Steps

Everything we do goes through seven distinct steps. These steps have been woven into the Thing pages on the wiki to help guide ourselves via checklists, reminders, and specialized note boxes for the important factors of each step.

Step One: Inspiration

Inspiration is where the initial impetus for the project starts. A client with a problem, an inspirational idea, or a new market opening up: whatever it is that gets the ball rolling. If it’s a client, at this stage we typically begin the project with a simple one-page getting started contract that sets an initial $1,000 deposit and sets our billing rates and such. Without the signed contract and deposit, we simply don’t being work. If it’s a product idea, we do some quick research to find out ASAP how viable our idea really is, and what people might be willing to pay for it ala Minimal Viable Product methods.
At this stage we’ll work in a wide range of media and talk ideas. We may do many rough estimates as well for the client to choose a direction or help define a project scope.

Step Two: Configuration

Configuration is where we’ve got the ideas and goals set for what we’re aiming for overall, now we’ve got to figure out how to meet those goals and make those ideas actually work. This step is where the Why meets the What. We’ll do preliminary plans, detailed estimates, design models, planning/zoning documents, and whatever else is needed to get to a more detailed project scope and configuration.

Step Three: Rationalization

Rationalization is where we need to take those design models & plans, and make them fully flushed out and ready for building. This step is typically only undertaken once the client has signed off on the detailed quotes created in Step Two, and a materials deposit has been given. Again, no payment no work. Design models are turned into Fabrication models and detailed construction/permit plans are made if required.

Step Four: Isolation

Isolation is where we now break down those fabrication models into exportable geometry for CNC production, part lists for ordering, shop drawings if needed, and timelines for production scheduling.

Step Five: Fabrication

Fabrication is where those isolated parts of our project are made real by both human and robot hands. Parts are toolpathed & cut and/or ordered, assembled, and finished.

Step Six: Installation

Installation is where those now-fabricated parts of our project are delivered to the project site or client and assembled. On a smaller element upon completion of this step is where we bill for the remainder of the estimate.

Step Seven: Utilization

Utilization is the final step, where the elements are used by the client / customer. We review how effective they are, how durable they are, how well our assumptions held up, and follow up on applying real time and materials towards the estimate. By keeping in touch with our client’s, and their use of our work, we can make certain they are happy and problems are quickly solved. We can also see about additional needs, or stumble upon ideas that rise out of the direct use of our work. This feeds back into step one.

The Wiki

We rely upon a in-house private Drupal wiki system for information and knowledge management. It’s got a number of different page types that are pre-made web forms. Client pages coordinate contact info, Thing pages coordinate project management re: the creation of things, Hours pages log time for billing. Note pages hold information on general items, like suppliers and how-tos. Need Sheets are a special web form akin to Toyota’s ‘A4’ sheet, where we can have a simple yet methodical process for problem solving. While it’s not a trivial amount of overhead to have set it up and to keep it running, it has proven useful and flexible in helping to run our business. Usable via the web or iPhones, it keeps track of everything but our Tasks and Calendar. It also used to log our time.

The Numbers

Let’s take a moment and talk about what exactly ‘successful’ means in this context. The whole idea behind starting your own business (which is risky) is that you’ll make more money and be happier with more freedom. Jillian & I could both get halfway decent day jobs, and probably combined make about $120k / year before taxes (that’s assuming a minimal amount, it could be more if one of us landed an awesome job). So in order to be wildly successful, we’d need to clear more than that in overall value generated.

We made an epic break-even spreadsheet that calculates all our overhead and then tells us what we need to bring in. It takes into account both fixed costs that don’t change (like Rent) and unfixed costs that do change as we bring in more money (like taxes). In the end, we estimate that we need to bring in $8,000 a month ($96,000 a year) in order to have the lives we want if it’s just Jillian and I working together. If we’re just going to break even (no profit or future savings) then it’s around $6,000 a month ($72,000 / year). But let’s stick with the $8,000, for that’s what were aiming for as a minimum. Looking at what we could make with day jobs instead, if we want to make at least that or more we’d need to bring in $10,500 a month on average.

So a typical project’s material costs are about 1/3 to 1/2 it’s total budget. So in order to bring in $8,000 a month on average, we’d need to bring in around $12,000 to $16,000 worth of projects per month (or $144,000 to $192,000 a year). If we want to make at least what we could make with day jobs we’d need to bring in $18,000 to $21,000 per month worth of projects ($216,000 to $252,000 / year).

If we add in our employees, assuming normal hours, we’d need to bring in more around $12,500 per month (that’s $150,000), meaning more like $18,000 to $25,000 worth of projects per month ($216,000 to $300,000 a year). Our break-even (no profit or savings, just surviving) is around $10,000 a month ($120,000 per year). And again, if we wanted to do the same or better than the day job, we’d need to bring in around $15,200 a month ($184,200 / year), which is more like $23,000 to $30,000 a month in projects ($360,000 / year).

So our business has to be worth roughly around $3,000 a month, or $36,000 a year, personally for it to be worth us doing.
In other words, if we gave up working together on creative projects and some creative freedom, but were getting an extra $3,000 handed to us every month, would we still be happy?

Also, looking at it this way, our business has to be worth at least an extra $36,000 / year in the future to make up for every year we’ve been working at it since it started. So our business needs to have a market worth of at least $144,000 to date to have been worth creating over day jobs.

The Company

Because We Can is a Design-Build Studio. That’s a mash-up of designers, artists, architects, fabricators, and builders that handle the design and production of interiors, buildings, furniture, and products.
Because We Can is a privately held Corporation. The company was founded by direct cash investment from it’s founders, so there is no outstanding start-up debts or loans.

The Company consists of two main directors, Jeffrey McGrew and Jillian Northrup. Jeffrey is an Architect. Jillian is a graphic designer and photographer. They are a husband-and-wife team that have been doing big creative things since they first met who throw themselves wholeheartedly into every project and love what they do beyond reason.

The Company currently has two employees, Sissily Harrell and Min.

The Company has one tirelessly working Robot, a CNC router named Frank. You can read more about Frank in the Assets section.

The Company works out of a 2,500 sq. ft. fabrication studio and offices, relentlessly optimized for speed, quality of production, and quality of design inspiration. Located in West Oakland, it’s centrally located within the Bay Area, and well suited to monthly open houses that you can read more about under Marketing.

The Company frequently collaborates with Justin Quimby of Quimby Heavy Industries, a software consultancy, on in-house software tool creation and consulting projects for outside clients.

The Company maintains healthy connections with a large number of local artisans, designers, fabricators, and contractors such that it can pull upon a diverse and talented temporary / subcontracted labor pool as projects demand.
The Company also has one feline, named Professor Kitty. He’s responsible for rodent relations and biting the interns.
The Company is owned 50/50 between Jillian Northrup and Jeffrey McGrew.