Rae

Timmys
If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve likely seen me use hashtags like #needtimmys #timmys #misstimmys (when I’m traveling in the states) and #timmysrun. And if you’re not Canadian or from a state close to the Canadian border, you likely have no idea what the hell I’m talking about when I use them. Tim Hortons is a Canadian chain – much like a Dunkin Donuts – except it doesn’t suck and Canadian’s love their Timmys almost as much as they love their hockey (kinda fitting that Tim Hortons is named after and was founded by a former hockey player, eh?). And please note that I didn’t say “coffee” – I said “Timmys” – because it is this specific brand of coffee I can’t live without. If I were to ever move back to the states, I’d definitely have to become a coffee smuggler. The safety and welfare of those around me would depend on it.

Pen and Paper
Just because I work in the tech sector doesn’t mean I love to have everything be technical. My two most loved tools for work are a pad of paper and a pen. But, not just any paper and pen will do. My pens must be Papermate with the blue casing, blue ballpoint and have no eraser. If you think I’m joking, I’m not at all embarrassed to inform you that I’m not. I keep boxes of these on hands at all times. My notepads must be Staples brand wide rule. And like the pens, I keep stacks of them in the supply closet in the office and in my home. I won’t even attempt to do serious work or site planning without *MY* pens and paper.

My Mafia Memorabilia
The first comment most people make when they walk into my office is that it looks like a “mafia movie shrine.” From posters to action figures, I’ve got representation of my favorite mobster movies all over my walls, desk and bookshelves. I don’t know where my fascination with the mafia started, but I’ve had it as long as I can remember and have read hundreds of books on the topic – both fictional and non with a strong lean towards non-fictional. My favorite book of all time is The Last Don. My favorite movie of all time is The Godfather. My favorite TV show of all time is The Sopranos. And my favorite movie character of all time is Tony Montana, AKA Scarface.

When I look at that memorabilia around my office, it reminds me that I’ve made my own rules, my own successes and my own “empire” based on nothing but that same kind of perseverance (sans, you know, all the criminal activity and violence).

Rhea

Headphones
I need music. This need might be magnified by the fact that I work from home. Without music my Cat, Skype windows and client calls would be the extent of my socialization throughout the workday. With music I can tackle any type of work or mood from the monotonous and stressful to the creative and competitive. Beyond the hardware ( Apple headphones) I rely on custom stations I’ve built with Grooveshark. Today I’ve listened to Meat Loaf, Vivaldi, Miles Davis, Kid Cudi and Mumford and Sons. I might have been just as productive without the tunes, but I would not have been as fulfilled.

Sticky Notes
Lisa introduced me to the sticky note. I’d met stickies prior to Lisa, but they didn’t have a sense of purpose. In the early days of Outspoken Media (basically the first year!) I was relying on long-winded and chaotic TextMate docs, stacks of written lists and iCal to keep my life in order. Needless to say, it wasn’t working out. Then Lisa showed me her daily to-do’s… on one sticky note! I wanted to experience the same satisfaction she got from crumpling up and tossing her little sticky note in the trash after she’d conquered her day.

Unfortunately, I think very differently from Lisa. She’s about as left brained as you can get and I’m just as far to the right. I found my sticky note garden of zen in having a stack of different colors that allow me to quickly jot down a single thought. Now my stack of stickies helps me avoid the “out of sight, out of mind” problems that would otherwise plague my business life.

Tea
CAFFEINE!!! I’m not really an addict as I only drink one cup of tea each morning. What I am, is not a morning person. My sweet spot for productivity is 9pm – 1am (it’s 9:34pm and I’m zoning out to Kind of Blue). I love the stillness of night and getting lost in my work. The day belongs to clients and coworkers, the night belongs to me. So what does this have to do with tea? It’s my safety blanket more than a wake up. Tea reminds me of the evening hours and quiets my otherwise manic morning brain. I’m partial to Twinings Irish Breakfast or Earl Grey for the work hours and loose leaf is ideal, but you’ll need one of those pretentious tea strainers.

Lisa

Egg Timer
I know. You’re about to haul me away because I can’t stop talking about my love affair with an egg timer. However, this is hands down my biggest productivity tool and the one thing I cannot live without (other than headphones, but Rhea stole those). This baby and my handwritten To Do list helps me block my week out into egg timer-trackable intervals so I can increase productivity and keep knocking things out.

Fuel
What? Something has to fuel all of my writing and that, my friends, is a whole lot of coffee. I know it’s a vice and that I should watch my intake…but then it’s suddenly Wednesday and I have five blog posts and client work to handle. I dare you to tell me I can’t go get another cup. Though I’m sometimes swayed by an iced coconut latte from Dunkin Donuts, I prefer to get my coffee from local coffeehouses. Flavour Cafe in Troy makes a mean Almond Joy Latte (though you won’t find it on the menu), Uncommon Grounds kills me with its unbelievable vanilla latte, and I’m a sucker for Professor Java’s Cappawappacino even though I can’t pronounce it. It all equals a big cup of yum.

Inspiration
Okay, so caffeine isn’t the only thing that keeps me going. So do my personal goals and the people I’m lucky enough to call friends and family. The wooden bear cub, a card from my father telling me he’s always behind me, and the hand-drawn picture of the house I’ll someday live in are all reminders of why it is I work so hard and the dreams that I have for myself. They keep me going long after the coffee has worn off and remind me how lucky I am to have the support network I do.

Dawn

Headphones
While Rhea needs headphones for music, I need headphones for Rhea to hear me. Since Skype is one of the tools we use most to work virtually, it’s really important that that communication be as disruption-free as possible. The on-board mic on my laptop was…shall we say, lacking, and Rhea and I would spend most of our calls asking “Can you hear me now? How about if I lean in further?” A simple headset with a mic allows us to actually get our work done quickly. The bonus is that the comfy earphones are great for canceling out office sounds when I am listening to music.

A sweater
I am always cold. I hear it’s a girl thing, but I think offices just like to torture us with over air-conditioning. As a result, I’ve learned to keep a sweater at the office. It’s an old, well-worn cardigan, with nice long sleeves (I have long arms) and I can zip it up to my chin. It’s a lot easier to be productive when you aren’t shivering away!

Coworkers
Working virtually can be really isolating. Humans need contact with each other during the day. This is the reason that co-working has become so popular. With half of Outspoken Media in Troy and half in Guelph, it could get really lonely. However, I get to share office space with Rae’s other company, MFE Interactive. It’s great having Cooper and Stu around to grab lunch with, take a break and play darts, or even bounce ideas off of. They’re also really handy at controlling the wildlife that also inhabit our office.

And there you have it…

If you’d like more picture storytelling from the Outspoken crew, you can follow myself, Rhea, Lisa and Dawn on Daily Booth.

Now that you know what our indispensable items are, feel free to let us know about yours in the comments.

Starting a company is never an “easy” task, but starting a company during a recession, with three very different personalities at the helm – two of which have zero experience with entrepreneurship – was dubbed a bit insane by quite a few people [waves to Lisa's parents]. But we’ve learned a lot in the last year, we’re even stronger now than we were a year ago – as individuals, as partners and as a company – and we’ve been successful to the delight and dismay (depending on who you ask) of many people.

Over the last year, we’ve had a lot of questions about the inner workings of the company and I decided to take our one year mark as an opportunity to let you in on a bit of what we’ve done, how we work, how we’ve grown (as individuals and as a company) and where we’re going.

Start-up mode

We get asked about our start up quite a bit, so I figured I’d let you guys in on the fact that Outspoken was never “funded” in the beginning. I put up the cash (which amounted to a few thousand dollars) to get the initial design, logo, business formation and the required “necessary launch tasks” done and was immediately paid back when our first client checks came in. Rhea and Lisa jumped from their jobs, with nothing acting as a safety net other than their personal savings on faith that they’d earn an income they could survive on with Outspoken.

The inner workings

Our initial positions and responsibilities within the company were based on a group consensus. Contrary to popular belief, Lisa and Rhea do not “work for me”. We are a team. We have been from day one and always will be. But someone has to “drive the bus” and based on my prior successful experience with being both an entrepreneur and a CEO, it was decided that the “driver” would be me.

As the CEO of Outspoken Media, I have a responsibility to develop company strategy, company goals, develop business and oversee that we’re headed in the right direction. Yes, I may make some of the tough (and sometimes some of the “final”) decisions, but that is based on the faith my partners have put in my abilities in the area of “running a company”. I also have the most experience in Internet marketing and have a strong background in “technical SEO” and advanced link development techniques, so I also ensure that all client strategies are as strong as they can possibly be, both before and during execution.

As the COO of Outspoken Media, Rhea is responsible for making sure the day to day workings of the company on a granular level are organized, executed properly and actually “getting done”. Rhea is responsible for business development, develops all the proposals for potential clients, is heavily involved in developing all client strategies (especially those involving ORM) and is responsible for the management of our various contractors/employees. Rhea is who our clients deal with on a day-to-day basis most.

As the CBO of Outspoken Media, Lisa acts as our own in-house PR firm, our internal expert on content development and branding strategies for both clients and ourselves, and is responsible for business development. Oh, and make no mistake about it… Lisa rules the Outspoken blog with an absolute and iron fist. When it comes to the blog – which amounts to our company brand – both Rhea and I answer to Lisa.

The “Sugarrae” factor

When we started the company, Rhea and Lisa were both “warned” by folks that my “mouth” would “cost them business”. And I can’t and won’t deny that it likely has. My reputation for being blunt, honest and no-holds barred has long been apparent through my personal brand and was something we all knew I wouldn’t (and couldn’t even if I wanted to – which I don’t) change.

But, while I know I have cost us business because I’ve refused to “go corporate”, I also know that I have earned us business for the very same reason. People know what they see is what they get. People know that I am where I am in this industry because I know what I’m doing and not because I am good at being who people want me to be. The people we want to work with are looking for a company with the skills to “get er done” and not the skills to kiss their ass.

The Estrogen factor

We’re a bit unique in the fact that all three founders of Outspoken Media are female. And when we hired Dawn the questions, “warnings” and wisecracks about us being an “all female company” got even louder. We’re not looking to be an all female company. Dawn was hired (in actuality, recruited) because she has a technical background, a firm understanding of technical SEO and fit in with our company culture (a.k.a. she can put up with us).

“Be careful. You don’t want to be the ‘all women’ company.”

We have no fears of being seen as “weaker” because we’re currently “only women”, we have no purposeful intent to keep the company “only women” and we make no apologies for the fact that the company is currently female dominated. We’re not going to hire a male simply to “balance out the scales” or outside perceptions. It would be insulting to all parties involved. We hire based on talent, not gender.

Our growth as a company

The company experienced a lot of growth over the year in both branding and revenue. In less than one year in business, we’ve managed to get mentions in some of the world’s largest news outlets including CNN, the Wall Street Journal, USAToday and more. We’ve managed to develop over twenty thousand links (many of which are deemed to be pretty damn authoritative) to a blog that didn’t exist until a year ago today. And we’ve just gotten started.

More important than the success we’ve had developing a strong company brand, we’ve also had success in developing happy clients. I’m not going to get into specifics of who our clients are or what our company revenue was. Partially because we respect the privacy of our clients and partially because it’s none of your damn business.

But what I can tell you is that Outspoken Media doesn’t require contracts. We’ve always operated on the belief that if a client isn’t happy, we want them to be able to go where they will be happy at any time. We don’t want to work with clients who don’t want to work with us. That said, we have yet to lose a client because they weren’t happy with our work. For us, that speaks volumes louder than any client brag list or revenue chart ever could.

Our growth as individuals

I won’t lie to you. There have been some rocky moments in our growth as individuals and as partners. Lisa and I have been good friends for a long time and it was tricky developing the line between speaking as friends and speaking as partners. Rhea tends to be, as she puts it, the “soft spoken member of Outspoken” and at times that could lead to her being overrun by personalities as strong as mine and Lisa’s. Lisa and Rhea are neighbors in addition to being business partners and needed to learn that sometimes, too much together time is a bad thing.

But, what we all learned early on is that being partners in a company is much like being in a marriage. And in this marriage, divorce was never an option. We all learned to speak our minds openly and honestly with each other, compromise and put in the effort it required to make it work. We learned to work together as a group, while maintaining our individuality.

In the last year, I’ve watched both Lisa and Rhea grow as entrepreneurs.

If you had told me a year ago that Lisa would be doing radio interviews I would have likely laughed at you. She is used to wielding her keyboard and it’s been exciting to see her start to wield her voice. She’s realized she needed to start taking every opportunity she could to promote her company, even if it puts her outside of her comfort zone. I’ve watched Lisa put in long hours, late nights and many weekends that I’m sure she used to spend in much more exciting ways. Lisa has never uttered the phrase “that’s not my job.” When there is a hole, she fills it if there is any possible way for her to do so. She uses phrases like “company growth plan” now. Awesome.

It’s also been exciting to see Rhea grow in her confidence and start to stand her ground when tough situations arise. She has always questioned why we’ve made every decision we have as a company – not because she doubts it – but because she has been eager to learn the reasoning behind why we made it so she can get better at making those decisions herself. I’ve watched her grow as a manager of both employees and clients. She’s learned why not every client is a “good client” for us and for the last several months has been “bang on” in weeding those out herself before we ever sit down to discuss what new client proposals need to be done and if they are a fit for us.

As for myself, I’ve learned to work in a group setting over the last year when I’m used to being the only voice in charge. I’ve also learned that it’s hard as hell to run two companies (my other primary company is MFE Interactive) and have been learning to work through the chaos my life can sometimes become as a result. [Lisa says to note that I've "also learned to play better with others and not always be a bitch, which is very new to [me].” Bite me Barone.]

Where we’re going

I’m actually pretty damn excited about the second year with Outspoken. You can expect more press mentions, more controversy and more killer content from us in the coming year. We have revenue goals and company growth goals you can expect to see us working our assess off to achieve. And we’ll be working harder to spread our wings and extend our reach further and further outside the typical core “SEO realm.”