Hi. I’m Shane.
10 years ago, I started a company of 1. It was a healthy mixture of dream and desperation. With a lot of love from some great people, and some sweat, it worked out. I solved some cool problems and surfed when most of my friends worked. Freelancing let me make my living from home and coffee shops. I supported myself and eventually a family. What started as a backup plan became a career. It was fun. While I loved being in business for myself, after 5 years, I found myself wishing I didn’t have to be in business all by myself. I wanted to collaborate with other awesome people.
Across town, Peter meandered a similar path.
Eventually (with a little prodding) Peter quit his job at a tech company in the valley and started freelancing full-time. We partnered on a number of projects and in mid 2006 merged our companies to form Shane & Peter Inc. We’ve worked with household brand names creating websites and apps many of you have used. While we started as Shane & Peter, soon we were Shane, Peter and 30 other freelancers. We grew our agency into a collaborative. By banding together, we could take on larger projects with bigger companies than any of us had been able to do when we were working completely alone. The thing is, our brand is as personal as you can get, but if you aren’t Shane or Peter it can make a small barrier to a sense of ownership.
2,000 miles away, Reid quits his day job.
Two years or so after starting S&P Inc, I saw a heartfelt comment on another blog by a guy in Minnesota. He was taking the leap and quitting a job he didn’t believe in to start freelancing full-time. I sent him an email telling him that if I could do it, so could he. We ended up chatting and it turned out Reid had a solid portfolio and a work ethic to match ours. Even our healthy dose of crazy didn’t scare him off. In fact, almost three years later in 2010, Reid asked to buy-in. He now shares in our profits. As a partner, he put up with the old company name with remarkably good nature. A couple witty retorts and a smile when asked if he was Shane or Peter.
In 2010 we launched our first line of products, with a surprising (to us) amount of success. We’ve watched the WordPress platform explode in the last 5 years and see an almost desperate need for quality and support within the plugin ecosystem. We launched through one of the largest marketplaces and Events Calendar PRO became their #1 grossing and selling plugin in history. With the launch of this brand, we are taking it another step and selling direct to have greater control of our relationship with our customers.
We are speaking, writing, working on a book and actively looking to find ways to help our team of freelancers and the community at large to live intentionally and succeed financially.
Its not just Shane & Peter. Or Shane, Peter & Reid. There are a lot of people coming together to help us accomplish great things.
We’re not just an agency any more.
We are a lot of things to a lot of people.
We are a Modern Tribe.