Tara Hunt of Citizen Agency - In conversation with women 2.0

I'm Emily Goligoski with Women 2.0's In Conversation series. Here with Tara Hunt, she's a marketing strategy consultant and the co-founder of Citizen Agency, an internet consultancy that specializes in community-centric strategy. I started Citizen Agency about 2.5 years ago, almost, actually almost 3 years ago and it was founded based on thinking about marketing a little bit differently. Previously marketing has been thought of sort of like putting a voice in the company to go outwards and capture an audience and that sort of thing and both my business partner Chris Messina and I had really strong feelings about putting the customer at the center of marketing so we like to say we, our customers, our clients are our clients' clients so we like to listen to the customers of our customers and we think that's a better strategy and it's proven to be so. What brings me in every day is that I get to work in the way that, on my own terms, in the way that I believe so no matter what day I wake up if I stop believing in what I do I can switch gears. It's the beauty of being a consultant. I, you know, saying, the other night it's taken me longer to get where I wanted to be. I remember thinking in my early 20s that I want to be you know, this big success. I want to be in this place I had imagined for myself by the time I was 30 and so now I'm 35 and I'm finally feeling like I'm getting to that place with my book coming out at the beginning of next year and speaking a lot and being seen as an authority but I did it on my own terms. I didn't take any short-cuts, I didn't elbow anybody out of the way. I have very much done it in a way that I can feel ethically sound about. I also feel like I made a lot of friends on the way instead of enemies, that sort of thing. But definitely, I mean the beauty of being a consultant is that you do have that you know, if you do it right you have the freedom to choose what kind of clients that you work with and then you can also influence clients that might need influencing in the right direction so when I say being customer-centric it's not just a marketing ploy. For me it's an important part of the revolution that's happening online and offline with you know really levelling out the playing field so that's what I love about what I can do. I can couple my passion with the way that I make, I make money every day. Don't spend money that you don't have. Don't go in debt on credit with your business. Grow it slowly, step by step and pay for what you have when you can or when you need to, when you have the money in the bank sort of thing. I made, I had a company previous to Citizen Agency in Canada called Rogue Strategies, really I mean, based a lot on the same principles, very you know guerilla marketing sort of stuff online/offline and I decided to really go all out with putting myself out there in the beginning buying brochures, paying for a fancy website, putting all sorts of money out for like lunch parties and traveling all over the place to meet people and I didn't need to do that. I just needed to build the company client by client and then I ended up in a lot of debt which was really hard for me to transition then my company to the next level when I needed to because I had sort of spent everything up front. Young women interested in entrepeneurship should definitely do it and convince all your other, other young women around you that they should be entrepeneurs as well. I know it's scary, I think, I don't think as, maybe it's changing now but when I was growing up the whole idea of a woman becoming her own boss was not really commonly accepted so this might, I'm hoping that this is changing, for sure, for young women so you know, if you're thinking about it it's not as scary as, it actually doesn't give you any less job security than you have if you get a job somewhere, especially you know, look around now with all the layoffs etcetera that are going on and people are like oh my God, I thought I was set there for the next five years and I just say you're never set anywhere for the next five years and the beauty about being an entrepeneur is that you can make your own success. I heard some of the best advice I've heard from Mary Hodder, a fellow female entrepeneur who said build your business model from day one to your start-up. No matter you know, whether they say build community and then the money will come. You should have a business model from day one, whether it's a subscription service or affiliate program or whatever, just build it in from day one and that will make it so that you can be more customer, community-centric and not worry so much about somehow flipping that in the future. Those companies that couple their passion with their business model sort of thing, so you know Emily Chang and Max Kiesler with Ideacodes definitely. Their passion for design as well as the kind of projects they take on. People like Stewart and Katarina with Flickr, maybe even companies like Timberland the boot company that has a lot of purpose in what they're doing as well as Stonyfield Farms which makes the organic yogurt, they've always had passion with their profits. Craig Newmark with Craigslist, you know different companies like that that ethically get to where they want to get and because of that, you know this is a long-term sort of thinking, sort of process and those are the companies that I've always modeled the kind of business that I want to do. I like making money, don't get me wrong. I love being able to pay my rent in San Francisco and go on nice trips and that sort of thing but I think that'll come when I'm doing something that is purposeful and that I'm passionate about and that the world needs.