Our first full year in business ran on more than conviction. It ran on a nonprofit that trusted us with their story, a coffee shop that gave us a room, and a handful of local creatives who showed up before we'd earned it. This is our thank-you, written the way we'd say it in person.
We didn’t build this alone
Every founder story likes to sound like a solo climb. Ours isn’t one, and we’re not interested in pretending otherwise. HAUS XXIV opened its doors in Long Beach with a small team, a bigger idea, and almost no track record to point to. What we had instead was a city full of people willing to bet on us before there was much evidence to bet on.
Thanksgiving gives us a reason to slow down and say the names out loud, so that’s what we’re doing this year. Not a generic thank-you to "our community," the kind of line that means nothing because it could describe anyone. Specific people. Specific favors. Specific reasons we’re still here doing the work.
We started this haus on the idea that the people the rest of the market overlooks deserve the same craft as anyone with a bigger budget. Long Beach handed that idea right back to us, over and over, in the first eighteen months. Small businesses gave us their trust before we had a portfolio worth trusting. A nonprofit gave us a reason to prove what pro bono work could look like when it’s treated like real work, not a favor. A coffee shop gave us a room when we didn’t have an office. None of that shows up on an invoice. All of it is why we’re still building.
“"We don’t build a brand by ourselves, and this year proved it. Long Beach fed us, hosted us, and referred us before we had a reputation to hand back. Gratitude isn’t a caption on a social post. It’s a debt, and we intend to keep paying it."”
David Keyes, Founder & CEO, HAUS XXIV
The people who let us build for free, and meant it
Early on, we did pro bono brand and content work for a local youth literacy nonprofit, the kind of organization running on grant cycles, volunteer hours, and a program director who answers her own phone. They needed a new site, a donor one-pager that didn’t read like a form letter, and photography that made their after-school reading room look like the place it actually is: warm, a little chaotic, full of kids who are proud of themselves.
We took the project because it mattered, not because it was strategic. What we didn’t expect was how much it would teach us. Working without a big budget forces a kind of discipline that paid work doesn’t always demand. Every photo had to earn its place. Every sentence had to work twice as hard, because there was no ad spend behind it to cover for a weak line. That nonprofit’s board chair told us afterward that donations were up the following quarter, and that new volunteers mentioned the website by name when they signed up. That’s the kind of proof we build for.
We also want to thank the coffee shop on Fourth Street that let us take over its back room for our first client mixer, no rental fee, just a request that we tip the baristas well and clean up after ourselves. We did both. The owner pulled double shifts that night pouring drinks for people she’d never met, because a fellow small business asked for a favor and she said yes without much hesitation. That’s the kind of neighbor Long Beach keeps producing, and we don’t take it lightly.
And to the fellow creatives, photographers, copywriters, a motion designer who shares a studio two blocks from ours, who sent us overflow work when their own plates were full instead of sitting on it: thank you. In a lot of markets, that’s the kind of lead you keep for yourself. Here, more often than not, it’s the kind of lead you pass along, because the whole scene does better when everyone’s booked.
“*"Working pro bono with HAUS didn’t feel like a favor. It felt like they treated our two”
room reading program the same way they’d treat a client with ten times our budget. That respect is rare, and it’s the reason donations climbed the quarter after the site went live."* — Program Director, Long Beach youth literacy nonprofit, HAUS XXIV client
What we’re carrying into next year
None of this is filler gratitude. Real thanks names the debt and says what you’re doing with it. So here’s what we’re doing with it: we’re keeping the pro bono slot open every year, not as a marketing line but as a standing commitment, one nonprofit project a year, chosen with the same care as any paid engagement. We’re showing up at that coffee shop again this December, this time as paying customers hosting a bigger room. We’re sending referrals back to the creatives who sent them to us, because that’s how a scene stays a scene instead of turning into a pile of competitors.
Long Beach didn’t have to make room for a new creative haus with an untested name and a defiant streak. It did anyway. Nonprofits handed us their stories. A coffee shop handed us a room. Other creatives handed us work they could have kept. That’s not a slogan. That’s a debt we intend to keep paying forward, one Thanksgiving at a time.
