Inside The Studio - Steadfast Collective

Pete Fergusson is Founder of Nemorin Film & Video, the world's branded video agency (part of the Argonon Group). Ex Head of Commercial Video for the Telegraph. Broadcast, media and branded content geek. Pete shares his three lessons learnt in this week's Dear Unexpected Entrepreneur. https://www.linkedin.com/in/pete-fergusson/

Chris Schutrups is a UK based Entrepreneur, having founded the successful Mortgage Hut and now moving into hospitality. Chris shares his three lessons learnt in this week's Dear Unexpected Entrepreneur. https://www.linkedin.com/in/schutrups/

Liana Fricker is the founder of Inspiration Space, TedX Speaker and Californian optimist sharing her three lessons to you, our Unexpected Entrepreneurs. Dear Unexpected Entrepreneurs is the new flagship podcast for Summit, a community for entrepreneurs looking to refine their idea or grow their businesses to the next level. An unexpected entrepreneur is an expert in their field, who has ambitious goals to innovate in their sector and push boundaries, which then, in turn, become their means for living and their own unique business. https://www.linkedin.com/in/lianawilsonfricker/

Officevibe Co-Founder shares all on HR Tech - Jeffrey Fermin Find out more at; https://exploresummit.co.uk/

Pete Matheson joins us to discuss the ups and downs of running and selling a business. Pete shares his top three tips for Unexpected Entrepreneurs in this podcast. https://www.youtube.com/c/PeteMatheson

We dig into some real-world UX problems and talk about how these lessons can translate into better designed digital products.

This week we break down the three reasons you don't need an app in the Apple App Store.

Stripe Connect is a product which allows you to facilitate paints and distribute funds. SAAS Apps and marketplaces go hand-in-hand with Stripe Connect. Dan and Pete jump into why, what and when to use Stripe Connect. Watch more episodes of Inside The Studio at; https://steadfastcollective.com/videos

Dan and Pete jump into the Bloom and Wild website to showcase five lessons you can implement into your website!

Inside the Studio is back. In this first episode, we take a look at four applications we are using for communication, project management, and pair programming, all of which are particularly useful when working remotely. Watch the full episode at: steadfastcollective.com/videos

You requested it, we filmed it. Season 3 of Inside The Studio will be coming to your screens on Tuesday the 10th of November. This season, we'll be getting practical; sharing tips, tricks and tools for running your business in the COVID-19 pandemic. We'll be taking a look at some of your landing pages for review and we will be chatting through how to make the maximise your web application now that everybody is heading online.

In February, Mills and Neef from ustwo joined us for our Creative X Business event. ustwo is a multi-national business started back in 2014 by Mills and Sinx.ustwo is a leading design, technology, games, and venture company with studios in Malmö, Lisbon, Sydney, Tokyo, New York and London.Perhaps best known for crafting the award-winning game Monument Valley, co-founder Mills and Neef from ustwo adventures will be joining us to share their story and announcing something special.The format of the evening was an interview, digging into the history of ustwo, what's the current state-of-play and looking ahead to the future.Watch the full video at: https://steadfastcollective.com/articles/our-evening-with-ustwo-mills-neef-inside-the-studio/

Inside The Studio is our behind the scenes series which lifts the lid on how we run our Digital Product Studio. We’re giving away our tips, tricks and processes which help us grow year after year. Subscribe to the podcast at: http://inside.steadfastcollective.com/

In this week's video, we're talking about what to consider before starting a new business.  We often meet folk with new business ideas who want to start right away on their idea. There's much more to a business than an idea and a good product. Inside The Studio is our behind the scenes series which lifts the lid on how we run our Digital Product Studio.  We’re giving away our tips, tricks and processes which help us grow year after year. Subscribe to the podcast at: http://inside.steadfastcollective.com/

On this week's Inside The Studio, we talk through why we use Slack and why you may also find it helpful in your organisation. Lastly, we talk through golden rules to ensuring Slack doesn't become a hindrance. Inside The Studio is our behind the scenes series which lifts the lid on how we run our Digital Product Studio. We’re giving away our tips, tricks and processes which help us grow year after year. Subscribe to the podcast at: http://inside.steadfastcollective.com/

We’re back with season two of Inside The Studio. Season two will be eight episodes about sharing our tools, processes and ideas around business growth, giving you tips and tricks on how you can grow your business, no matter what industry you’re in. Let’s get started with season two, episode one. Shopify is a fully managed eCommerce platform which allows you to create an online store for your brand. Nearly 450,000 online stores are power by Shopify, with over transactions of over $55 billion processed. At Steadfast Collective, we love working with Shopify. Let's tell you why!Read more at: https://steadfastcollective.com/articles/should-you-use-shopify/Watch the video at: 

In this week's inside the studio, we talk through three things we wish we implemented from the start of starting our Agency. Subscribe to the podcast at inside.steadfastcollective.comWatch the video at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2wqdXFTQRDh2ZamjoH3NHQ

This week on Inside The Studio we took a question from Twitter. Martin Adams asked; What are the challenges you face being a leader. Pete explores three challenges he faces while leading his team of smart creatives at Steadfast Collective. Don't worry, Dan will be back next week! Subscribe to the Inside The Studio podcast at; http://inside.steadfastcollective.com/

In this week’s Inside The Studio episode, we chat through hiring in an agency context.We’re worked hard to develop our team of smart creatives, and we’re proud of our team!We wanted to share our top hiring tips on how we grew that team.You can watch this at: https://steadfastcollective.com/?p=2951&preview=true

This week we chat through our vision day, 2019 goals and looking ahead to what we’re hoping to achieve in 2020!

Bryony Simpson is the founder of Engineers for Pioneers. Engineers for Pioneers pitches itself as a platform for making talented people more accessible to small and scaling business.We have worked with Bryony on their digital platform over the last 12 month, which you can read more about here.In this podcast, Bryony shares three lessons she has learnt while starting Engineers for Pioneers.

In our second Inside The Studio, we talk through our top tips for attending conferences. Conferences are a fantastic place to meet new people, build relationships and meet new clients.

This week we jump into how we win new work. Over the last 6-12 months, we’ve been giving our sales funnel a lot more thought as we’ve been growing as an agency.Inside The Studio is a weekly video series, digging into how we run our digital product studio. We’ll be covering topics such as; sales, hiring, project management and burnout. Follow along on YouTube, Twitter or your favourite podcast app.https://steadastcollective.com

Inside The Studio has been months in the making. Next week we launch our first episode.This series will be a deep dive into how we run our agency, manage clients and keep growing year after year.We're excited to share our journey with you between now and Christmas.

Jeff has been at Intercom for seven years, as the fourth employee he headed up customer support while fixing bugs and odd engineering tasks. He then went on to lead the support team. In the last 18 months, Jeff has taken on the role of Head of Platform Partnerships. We asked Jeff to share three lessons he has learnt during his time at Intercom. Read the interview at: https://steadfastcollective.com/articles/jeff-gardner-intercom/ Join the other developers, designers and product owners by subscribing to http://thedigitalproductplaybook.com for monthly insights into how to start and grow your digital product.

I met with Daniele Marino, Head of Product Development at Soldo to talk through lessons he learnt while building Soldo. Soldo helps businesses to control their spending, with pre-paid debit cards, virtual payment cards, and a handy dashboard overview. Founded in 2015, Soldo has raised a total of $22.2M in funding. http://steadfastcollective.com

Intercom’s products are an undeniable success, with more than 450 employees around the world focused on creating the worlds best suite of messaging-first products. Their book, On Starting Up, is lessons their founders have learnt along the way. We’re giving away a brand new copy of this book, at the end you can find out how to get your hands on your own copy.

In recognition of our fourth birthday as a business, we’ve recorded a special run of podcasts looking at what has inspired us along the way, the lessons we have learnt, and to bring some focus to what’s next for us as a company. The first instalment of these podcasts is entitled ‘Directors Growing Up’. Thanks for listening. We hope you have enjoyed finding out more about our back story as a company and our hopes for the future. We would love to get to know you, so get in touch and meet us for a coffee.

We met with Ben Everard to talk through three lessons learnt while starting up The Idea Bureau. We recorded this special edition of the Steadfast Collective podcast at New Adventures Conference 2019, we’ll be sharing our thoughts about the conference shortly! The Idea Bureau is a creative digital workshop focused on designing and building engaging websites, apps and digital services which have a positive impact on the world. So let’s jump into Ben’s three lessons. 1) Plan your day. Maintain focus and flow on different elements of your business. Planning your day allows you to allocate time to business development and other important elements of running a digital studio. 2) Understand your financials It’s important to have clarity around your current and projected financial situation so when opportunities or risk come up, that allows you to make an informed decision. 3) Prioritise yourself When there’s an overwhelming amount of things you can do to impact your business, how do decide where to start? Ben talks about the effort impact scale, a way of measuring task which will have the biggest impact with the least effort. Thanks again to Ben for sharing his wisdom on the podcast. If you’ve been listening to the podcast regularly, why not share your key lessons with us in the comments, twitter or email us! We are Steadfast Collective; a team of passionate creatives based on the south coast.

This week our ‘Three Lessons Learnt’ podcast featured Brandon from the Craft CMS team. Brandon is the founder and CEO of Pixel and Tonic who created the content managing system titled Craft CMS. This system aids web agencies in building websites that their clients are then able to content manage going forwards. If you haven’t yet listened to the podcast, here’s a summary of Brandon’s three lessons that he learnt when starting up his own business: Don’t take your existing customers for granted. Brandon has learnt from his own mistakes in this, having lost half of their sales after a few months of announcing their new, competitive product. He says not to take your current situation for granted as clients are always capable of moving onto something new. His advice to avoid this is to stay professional, keep delivering what customers are looking for, and treat them with respect. Be transparent with your community. After seeing how their competitors were treating their communities, Brandon decided to learn from their mistakes. The team aim to be as transparent as possible whilst keeping future plans somewhat close to their chest as to keep some elements a surprise. Brandon suggests trying to keep things open to the public and being honest; particularly on a personal level. Being honest when people write into the company is key to being transparent. It is important to give your team members a voice. Brandon says that no matter what your team are talking about, give them room for their opinions. Often they are seeing things from a different perspective to you and you may be overlooking something. Trust that you have hired smart people and that they have smart opinions to voice. Respect your team and give them all a fair stake at the table. It was great to have Brandon on this week's podcast. You can find him over on Twitter @brandonkelly or find Craft CMS @craftcms or via their blog www.craftcms.com/blog. www.steadfastcollective.com

This week our ‘Three Lessons Learnt’ podcast featured Martin Adams. Martin currently works for a mattress company, consulting as their technical CTO as a contractor. Originally part-time, he has been full time since 2003. He is also building his own start-up called Zaro which began out of the frustration of working with remote, in-house and agency teams, where there is a lack of communication of the work that is done. He has been into technology and the web space since studying Internet Technology at University in 2000 and has been programming since he was 13. If you haven’t yet listened to the podcast, here’s a summary of Martin’s three lessons that he learnt when starting up his own business: Don’t get distracted. Martin admitted then when he spots a problem, he often tries to figure out a solution by looking at the different things that are going on and can become easily diverted off of the path that he is working on. His main advice is to enjoy doing one thing really well rather than ten things to a subpar standard and suggests training yourself to be focussed and to tune out any possible distractions. Just launch. Martin knows from his own experiences that you can get into a cycle of trying to make everything perfect or going above what is required for a launch. He uses various methods to control deadlines to ensure no tasks are put off. Constant reminders proved beneficial. He suggests to just get something launched, take the win and move on to the next challenge. Enjoy the dip. Martin believes ‘the dip’ is the part of a project or phase of a business where most entrepreneurs quit as things begin to get difficult. He advises not to “compare your documentary to other people’s highlight reel”. People can look at other startups and see success but they don’t necessarily see the behind-the-scenes years spent stuck in the dip pushing and believing in their startup. Martin does his job for the love of the craft as he naturally finds it enjoyable. He suggests that appreciating the small things can get you through the dip. It was great to have Martin with us on our podcast. Why not follow along on Twitter @martin_adams and find out more about what Martin is working on. We’ll see you again soon for our next podcast. www.steadfastcollective.com

Radim Malinic is an award winning freelance creative director, graphic designer and keynote speaker based in London. He runs the micro agency brandnu.co.uk. He joined us to talk about three lessons he's learned along his career and working with brands such as Nike, WWF and the Harry Potter Franchise. At Steadfast Collective, we're meeting with creatives from all over the world to chat to them about three lessons they've learnt while starting up. https://Steadfastcollective.com

On this latest episode of Talking Tech Dan and Josh talk about gaming and how that had an impact on their careers as developers

Lee Button @leebutton joined us to share this three lessons he's learnt during his startup journey. Lee is a facilitator, working with businesses, charities, and organisations to help them plan and get over obstacles.  Listen here! www.steadfastcollective.com

We chatted with Simon Bennett of Snapshooter to discuss three lessons that he has learnt while building Snapshooter and other SAAS products.  Snapshooter helps you schedule frequent customizable DigitalOcean backups of your droplets and volumes. About Steadfast Collective - We are Steadfast Collective; a team of passionate creatives based on the south coast. www.steadfastcollective.com

In this episode of Talking Tech, Dan and Pete discuss Apple's most recent Apple event including; iPhone XS, iPhone XS+, iPhone XR and Apple Watch Series 4. www.steadfastcollective.com

We met with Lee Tengum of 7am.ca to discuss three lessons that he has learnt while building digital products and helping others with their sales process. 7am builds products and processes that help businesses grow their revenue and market share. Lee has years of wisdom in building businesses Listen to hear Lee’s lessons on sales, failing and no excuses! The Steadfast Collective podcast steadfastcollective.com is for those starting up looking for wisdom from those with a few years head start.

We met with Chris Whyley of Zamzar to discuss three lessons that he has learnt while starting Zamzar. Zamzar is an online file converter, created by brothers Mike and Chris Whyley in England. It allows users to convert files without downloading a software tool, and supports over 1,000 different conversion types. Listen to hear Chris’ wisdom about focus, shipping and running an application older than the iPhone.

As developers, we consistently strive to deliver feature-rich, performant and secure products. Due to the fast-paced nature of our work, it can often be difficult to deliver all three within the time and budget requirements of any given project. To ensure we meet these goals, we often reach for frameworks and tools which allow us to build products without re-inventing the wheel. We have recently been working with Craft CMS 3 to build client websites, and have been loving it. Here’s why:

We met with Jan Carlyle to discuss three lessons that she has learnt while starting Autumn Live. AutumnLive is passionate about Technology, Education, Equality and Inspiration.  They deliver this through strategic events, programmes and marketing campaigns, specialising in the tech, digital and creative sectors. Listen to hear Jan's wisdom about marketing, ROI and mentorship.

Pete and Rachel Heslop, our company directors, share the Steadfast story, starting with our small beginnings, growing into the team and client work you see today. Steadfast Collective are a team of passionate creatives focusing on creating content-driven digital platforms and applications. We have a team of five, permanent, talented individuals in our Southampton office, alongside a small team of regular contractors who work alongside us on many of our projects. Pete and Rachel share three key lessons they have learnt along the way...

This week I had the chance to speak to Shelly Frame of Etch. Shelly is Group Commercial Director responsible for strategising growth plans, keeping an eye on the finances, and keeping the company in check. The Etch Group is a collection of user design, customer experience, product and web development companies, which include Big Radical Ltd. They work across the Auto, Airlines, Health, Hospitality, Financial and Entertainment industries. Etch has a team of around 80 talented individuals across three offices in London, Southampton, and Cape Town. We asked Shelly what three lessons she had learnt whilst starting up Etch several years ago and along the way.

This week I had the chance to speak to Ashley Baxter. Ashley is currently building Jack, business insurance on a first name basis. She is also Director of Brokers Direct. Ashley likes video games, photography, and her dog, Indie. She is based in Glasgow, Scotland. We asked Ashley what three Lessons she had learned while starting With Jack,

Throughout May we are meeting with business owners from all over the UK to discuss three lessons they have learned while starting a business. Why three lessons? I’m glad you asked! At Steadfast Collective it’s our third birthday so we’re celebrating by meeting with some entrepreneurs who inspire us. This week I had the chance to speak to James Mitchell. James runs M3 productions, a UK-based theatrical production company and technical theatre design, support, and hire. James is a creative entrepreneur who can find his way around any limitation. We discuss everything from cash flow to getting over the fear of making mistakes.