Podcast appearances and mentions of Charlie Waite

Charlie Waite, founder of Light & Land, who are celebrating 30 years with a landscape photography exhibition at the Mall galleries in London...with TRE's Hannah Murray

The landscape photographer Charlie Waite is a true national treasure. A fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, he has published dozens of photography books and founded the Landscape Photographer of the Year awards back in 2006.We're absolutely delighted that he joined us on the Country Life Podcast, telling host James Fisher about his life in photography, how he was shaped by his early years in theatre and film, and his philosophy on how to produce — not just 'take' — a photograph has evolved.Listen to Country Life podcast on Apple PodcastsListen to Country Life podcast on SpotifyListen to Country Life podcast on AudibleHe tells us about how he has been inspired by some of the greats of the craft, from Ansel Adams to Henri Cartier-Bresson, quoting some of the advice he has taken on board from his heroes. Charlie is also passionate about sharing his love of landscape photography with as many people as possible, both through his Light & Land workshops and tours, and with his latest venture, an exhibition at the Mall Galleries in September 2024 in which Charlie's pictures will hang alongside those of other landscape photographers, amateur and professional, from across the world. Episode creditsHost: James FisherGuest: Charlie WaiteEditor and Producer: Toby KeelMusic: JuliusH via PixabaySpecial thanks: Adam Wilbourn Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Moneywise Radio Show and Podcast Monday, June 17th BE MONEYWISE. Moneywise Wealth Management I "The Moneywise Guys" podcast call: 661-847-1000 text in anytime: 661-396-1000 website: www.MoneywiseGuys.com facebook: Moneywise_Wealth_Management instagram: MoneywiseWealthManagement Guest: Dr. Richard Garhart, Associate Professor Of Economics at California State University Bakersfield

Every day, Uber facilitates 27 million trips worldwide. How do they provide the best experience possible? In today's episode, Charlie Waite, Director of Product design at Uber, delves into the challenges and rewards of designing a global product, navigating diverse user bases and global nuances, and providing the safest, most efficient experience in the market. He also underscores the relevance of balancing design, user experience, speed, and company growth.Join us as we discuss:How good product design serves as a powerful differentiator for brandsUber's commitment to diversifying services for increased accessibilityThe importance of authenticity and honesty in leadership roles

The Moneywise Show  Monday, October 9th BE MONEYWISE. Moneywise Wealth Management I "The Moneywise Guys" podcast call: 661-847-1000 text in anytime: 661-396-1000 website: www.MoneywiseGuys.com facebook: Moneywise_Wealth_Management instagram: MoneywiseWealthManagement linkedin: MoneywiseWealthManagement Guest: Kelly Damian, Spokesperson for "Bring Back the Kern" website: www.bringbackthekern.org/  

The Moneywise Guys Friday, June 2nd BE MONEYWISE. Moneywise Wealth Management I "The Moneywise Guys" podcast call: 661-847-1000 text in anytime: 661-396-1000 website: www.MoneywiseGuys.com facebook: Moneywise_Wealth_Management linkedin: MoneywiseWealthManagement Guest: Danielle Alcala, Tigerfight Foundation's Casino Night Committee Member website: https://tigerfight.org/  

The Moneywise Guys Friday, April 28th BE MONEYWISE. Moneywise Wealth Management I "The Moneywise Guys" podcast call: 661-847-1000 text in anytime: 661-396-1000 website: www.MoneywiseGuys.com facebook: Moneywise_Wealth_Management linkedin: MoneywiseWealthManagement Guest: Kyle Jones, Attorney at Law website: www.KWJonesLaw.com phone: 661-833-1090 email: kylejones@kwjoneslaw.com  

The Moneywise Guys Monday, February 27th BE MONEYWISE. Moneywise Wealth Management I "The Moneywise Guys" podcast call: 661-847-1000 text in anytime: 661-396-1000 website: www.MoneywiseGuys.com

The Moneywise Guys Thursday, February 16th BE MONEYWISE. Moneywise Wealth Management I "The Moneywise Guys" podcast call: 661-847-1000 text in anytime: 661-396-1000 website: www.MoneywiseGuys.com

The Moneywise Guys Wednesday, January 11th BE MONEYWISE. Moneywise Wealth Management I "The Moneywise Guys" podcast call: 661-847-1000 text in anytime: 661-396-1000 website: www.MoneywiseGuys.com  

The Moneywise Guys Friday, December 9th BE MONEYWISE. Moneywise Wealth Management I "The Moneywise Guys" podcast call: 661-847-1000 text in anytime: 661-396-1000 website: www.MoneywiseGuys.com Guest: Steve Sanders, Kern County Superintendent of Schools + Board Member for CALM Zoo  website: https://calmzoo.org/holidaylights/  

Charlie Waite, British Landscape Photographer has teamed up with the Gillingham branch of Robert Friths Opticians to fund raise for the RNIB by donating one of his landscape photographs for a silent auction which will end on 20 September 2022. RNIB Connect Radio's Toby Davey caught up with Charlie to find out why he wanted to donate one of his landscape photographs for a silent auction to fundraise for the RNIB.  Charlie began by telling Toby how he got into photography after leaving school and spending some time working as an assistant Stage manager at Salisbury Theatre.  Then a few years later working as a Photographer in London mainly taking photographs of Actors, one day as he stepped out of his studio a car pulled up and a man asked Charlie whether he had done any landscape photography which then ended up in the work that Charlie has been doing ever since as a British Landscape Photographer. Charlie then talks about the silent auction of one of his landscape photograph, describing the donated photograph, how it looks, the time of the day it was taken and how he used the midday sun to cast the shadows that he wanted in the landscape scene.   Charlie also explained to Toby how the silent auction will work and how he would like more landscape photographers to do the same and put on a silent auction of one of their photographs to fundraise to support the work of the RNIB. To find out more about Charlie Waite, his landscape photography and much more, do visit his website - https://www.charliewaite.com (Image shows RNIB logo. 'RNIB' written in black capital letters over a white background and underlined with a bold pink line, with the words 'See differently' underneath)

On The Alfred Daily Today: Shaftesbury what's ons Transport officials recommend against upgrade of A350 as M4 to Poole link Photography guru Charlie Waite gifts artwork to Shaftesbury Hospital Blanche Miller shares seven decades of Donhead memories Shaftesbury traffic news View from the Hill - Visitors compared Shaftesbury with Keswick Sunday story – Deborah Jones reads ‘The Life Saver' Soundscape – Sparrows in St James' Street hedge

The landscape legend Charlie Waite is our Photowalk guest this week answering your questions. It's the only photo podcast like it; your letters plus guests Thomas Heaton and Henrik Saxgren with words of inspiration as we walk together, sharing stories and pictures on a photowalk. This week we talk imposter syndrome, photographic prompt jars, 2022 photo plans, introversion and we have the best idea to keep tripods steady in the wind. This and other stories as we make pictures together. Brought to you by MPB.com and our patrons. See the SHOW NOTES.

Investors have pumped capital into emerging markets since the beginning of civilization. Egyptians explored basic mathematics and used their findings to build larger structures and even granaries to allow merchants to store food and serve larger and larger cities. Greek philosophers expanded on those learnings and applied math to learn the orbits of planets, the size of the moon, and the size of the earth. Their merchants used the astrolabe to expand trade routes. They studied engineering and so learned how to leverage the six simple machines to automate human effort, developing mills and cranes to construct even larger buildings. The Romans developed modern plumbing and aqueducts and gave us concrete and arches and radiant heating and bound books and the postal system.  Some of these discoveries were state sponsored; others from wealthy financiers. Many an early investment was into trade routes, which fueled humanities ability to understand the world beyond their little piece of it and improve the flow of knowledge and mix found knowledge from culture to culture.  As we covered in the episode on clockworks and the series on science through the ages, many a scientific breakthrough was funded by religion as a means of wowing the people. And then autocrats and families who'd made their wealth from those trade routes. Over the centuries of civilizations we got institutions who could help finance industry.  Banks loan money using an interest rate that matches the risk of their investment. It's illegal, going back to the Bible to overcharge on interest. That's called usury, something the Romans realized during their own cycles of too many goods driving down costs and too few fueling inflation. And yet, innovation is an engine of economic growth - and so needs to be nurtured.  The rise of capitalism meant more and more research was done privately and so needed to be funded. And the rise of intellectual property as a good. Yet banks have never embraced startups.  The early days of the British Royal Academy were filled with researchers from the elite. They could self-fund their research and the more doing research, the more discoveries we made as a society. Early American inventors tinkered in their spare time as well. But the pace of innovation has advanced because of financiers as much as the hard work and long hours. Companies like DuPont helped fuel the rise of plastics with dedicated research teams. Railroads were built by raising funds. Trade grew. Markets grew. And people like JP Morgan knew those markets when they invested in new fields and were able to grow wealth and inspire new generations of investors. And emerging industries ended up dominating the places that merchants once held in the public financial markets.  Going back to the Venetians, public markets have required regulation. As banking became more a necessity for scalable societies it too required regulation - especially after the Great Depression. And yet we needed new companies willing to take risks to keep innovation moving ahead., as we do today And so the emergence of the modern venture capital market came in those years with a few people willing to take on the risk of investing in the future. John Hay “Jock” Whitney was an old money type who also started a firm. We might think of it more as a family office these days but he had acquired 15% in Technicolor and then went on to get more professional and invest. Jock's partner in the adventure was fellow Delta Kappa Epsilon from out at the University of Texas chapter, Benno Schmidt. Schmidt coined the term venture capital and they helped pivot Spencer Chemicals from a musicians plant to fertilizer - they're both nitrates, right? They helped bring us Minute Maid. and more recently have been in and out of Herbalife, Joe's Crab Shack, Igloo coolers, and many others. But again it was mostly Whitney money and while we tend to think of venture capital funds as having more than one investor funding new and enterprising companies.  And one of those venture capitalists stands out above the rest. Georges Doriot moved to the United States from France to get his MBA from Harvard. He became a professor at Harvard and a shrewd business mind led to him being tapped as the Director of the Military Planning Division for the Quartermaster General. He would be promoted to brigadier general following a number of massive successes in the research and development as part of the pre-World War II military industrial academic buildup.  After the war Doriot created the American Research and Development Corporation or ARDC with the former president of MIT, Karl Compton, and engineer-turned Senator Ralph Flanders - all of them wrote books about finance, banking, and innovation. They proved that the R&D for innovation could be capitalized to great return. The best example of their success was Digital Equipment Corporation, who they invested $70,000 in in 1957 and turned that into over $350 million in 1968 when DEC went public, netting over 100% a year of return. Unlike Whitney, ARDC took outside money and so Doriot became known as the first true venture capitalist. Those post-war years led to a level of patriotism we arguably haven't seen since. John D. Rockefeller had inherited a fortune from his father, who built Standard Oil. To oversimplify, that company was broken up into a variety of companies including what we now think of as Exxon, Mobil, Amoco, and Chevron. But the family was one of the wealthiest in the world and the five brothers who survived John Jr built an investment firm they called the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. We might think of the fund as a social good investment fund these days. Following the war in 1951, John D Rockefeller Jr endowed the fund with $58 million and in 1956, deep in the Cold War, the fund president Nelson Rockefeller financed a study and hired Henry Kissinger to dig into the challenges of the United States. And then came Sputnik in 1957 and a failed run for the presidency of the United States by Nelson in 1960.  Meanwhile, the fund was helping do a lot of good but also helping to research companies Venrock would capitalize. The family had been investing since the 30s but Laurance Rockefeller had setup Venrock, a mashup of venture and Rockefeller. In Venrock, the five brothers, their sister, MIT's Ted Walkowicz, and Harper Woodward banded together to sprinkle funding into now over 400 companies that include Apple, Intel, PGP, CheckPoint, 3Com, DoubleClick and the list goes on. Over 125 public companies have come out of the fund today with an unimaginable amount of progress pushing the world forward. The government was still doing a lot of basic research in those post-war years that led to standards and patents and pushing innovation forward in private industry. ARDC caught the attention of a number of other people who had money they needed to put to work. Some were family offices increasingly willing to make aggressive investments. Some were started by ARDC alumni such as Charlie Waite and Bill Elfers who with Dan Gregory founded Greylock Partners. Greylock has invested in everyone from Red Hat to Staples to LinkedIn to Workday to Palo Alto Networks to Drobo to Facebook to Zipcar to Nextdoor to OpenDNS to Redfin to ServiceNow to Airbnb to Groupon to Tumblr to Zenprise to Dropbox to IFTTT to Instagram to Firebase to Wandera to Sumo Logic to Okta to Arista to Wealthfront to Domo to Lookout to SmartThings to Docker to Medium to GoFundMe to Discord to Houseparty to Roblox to Figma. Going on 800 investments just since the 90s they are arguably one of the greatest venture capital firms of all time.  Other firms came out of pure security analyst work. Hayden, Stone, & Co was co-founded by another MIT grad, Charles Hayden, who made his name mining copper to help wire up the world in what he expected to be an increasingly electrified world. Stone was a Wall Street tycoon and the two of them founded a firm that employed Joe Kennedy, the family patriarch, Frank Zarb, a Chairman of the NASDAQ and they gave us one of the great venture capitalists to fund technology companies, Arthur Rock.  Rock has often been portrayed as the bad guy in Steve Jobs movies but was the one who helped the “Traitorous 8” leave Shockley Semiconductor and after their dad (who had an account at Hayden Stone) mentioned they needed funding, got serial entrepreneur Sherman Fairchild to fund Fairchild Semiconductor. He developed tech for the Apollo missions, flashes, spy satellite photography - but that semiconductor business grew to 12,000 people and was a bedrock of forming what we now call Silicon Valley. Rock ended up moving to the area and investing. Parlaying success in an investment in Fairchild to invest in Intel when Moore and Noyce left Fairchild to co-found it.  Venture Capital firms raise money from institutional investors that we call limited partners and invest that money. After moving to San Francisco, Rock setup Davis and Rock, got some limited partners, including friends from his time at Harvard and invested in 15 companies, including Teledyne and Scientific Data Systems, which got acquired by Xerox, taking their $257,000 investment to a $4.6 million dollar valuation in 1970 and got him on the board of Xerox. He dialed for dollars for Intel and raised another $2.5 million in a couple of hours, and became the first chair of their board. He made all of his LPs a lot of money. One of those Intel employees who became a millionaire retired young. Mike Markulla invested some of his money and Rock put in $57,000 - growing it to $14 million and went on to launch or invest in companies and make billions of dollars in the process.  Another firm that came out of the Fairchild Semiconductor days was Kleiner Perkins. They started in 1972, by founding partners Eugene Kleiner, Tom Perkins, Frank Caufield, and Brook Byers. Kleiner was the leader of those Traitorous 8 who left William Shockley and founded Fairchild Semiconductor. He later hooked up with former HP head of Research and Development and yet another MIT and Harvard grad, Bill Perkins. Perkins would help Corning, Philips, Compaq, and Genentech - serving on boards and helping them grow.  Caufield came out of West Point and got his MBA from Harvard as well. He'd go on to work with Quantum, AOL, Wyse, Verifone, Time Warner, and others.  Byers came to the firm shortly after getting his MBA from Stanford and started four biotech companies that were incubated at Kleiner Perkins - netting the firm over $8 Billion dollars. And they taught future generations of venture capitalists. People like John Doerr - who was a great seller at Intel but by 1980 graduated into venture capital bringing in deals with Sun, Netscape, Amazon, Intuit, Macromedia, and one of the best gambles of all time - Google. And his reward is a net worth of over $11 billion dollars. But more importantly to help drive innovation and shape the world we live in today.  Kleiner Perkins was the first to move into Sand Hill Road. From there, they've invested in nearly a thousand companies that include pretty much every household name in technology. From there, we got the rise of the dot coms and sky-high rent, on par with Manhattan. Why? Because dozens of venture capital firms opened offices on that road, including Lightspeed, Highland, Blackstone, Accel-KKR, Silver Lake, Redpoint, Sequoia, and Andreesen Horowitz. Sequoia also started in the 70s, by Don Valentine and then acquired by Doug Leone and Michael Moritz in the 90s. Valentine did sales for Raytheon before joining National Semiconductor, which had been founded by a few Sperry Rand traitors and brought in some execs from Fairchild. They were venture backed and his background in sales helped propel some of their earlier investments in Apple, Atari, Electronic Arts, LSI, Cisco, and Oracle to success. And that allowed them to invest in a thousand other companies including Yahoo!, PayPal, GitHub, Nvidia, Instagram, Google, YouTube, Zoom, and many others.  So far, most of the firms have been in the US. But venture capital is a global trend.  Masayoshi Son founded Softbank in 1981 to sell software and then published some magazines and grew the circulation to the point that they were Japan's largest technology publisher by the end of the 80s and then went public in 1994. They bought Ziff Davis publishing, COMDEX, and seeing so much technology and the money in technology, Son inked a deal with Yahoo! to create Yahoo! Japan. They pumped $20 million into Alibaba in 2000 and by 2014 that investment was worth $60 billion. In that time they became more aggressive with where they put their money to work. They bought Vodafone Japan, took over competitors, and then the big one - they bought Sprint, which they merged with T-Mobile and now own a quarter of the combined companies. An important aspect of venture capital and private equity is multiple expansion. The market capitalization of Sprint more than doubled with shares shooting up over 10%. They bought Arm Limited, the semiconductor company that designs the chips in so many a modern phone, IoT device, tablet and even computer now. As with other financial firms, not all investments can go great. SoftBank pumped nearly $5 billion into WeWork. Wag failed. 2020 saw many in staff reductions. They had to sell tens of billions in assets  to weather the pandemic. And yet with some high profile losses, they sold ARM for a huge profit, Coupang went public and investors in their Vision Funds are seeing phenomenal returns across over 200 companies in the portfolios. Most of the venture capitalists we mentioned so far invested as early as possible and stuck with the company until an exit - be it an IPO, acquisition, or even a move into private equity. Most got a seat on the board in exchange for not only their seed capital, or the money to take products to market, but also their advice. In many a company the advice was worth more than the funding. For example, Randy Komisar, now at Kleiner Perkins, famously recommended TiVo sell monthly subscriptions, the growth hack they needed to get profitable. As the venture capital industry grew and more and more money was being pumped into fueling innovation, different accredited and institutional investors emerged to have different tolerances for risk and different skills to bring to the table. Someone who built an enterprise SaaS company and sold within three years might be better served to invest in and advise another company doing the same thing. Just as someone who had spent 20 years running companies that were at later stages and taking them to IPO was better at advising later stage startups who maybe weren't startups any more. Here's a fairly common startup story. After finishing a book on Lisp, Paul Graham decides to found a company with Robert Morris. That was Viaweb in 1995 and one of the earliest SaaS startups that hosted online stores - similar to a Shopify today. Viaweb had an investor named Julian Weber, who invested $10,000 in exchange for 10% of the company. Weber gave them invaluable advice and they were acquired by Yahoo! for about $50 million in stock in 1998, becoming the Yahoo Store.  Here's where the story gets different. 2005 and Graham decides to start doing seed funding for startups, following the model that Weber had established with Viaweb. He and Viaweb co-founders Robert Morris (the guy that wrote the Morris worm) and Trevor Blackwell start Y Combinator, along with Jessica Livingston. They put in $200,000 to invest in companies and with successful investments grew to a few dozen companies a year. They're different because they pick a lot of technical founders (like themselves) and help the founders find product market fit, finish their solutions, and launch. And doing so helped them bring us Airbnb, Doordash, Reddit, Stripe, Dropbox and countless others. Notice that many of these firms have funded the same companies. This is because multiple funds investing in the same company helps distribute risk. But also because in an era where we've put everything from cars to education to healthcare to innovation on an assembly line, we have an assembly line in companies. We have thousands of angel investors, or humans who put capital to work by investing in companies they find through friends, family, and now portals that connect angels with companies.  We also have incubators, a trend that began in the late 50s in New York when Jo Mancuso opened a warehouse up for small tenants after buying a warehouse to help the town of Batavia. The Batavia Industrial Center provided office supplies, equipment, secretaries, a line of credit, and most importantly advice on building a business. They had made plenty of money on chicken coops and though that maybe helping companies start was a lot like incubating chickens and so incubators were born.  Others started incubating. The concept expanded from local entrepreneurs helping other entrepreneurs and now cities, think tanks, companies, and even universities, offer incubation in their walls. Keep in mind many a University owns a lot of patents developed there and plenty of companies have sprung up to commercialize the intellectual property incubated there. Seeing that and how technology companies needed to move faster we got  accelerators like Techstars, founded by David Cohen, Brad Feld, David Brown, and Jared Polis in 2006 out of Boulder, Colorado. They have worked with over 2,500 companies and run a couple of dozen programs. Some of the companies fail by the end of their cohort and yet many like Outreach and Sendgrid grow and become great organizations or get acquired. The line between incubator and accelerator can be pretty slim today. Many of the earlier companies mentioned are now the more mature venture capital firms. Many have moved to a focus on later stage companies with YC and Techstars investing earlier. They attend the demos of companies being accelerated and invest. And the fact that founding companies and innovating is now on an assembly line, the companies that invest in an A round of funding, which might come after an accelerator, will look to exit in a B round, C round, etc. Or may elect to continue their risk all the way to an acquisition or IPO.  And we have a bevy of investing companies focusing on the much later stages. We have private equity firms and family offices that look to outright own, expand, and either harvest dividends from or sell an asset, or company. We have traditional institutional lenders who provide capital but also invest in companies. We have hedge funds who hedge puts and calls or other derivatives on a variety of asset classes. Each has their sweet spot even if most will opportunistically invest in diverse assets. Think of the investments made as horizons. The Angel investor might have their shares acquired in order to clean up the cap table, or who owns which parts of a company, in later rounds. This simplifies the shareholder structure as the company is taking on larger institutional investors to sprint towards and IPO or an acquisition. People like Arthur Rock, Tommy Davis, Tom Perkins, Eugene Kleiner, Doerr, Masayoshi Son, and so many other has proven that they could pick winners. Or did they prove they could help build winners? Let's remember that investing knowledge and operating experience were as valuable as their capital. Especially when the investments were adjacent to other successes they'd found. Venture capitalists invested more than $10 billion in 1997. $600 million of that found its way to early-stage startups. But most went to preparing a startup with a product to take it to mass market. Today we pump more money than ever into R&D - and our tax systems support doing so more than ever. And so more than ever, venture money plays a critical role in the life cycle of innovation. Or does venture money play a critical role in the commercialization of innovation? Seed accelerators, startup studios, venture builders, public incubators, venture capital firms, hedge funds, banks - they'd all have a different answer. And they should. Few would stick with an investment like Digital Equipment for as long as ARDC did. And yet few provide over 100% annualized returns like they did.  As we said in the beginning of this episode, wealthy patrons from Pharaohs to governments to industrialists to now venture capitalists have long helped to propel innovation, technology, trade, and intellectual property. We often focus on the technology itself in computing - but without the money the innovation either wouldn't have been developed or if developed wouldn't have made it to the mass market and so wouldn't have had an impact into our productivity or quality of life.  The knowledge that comes with those who provide the money can be seen with irreverence. Taking an innovation to market means market-ing. And sales. Most generations see the previous generations as almost comedic, as we can see in the HBO show Silicon Valley when the cookie cutter industrialized approach goes too far. We can also end up with founders who learn to sell to investors rather than raising capital in the best way possible, selling to paying customers. But there's wisdom from previous generations when offered and taken appropriately. A coachable founder with a vision that matches the coaching and a great product that can scale is the best investment that can be made. Because that's where innovation can change the world.

Valda Bailey is an impressionist photographer from Sussex, England. With a background in painting, Valda explores nature using a variety of techniques to create art that is truly unique. Our conversation ranges from Valda's journey to find her own style, why she takes confidence from that journey, how she presses on in difficult times and much more. If you're on any kind of creative path I'm sure you'll take some thing away from this episode.  Listen to the show here or on: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/view-finders-photography-podcast/id1535018815 (Apple Podcasts) https://open.spotify.com/show/1vm9WE1uSi3etjV1e6WH49 (Spotify ) https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5jYXB0aXZhdGUuZm0vdmlldy1maW5kZXJzLXBob3RvZ3JhcGh5 (Google Podcasts) Amazon Music  Stitcher Support Valda at the following links: Valda's website - https://valdabailey.com (https://valdabailey.com)  Valda's Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/valdab/ (https://www.instagram.com/valdab/)   Tuition and Tours - https://www.baileychinnery.com (https://www.baileychinnery.com)  Valda's Book, Fragile - https://amzn.to/373t8As (https://amzn.to/373t8As)  Connect with me at the View Finders web page where you can get my free eBook, 3 Steps to Better Photographs: http://www.grahamdargie.com/viewfinders (www.grahamdargie.com/viewfinders)  Connect with me at: http://www.youtube.com/5minutephotography (www.youtube.com/5minutephotography)  http://www.instagram.com/grahamdargie (www.instagram.com/grahamdargie)  http://www.facebook.com/grahamdargiephotography (www.facebook.com/grahamdargiephotography)  http://www.grahamdargie.com (www.grahamdargie.com)  Additional show links: Jay Maisel - https://www.jaymaisel.com (https://www.jaymaisel.com)  Charlie Waite - https://www.charliewaite.com (https://www.charliewaite.com)  Chris Friel - https://www.cfriel.com/home (https://www.cfriel.com/home)  Doug Chinnery - http://www.dougchinnery.com (http://www.dougchinnery.com)  Support this podcast

This latest episode is a landscape photography special, including an exclusive interview with Charlie Waite, the master of scenic shots and founder of Landscape Photographer of the Year! Charlie talks about his passion for shooting landscapes in the UK and beyond, his influences – including what he learnt from the great Ansel Adams – how to get more from your own camera and how to take more enjoyment from your photography, whatever your subject. Will, Roger and Kingsley also discuss shooting landscapes in all types of light, how using the right filters can help and what a good-quality tripod can bring to your scenic shots. To get in touch with any or all of the above, send an email to: podcast@photographynews.co.uk.

We’re back with a small ‘bonus episode’ featuring Charlie Waite. In this episode we discuss the origins of ‘Landscape Photographer of the Year’ (lpoty.co.uk) with Charlie. We reflect on how the competition has developed over the last 13 years, how it has positively impacted the lives of many photographers, and much more. We also get to quiz Charlie on some of the criticisms of competitions and get his thoughts on how the landscape genre has evolved over the last two decades and its position in the media world. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  Many thanks to Fotospeed for supporting the show and our media partner Landscape Photographer of the Year. We'll be back in 2 weeks with an episode recorded Live at South Manchester Camera Club, featuring Prof. Tim Allott. In the intro of this episode Sam mentions his new ‘MESOZOIC’ book, this is available via: http://www.samgregory-photography.com/mesozoic-book

In this episode Paul chats with landscape photographer & tutor Michael Pilkington. Michael is co-founder of the popular workshop company Aspect2i and particularly loves black & white and infrared photography. We dig into some of the techniques and tips for shooting infrared in a creative way and also discuss Michaels thought processes with printing and capturing images in the field. We'll be back in 2 weeks with Verity Milligan chatting with Sam about her work, success in social media, challenging stereotypes and pursuing your own creative path. Many thanks to Fotospeed.com for supporting the show, and our media partner LPOTY.COM (Landscape Photographer of the Year). - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  'Virtual' Exhibition News: Hidden Works | Charlie Waite at BoshamGallery.com Featuring an array of unseen work by Charlie Waite, this exhibition at Bosham Gallery celebrates his style and love of the natural world. You can check out more on the website including a video preview of the exhibition online. "Until the announcement of my Hidden Works exhibition I have deeply missed the almost mystical experience of black and white hand printing in my darkroom. Now however I have immersed myself once again, and it is very special because the whole process of interpreting the negative has always been sacred to me. With much sentiment I have revisited works I created some 40 years ago and joyfully looked back at the decades which were spent making silver gelatin prints in the darkroom. It is truly like coming home."  Charlie Waite, 2020"

The First Man Photography podcast is changing it's name to the Raw Room Photography Podcast. In this episode I explain the reasons for this and we also sit down for a conversation with the legend Charlie Waite, founder of Landscape Photographer of the Year and Light and Land. Join us on the tour - http://bit.ly/Lakes2020 Subscribe to the Raw Room - http://bit.ly/RawRoom Follow Adam (aka First Man Photography): YouTube - http://bit.ly/FirstManYouTube Instagram - http://bit.ly/InstaFirstMan FREE eBook - http://bit.ly/eBookFirstMan T-Sirts and Merch - http://bit.ly/FirstMan1Store Buy Prints - http://bit.ly/PrintsFirstMan

This episode features Mark Littlejohn, Charlie Waite, Ted Leeming, Morag Paterson and Tom Way in a Q&A session live with Sam. Hosted at the recent FotoFest Central event in Nottingham, this is a great chance to hear from multiple top photographers on one stage. We cover various topics including the importance of photography as a medium and how it's progressing, along with the photographers own approach to shooting and approaching locations. We also take a few questions from the live audience. We hope you enjoy this group chat and can take some inspiration from their words and advice. We'll be back in two weeks with the fantastic Karl Mortimer as our guest. The Togcast is hosted by Sam Gregory & Paul Sanders. We are ever grateful for the support we receive from WEX Photo Video & Fotospeed which keeps the show on the road. Check out www.TheTogcast.com for more info on the show.

This episode features Ben Brain, who was until very recently the editor of Digital Camera magazine. Ben has a long photographic back story which we get into during the show including his time at Art College, then working around the world as a pro shooter. This is a great chat with a photographer who has been active in many parts of photography. Ben now leads tours and workshops for Light & Land and is regularly called upon by bodies such as the Royal Photographic Society to act as a judge or mentor to upcoming photographers.  Also in this show, Sam and Paul reflect upon the 'Evolving Landscapes' exhibition that was recently held in London in which they both exhibited some work for Light & Land. We also look forward to our next show which will be a roundtable Q&A with Mark Littlejohn, Ted Leeming, Morag Paterson, Tom Way and Charlie Waite recorded recently at the Fotospeed FotoFest Central event. The Togcast is hosted by Sam Gregory and Paul Sanders - for more info check out TheTogcast.com. As ever we're very grateful to our supporters: WEX Photo Video & Fotospeed.

On this weeks show we've flipped the tables on our co-host Paul and HE is being interviewed by the legendary Charlie Waite. Charlie sat down with Paul for a recording to compliment the release of the August 'Digital Camera' magazine which Charlie was the guest editor on. The magazine features some of Charlie's work and locations, plus it has a 10 page feature on our very own Paul and here on the podcast we've got the full audio from that interview. Hopefully this is a nice way to get to know one of our hosts better with this in-depth interview. Paul talks about his motivations, some of his back-story as picture editor of The Times, his photographic fears and the power of creating solely for yourself.  We'll be back in a couple of weeks time with the editor of Digital Camera magazine Ben Brain. In the meantime please do keep in touch on social media and let us know if you have any events, exhibitions, book launches etc coming up and we'll share them with the listeners. The Togcast is hosted by Sam Gregory and Paul Sanders and is supported by the lovely people at WEX Photo Video and Fotospeed. Check out TheTogcast.com for more information and previous episodes.

We catch up with top professional photographer Jonathan Chritchley to celebrate our 40th episode in style. Jonathan is highly acclaimed for his signature style which features strong graphic elements and beautiful simplicity and minimalism. As well as shooting for top brands including Ralph Lauren, Vogue and Harrods he also runs a highly successful photographic tour company called 'Ocean Capture'. Paul chats with him about his motivations, his shooting style and the importance of good business acumen in today's climate. For more about Jonathan please visit http://www.jonathanchritchley.com Also in this bumper episode we catch up with Charlie Waite and talk to him about the upcoming 'Evolving Landscapes' exhibition at the Oxo Tower Gallery on London's South Bank. This exhibition is celebrating 25 years of Light & Land (his photographic tour company) and features work from a host of their tour leaders including our very own Sam and Paul. The exhibition runs from July 18th-22nd and entrance is free. Check out http://www.oxotower.co.uk/events/light-and-land/ for more info. As ever we thank you for listening to the show, we'll be back in two weeks with the landscape photographer Margaret Soraya. The Togcast is hosted by Sam Gregory (http://www.samgregory-photography.com) and Paul Sanders (http://www.paulsanders.biz). We're eternally grateful to WEX Photo Video and Fotospeed for supporting the show and making it all possible. Check out all our latest news via http://www.thetogcast.com  

On this episode we catch up with current 'Landscape Photographer of the Year' Benjamin Graham. Benjamin won last years competition with a subtle and intriguing image and Paul chats to him about the image itself, his shooting style, how its been since winning and much more including his photographic background. Benjamin is quite a character and it's great to get into the back story of his motivations. You can see more of his work at: www.benjamingraham.co.uk Also on this weeks show we feature 3 upcoming events that may be of interest to you all: The 'London Nights' exhibition at www.museumoflondon.org.uk feauring classic and contemporary images. The 'FotoFest Central' event on July 15th at Patchings Art Centre (www.fotofest.co.uk) featuring Charlie Waite, Mark Littlejohn, Leeming & Paterson and Tom Way. Finally we gave a shout out to Margaret Soraya (https://www.sorayaphoto.com) who has an exhibition on the Isle of Harris in June featuring her seascape images. Thanks as ever for listening to the show, and thanks to WEX Photo Video (www.wexphotovideo.com) and Fotospeed (www.fotospeed.co.uk) for supporting the show. We'll be back as usual in two weeks time with Irish photographer and gallery owner Norman McCloskey (https://www.normanmccloskey.com) The Togcast is hosted by Sam Gregory and Paul Sanders. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to stay up to date.

Charlie Waite is GoPro's User Experience Director. From an agency life to an in-house design director, Charlie explains what it takes to create a great product, talks about his background and what changed his perspective on how he designs products. Also, we talk about what companies can learn from GoPro and design better products. We talked about what is user experience, Google Home and Alexa, the future of user interface, how GoPro design products and how it motivates a creative culture. About Laroche: https://www.laroche.co/ ------- Laroche.fm is a podcast hosted by Eugeniu Esanu, the founder and creative director of Laroche.co, a design agency from Amsterdam. We are on a journey of learning from different experts and industry leaders about how they design great & valuable products and what do you need for a creative culture. ------- Music: https://soundcloud.com/itsnglmusic

Drew & Keiran are joined by Charlie Waite design experience director at GoPro, formerly Focus Lab talking about groceries, surfing and his work with GoPro designing software inside a hardware company.

'Don't give up, you've got to play the long game, you've got to plan things out and you've got to make it different to what has already appeared' - This is Keith's advice to anyone embarking on a big photography or book making project, and he should know, having worked on books for the well-known nature photographers Charlie Waite, David Lloyd, Leeming + Paterson, and Jonathan Chritchley. And it's not only books that Keith has produced: in a career spanning over 30 years he has worked for daily newspapers in Australia and the UK, edited the world's biggest weekly photo magazine – Amateur Photographer, launched and edited other titles including Outdoor Photography and most recently Wild Planet Photo Magazine, the world's first digital title devoted wholly to wildlife photography.

Join Sam & Paul for the last show of 2016 before our Xmas break. In the the intro we chat about Pauls recent travels, and thank the various listeners for getting in touch recently and all the positive feedback on the Charlie Waite interview. On this episode Paul caught up with photographer Baxter Bradford to discuss his work, his inspirations and how he has quietly gone about making a success of his photography business. We also mention a few Xmas deals from WexPhotographic.com who support the show. Do check out their store for all the latest camera news, offers and much more. If you'd like to see more of Baxter Bradford's work then please check him out on Twitter, Facebook and his site: www.baxterbradford.com We will be back on January 5th 2017 with out guest Bruce Percy (www.brucepercy.co.uk). In the meantime, have a great Xmas & New Year!

Join Sam & Paul for Episode 6 of The Togcast photography podcast. On this episode Paul has returned from his travels and we feature his interview with the legendary Charlie Waite. Recorded in New York, Paul and Charlie chat about photographic inspiration, keeping your work original and some of the ups and downs of photography. Charlie Waite is a world renowned photographer with a huge professional portfolio and is also the founder of the Landscape Photographer of the Year competition in the UK and the USA. He also founded the Light & Land tour company that runs photography workshops around the world in exciting locations with some of the leading photographers around. As usual we offer our thanks to Wex Photographic for their support of the show, they are the UK's no.1 supplier for all things camera and gear related, including new and used bodies and lenses, plus a plethora of accessories and equipment. Check out www.wexphotographic.com. From more info on Charlie Wait please visit www.charliewaite.com or catch up with him on Twitter, Facebook and through the Light & Land Workshops. Thanks again for listening, we'll be back in two weeks time with Baxter Bradford.

On this week s episode, we re joined by Bill Kenney. His unyielding passion for design began at a young age, but has been developed and honed over his decade in the industry. As a business owner, Bill has developed both the design acumen and business knowledge necessary for success. He s the co-founder and creative director of Focus Lab. Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By Discover why 201,344 website owners trust StudioPress, the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins. Launch your new site today! In this episode Brian Gardner, Lauren Mancke, and Bill Kenney discuss: Bill Kenney’s path as a creative Running a creative agency The importance of team Using Dribbble to create a creative following Repurposing content across platforms Complementing a service based business with products Finding your tribe Listen to StudioPress FM below ... Download MP3Subscribe by RSSSubscribe in iTunes The Show Notes Follow Bill Kenney on Twitter Follow Focus Lab, LLC on Twitter Follow Made by Sidecar on Twitter Visit Focus Lab’s Website Made by Sidecar Follow Focus Lab on Dribbble The Transcript Leveraging Social Media to Build a Creative Brand, with Bill Kenney Voiceover: Rainmaker.FM. StudioPress FM is designed to help creative entrepreneurs build the foundation of a powerful digital business. Tune in weekly as StudioPress founder Brian Gardner and VP of StudioPress Lauren Mancke share their expertise on web design, strategy, and building an online platform. Lauren Mancke: On this week’s episode, we are joined by Bill Kenney, the co-founder and creative director of Focus Lab to discuss leveraging social media to build a creative brand. Brian Gardner: Hey, everyone. Welcome to StudioPress FM. I am your host, Brian Gardner, and always joined by vice president of StudioPress, Lauren Mancke. Lauren Mancke: Welcome back, everyone. Thank you for joining us. We are starting a new series on talking to members of the design community. Brian Gardner: Today, we’re joined by Bill Kenney of Focus Lab. His unyielding passion for design began at a young age, but has developed, and he’s honed that in over the last decade in his industry. As a business owner, Bill has developed both the design acumen and business knowledge necessary for success. Like I said, he’s the co-founder of Focus Lab. He’s also the creative director. Bill, it’s a huge pleasure to have you on StudioPress FM. Bill Kenney: Thank you. I’m excited to be here and talk to you guys. Brian Gardner: Yeah, this’ll be good. Lauren and I are huge fans of you and what you guys do there, so it’s always fun to have people that we really look up to on the show. I’m going to get started here. I’m trying to think back. From what I remember, I’m pretty sure the first time I ever came across your work was on Dribbble. Rafal and I have always had a back-and-forth chat session where we show each other things that are cool and really neat design stuff. I’m pretty sure he sent me a link back to the day and said something to the effect of, “Check out this Bill Kenney guy. I think you’re going to like what he does.” That was probably three, four years ago maybe. Can’t believe it’s been that long, but I know it’s been a while. Here’s the thing. You got to love getting to interview people who you look up to. For me, that’s something for sure we’re doing here. I don’t know. It’s kind of crazy, a little bit humbling to talk to you. I know we’re good friends. We’ve hung out before down at Circles Conference and so on. So for you, it might not be a big thing, but for me, it sure is. Anyway, funny how things work out. Let’s talk about Bill. Who is Bill? How did he become the creative director of what I call, arguably, the best creative agency on the planet? Bill Kenney’s Path As a Creative Bill Kenney: So much buildup. I need to live up to this now. I appreciate that. Oh boy. Who is Bill? At what point would you like me to start? Brian Gardner: What was Bill doing when he was three that was creative, and how did that just ultimately go through school and into where you’re at right now? Bill Kenney: Oh boy. At three, I can remember … this is going to sound like I was prepared for this question. I was not, and that was my own fault. I can remember distinctly what I would now describe as the beginning of my creative endeavors, kind of like scratching my own itch but not knowing it. I would go to my grandmother’s house. She would always have colored construction paper. I think that was so much fun to me. I would cut out all these shapes. I would make animals out of them. I would layer it. I would cut out the green stuff first because that was the background. That was the skin. Then I’d cut out maybe yellow for the eyes. You cut that a little bit smaller so that you can still have green trim around the sides of it. You glue it on. I don’t really remember much from my young childhood, and that’s not because I did a lot of crazy things in high school and college. That’s just because my memory doesn’t go back that far, but I can still remember things like that. Honestly, if I had to pick where it began, I think I would say all the way back then. All kids play with coloring pencils, and they like to doodle and stuff. But I always was drawn to that more than anything. That just stayed true forever. That stayed true through high school, through college. I wouldn’t consider myself an academic by any means. It was always creative stuff that really struck the chord with me. Brian Gardner: At what point, though, do you think you acknowledged the fact, “I am a creative,” and understood what that meant and really thought for the first time maybe, “Hey, this is something I want to either pursue further in school or actually want to become when I grow up,” that kind of thing? Bill Kenney: Yeah, I think when it got real for me, that would have been college. I still really enjoyed art class even in high school and such, and was sending things away — as the school does, not on my own — to competitions and stuff. One of them got into this Air Force art show. I thought that that was really cool. That wasn’t a career at that point. I wasn’t even thinking career at that point in high school. I just wasn’t one of those types of high school students. But in college, when I learned after two years of a liberal arts degree that I didn’t want to do math, I didn’t want to do science, I didn’t want to do history, and didn’t want to do any of those other things, I went, “Wow, I can become an art major. That’d be pretty flipping awesome. I could draw all day. I’d love that. I could take printing classes. That would be awesome. I could paint.” In a way, it was a little bit of the easy way out, I think at that moment. Subliminally, I was drawn to that, so I followed the path I was supposed to follow. At that point, once I became an art major, school became awesome for me. I really enjoyed it, and I wanted to go to class. I wanted to go early. I wanted to stay late, all those types of things. That’s really when it opened up for me. That’s when it became real. Brian Gardner: I wish I would have had that experience in college. Bill Kenney: It was late in college, mind you. Again, I did liberal arts for a while, still trying to figure out, “What the heck am I going to do here?” When that changed, then I flipped the script. It was that much better. Lauren Mancke: I had that kind of experience in college, except I took all those classes that you want to take right away because I really wanted to take them, all my art classes. Then my last semester, I was left with all the terrible, boring stuff. Brian Gardner: Like the black jelly beans, right? Bill Kenney: With my degree I went to University of Tampa in Florida. It’s not a big school in general. The art program is not big as well, but thank goodness, they had one. Who knows what I would have gotten into because I don’t know that I would have been just transferring around. I don’t know that it was that clear to me that, that was my calling. To get your BFA — which is a Bachelor of Fine Arts, which is what my degree is — you had to at least pass college algebra, and math was always my sticking point. I kind of fumbled along through all the other classes. I wanted to keep my GPA high, and that one was the one that was always going to derail me. So you wait till that last day before you can get a W, you can withdraw, and it doesn’t work against you. It’s very clear that there’s nothing you’re going to be able to do to bring that grade for the rest of the quarter, the semester. I actually botched that one all the way until my final semester of school. Then it was very clear to me, like, “Okay, here it is. I need to take it. My GPA is skyrocketing now because of all these art classes. I’m really excelling. I can’t let this one class bring it down.” I just really buckled down, and I ended up — this is not to pat myself on my back — getting an A in college Algebra 101. Brian Gardner: Outstanding. Bill Kenney: Yeah, is not outstanding by any means, but for me, for the class that I had always dodged and ducked, I was like, “I will conquer you.” I did save that one until the absolute end, and I won, thankfully. Brian Gardner: Yep, good job. Lauren Mancke: Let’s talk about Focus Lab for a bit. As you know, I used to run my own creative agency, so I bet we can relate a little bit on what you’re doing and how things are going. It’s been fun to watch you guys evolve over the years through social media, especially on Dribbble, which we mentioned, and we’ll talk about a little bit more. But fill us in. What’s the status of the company these days? Running a Creative Agency Bill Kenney: Focus Lab is going great. It’s the normal ups and downs of any business. It’s not always sunshine every day. We have the best team that we’ve ever had. We are the biggest we’ve ever been. Revenue is the highest it’s ever been. All these simple metrics, if you want to look at those, we’re doing really great. I couldn’t be happier with what we’ve been able to achieve, honestly, in the past six years now. I don’t know that I ever thought that we would get this far, honestly. We started in a little tiny town, Savannah, Georgia. Honestly, the only reason people probably know about it, that it gets its name, is just the big tourism and the history of it all, but it is a small town with not much going on besides the history. That’s really what roots it and gives it its name. We started this little design development shop there with aspirations to do great things, but I don’t know that six years ago I could have told you, “Hey, we’ll be 16 people, and we’ll be doing this. We’ll be doing that,” just all the other things that come with it. I think I would have been shocked, honestly, so I couldn’t be happier with where we are. We’ve always kept a clear mind on the idea that we want to grow slowly. Growth is not the long-term goal. A success for us is not determined by, “Oh, we’ve reached 40 team members, and we make this much money.” That’s not success for us. I would say that we’ve already succeeded, and we just want to continue to build on that, which is having the team that we’ve built, honestly. Being around the people that we get to be around, working with the clients that we get to work with, and the way of life and culture that we’ve created — that’s success for us. We’re in a wonderful spot, and it’s just constantly learning, iterating, and growing on top of that. Brian Gardner: That’s really good to hear and very encouraging. Lauren Mancke: Okay, we got to take a quick break. Did you know all StudioPress themes are powered by the Genesis Framework? Genesis empowers you to quickly and easily build incredible websites with WordPress. Brian Gardner: Want to know why nearly 200,000 folks are using Genesis to power their websites? Here’s why. Lauren Mancke: Here’s a couple of the features Genesis has — search engine optimization, responsive HTML5 designs, unlimited everything, air-tight security, instant updates. Brian Gardner: On top of that — I’m going to keep going — it’s customizable and fast. We have multiple widget and layout options, and a community of developers you can trust. If you want a custom design, we have a list of talented, reliable designers who will knock one out of the park for you. For more … Lauren Mancke: I was going to just jump in. Brian Gardner: You’re so good. Lauren Mancke: I was just going to ad-lib that ending. Brian Gardner: Lauren, tell them where to go. Lauren Mancke: Go to StudioPress.com to get Genesis today. Brian Gardner: All right. Back to Bill. One thing I’ve seen from the outside is that people are important to you and Focus Lab as a whole. Your team matters to you. It’s clear to me that you value camaraderie in the workplace. You guys have Focus Lab retreats. You’re always sharing each other’s work on social media, attending conferences together, and whatnot. In fact, Lauren and I got to witness this team thing firsthand last year when we saw you guys down at Circles Conference in Texas. How accurate is this diagnosis that Focus Lab and the ethos in which you operate is really built around a team? The Importance of Team Bill Kenney: Team is 100 percent number one. To be fair, even to myself and the recognition that I get when people see, “Oh, he has a huge following on Dribbble.” They see these things, and that’s not just because of me. We all benefit from each other. We’re all growing. Even that metric, which is Dribbble following, I really have a good amount of that because of the team, because of the work that we all do. It’s not like I turn out all this stuff myself, and I don’t grow by myself. People don’t grow in a chamber. I’m surrounded by all these great people, and I grow in other ways, personally and all that, from the team. We all recognize that, so team is hugely important to us at Focus Lab. It’s very clear internally, and it’s nice to hear that it’s clear externally. Lauren Mancke: I think running a creative agency is really interesting. I know as creative director you have to wear many different hats. You get to take part in so many different aspects of the company, especially when you are the one producing creative work as well as running the business as an owner. My question is, what is your favorite part of running a creative agency? I know it doesn’t always come without challenges, but as I’ve had my fair share to deal with, I know. What is the most rewarding part of your day or week, and what makes you wake up each morning and say, “I love what I do”? Bill Kenney: Yeah, I guess that changes year to year. As you grow a business, early on what excites you most is new projects, bigger clients, revenue increases, and all those things early on in business. That is still all so new to you, and you’re trying to go from zero to something. That could be your biggest reward metric. At this point, it’s back to team. Team wins and team success for me is the most rewarding, so no longer am I most excited about, “Wow, I got such a great response from a client on a deliverable I sent or something I’ve posted online has been received really well.” I get my biggest reward — and this is going to sound a little bit weird — in a way that parents would feel happier for their kids when they’re playing sports if they won a championship, their kid hits a home run, or whatever it is, that same level of proud moment, I get that. That’s what I want now. That is when I’m at my happiest. I love team member success and when they get put up on the pedestal, if you will. A lot of what I do is to lift them up. I’m sharing all of our work through social media. I’m speaking about them. I’m shining light on them and making sure that clients know that this is not about me. Just because you happen to maybe find us or me on Dribbble first, we’re a team. That’s where my happiness comes from at this point and most of my joy. Brian Gardner: Yeah, I can certainly relate to that. On some levels, and it kind of comes and goes a little bit, people recognize me as the face of StudioPress because I founded it back in the day. Just yesterday, I had a Tweet exchange with somebody who made a comment about the newsletter we sent out, where we had sent him a bunch of traffic. He said, “Well, I knew Brian Gardner had something to do with it.” I kind of wrote back, and I was like, “Yeah, the old Brian would have said, ‘Yup. That’s right. It was exactly me,'” but sort of like what you were just talking about, I wrote him back. I said, “You know, no, it’s not me. It’s StudioPress as a whole,” because Lauren’s there. We’ve got an entire team from a support standpoint, from a development standpoint, a design standpoint, QA, all of that stuff. As you know, as you grow from one person to small company to bigger company with lots of customers and so forth, it does become so much more than just the person. I almost look for opportunities like that Tweet where I can kind of back myself out of it and say, like you said, just put the emphasis on the team. At this point, I sometimes feel the team does a better job at doing all of this than I do personally. Bill Kenney: Exactly right. Yeah, that’s 100 percent. We’re in the same exact boat. We’d have past clients that say, “I don’t want to work with anybody else but you.” I think they’re persuaded by what they see, so that’s like the social following is a little bit of a double-edged sword in that regard. But now, that is not the case. Thankfully now, [inaudible 00:16:16] works to make sure that that was not the case. No one can ever come in and just say, “I want to work with you because I think you’re the best.” That’s baloney. The team at this point is so strong. They are stronger than me in a lot of things, if not most things at this point. We’re constantly having that conversation internally. They know that. We all speak that way — to the point where, even when deliverables are sent out, even if only I, or Summer, or Alex worked on it that week, the signature at the bottom of Basecamp is still ‘Bill and the Focus Lab team’ or ‘Alex and the Focus Lab team.’ It’s pulling in that team all the time. That is where we get our strength. Regardless of whether I did 90 percent of the lifting in a given week or 10, it’s still the formula is team. Brian Gardner: I think Dribbble, and that’s where this next question is going, they really did us all kind of a service in this regard by opening up the idea of teams on that social media platform where you could take individual accounts and put that shot up underneath the team. When I look at the home page of Dribbble, and it’s always filled with Focus Lab things, I see Focus Lab posted thumbnails and not specifically from Bill Kenney. Bill Kenney: Yup. Brian Gardner: Yeah, Dribbble. That’s the big thing that especially with you guys, you personally have 33,000 followers, have posted over 1,200 shots, and each one of them, no doubt, makes its way to that front page. You’ve got that following, and people just always love your stuff. What’s the deal? How do you own them in the sense of … maybe it was just you guys got started early on, on top of just always creating awesome stuff. What’s the back story to Dribbble? More so than probably any other person or group of people that I know through the design community, Dribbble is really your sweet spot. I know that it drives a ton of leads — sometimes good, sometimes bad — but that’s where a lot of your stuff comes through, right? Using Dribbble to Create a Creative Following Bill Kenney: Yeah. Dribbble kind of broke us through the ice, if you will. Again, back to Savannah, this is not a knock to Savannah. Savannah’s a great city. Our headquarters are still there. Twelve of the team members live there, but it is not a thriving, West Coast, tech boom city, you know what I mean? The marketplace for growth and work for a design agency is going to be limited. What Dribbble allowed us to do was quickly bust into a world market instead of just a little local market. We relate a huge amount of our success to Dribbble, just for what it did. It was very clear, even if you look at the numbers year over year, from the year before we were on Dribbble, and then you look at revenue numbers the year after Dribbble. You’re talking about a spike that you could have never guessed at. To be fair, it may have been the following year because it takes you time to grow the following, to get the recognition, to drive those numbers up. But we can find that data to see like, “Wow, this is huge for us. Okay, let’s continue putting energy and muscle into this.” Basically we’ve never stopped. The game has stayed the same. To speak to the teams thing, the teams thing was a long time coming. I’m not an early bird to Dribbble, although I was in there earlier maybe than some, but not the earliest, earliest. I was in there, and we were building a following before team accounts existed. I remember that whole transition. Basically what happened is, we were having internal conversations about, “Okay, well, I’m posting stuff, but it would be nice to have a team feed,” so we talked about it internally, tried to figure it out how to hack the system in a way and say, “Look, okay, if we tag them all Focus Lab, people can search by tag. Therefore, we get a URL by tag. Okay, we can use that URL as the thing that we link to. Now we have a hacked team page in a way.” Then we would put that at the bottom of every shot, “Made with the Focus Lab team.” That was a link basically to just the tag that would show all of our shots. I’m not saying that we started this, but we were early in that game of people doing that, if not the first. I don’t know. Then a lot of people started to see like, “Oh, that works, and that works well,” so then a variety of people were doing that. Then eventually the teams accounts came around, which was nice. At that point, we had been doing it so long. It was like, “Oh, this is refreshing actually to have this now and not have to do it the other way.” That was a great addition, and Dribbble’s been doing great lately with all their new updates and stuff. Lauren Mancke: Yeah, it was really cool to see the team thing. My company, Northbound, got invited to do a beta test of the team aspect by Dan and Rich, and it was fun to be one of the first teams on there. Bill Kenney: Yeah, we were happy when that finally opened, opened up. We knew it was out there. We actually knew that people were testing it. We’re like, “Okay, we’re just waiting for this door to open,” because we’ve obviously been ready. We got this link thing here, and we’re faking teams, like a team account. Brian Gardner: Did you have to go back and update all those links, though, when the team thing came out? Bill Kenney: You know, that’s a good question. We put up so much content on Dribbble that any time you have to backtrack and change anything, that is so much work. I don’t know if we did. I kind of feel like we did, or maybe we didn’t. Again, we have so much volume that we’re going to push all that content so far back and down that it doesn’t really matter. Brian Gardner: Yeah, that’s true. Bill Kenney: It’ll just follow the new structure. Brian Gardner: All right, so you guys started out with Dribbble. It’s obviously done very well for you, but over the last year or two, I’ve seen you guys venture out into other social media platforms in what I think is a deliberate play at leveraging those as well. I’ve seen you guys do stuff more so on Twitter than you have in the past, but also you’ve made your way into Facebook and even have written some things and published them over on Medium. Now, you and I have had some conversations about content strategy. This led up to the whole Sidecar deal, so I had a little bit of inside information there. But how has that been going for you? I know that at Copyblogger and Rainmaker Digital as a company, we talk a lot about not digital sharecropping and investing your assets and resources in places that could potentially go down. Let’s just say Dribbble closed the doors and completely vanished. Your efforts, especially like on Sidecar with the educational pieces and whatnot, how has that piece of strategy gone since you guys started implementing that? Repurposing Content Across Platforms Bill Kenney: Yeah, that’s a great question. That’s funny you talk about Dribbble as the example because that’s real. If we think about that right now, what would happen if Dribbble was wiped off the face of the earth, that would be not great for us in some ways. It’s not as if we’d lose all that content. We still have it all. We still created it all. But the exposure, the eyeballs, the following, all of that stuff disappears, and then we have to populate it somewhere else and build all that back up — which is why when I talked to Dan three weeks ago in my podcast with him, I told him, “Don’t mess it up, Dan. We got a good thing going.” Yeah, we’re aware of that to the point we’re hyper-aware. To be clear, so Focus Lab, we have what we call ‘Quarterlies.’ What that means is we all get together as a team onsite for an entire week each quarter, hence the name, and we don’t work on any client work. We just work on internal projects. Each one of those has a focus. In the one that was Focus Lab specific focused, which was our site and how we’re marketing ourselves, if you will, we talked about what are the new platforms, like what’s the new frontier look like for us. Dribbble is basically stay the course, if not get more aggressive. You can always post more. The new frontiers would be basically Twitter, picking up volume there. We were already doing that, so that’s not really new. Medium would be a big new one. We don’t post a ton there yet, and when and if we do, and we will, that content will still come out first on our own platforms. So that content, if you will, to get back to the question, it is safe. It’s not like it would just disappear, but we would post it again basically through a channel like Medium for the added exposure. I’ve already seen that work personally when I took a couple of posts that I wrote for Sidecar that got picked up, 600 recommends, and just so much traffic that they still get the traffic, that it is just so fruitful to post out there. We learned that because Dribbble’s the perfect example. It is the example of we can post whatever we want on our own website, but that doesn’t do us any good. We need to basically go where the people are. Like you read in a lot of these books, you got to go where the people are, and then bring them back to what you want to bring them back to. Instagram has been another one. There’s been a very intentional plan for Instagram this year. We’ve gone from 1,000 followers to, I don’t know, today I think there’s like 16,000 or something. The team that focused on it, that’s been working on the Instagram account specifically, has done an amazing job with that. That will be more of a peer-facing platform, though. I don’t expect that really to drive a lot of work. We’re talking about that. We’re making plans in and around that, but Dribbble still carries the weight. We’re on Behance. Behance is a little bit of a different beast. It’s a lot of eyeballs, but it’s not the same as Dribbble. It doesn’t really drive work. Brian Gardner: Really, what you’re talking about is producing original content, putting it out on your own site, and then using some of these other social media outlets, kind of like in a syndication play, which is what Medium’s really known for, which is getting something that’s out there. I think Medium itself has even embraced the fact that that’s how they know they’re being used. They’ve allowed for canonical tags to go back to the original source and whatnot. That’s where the people are. You can take the awesome work that you’ve done originally, put it out where the people are, and then just drive them back to your site. It works almost in a symbiotic relationship there as well. Bill Kenney: For sure. We are organically creating so much content at Focus Lab that … you hate to use the word ‘repurpose’ because it sounds like we’re just spamming everything, but when you think about like a Dribbble shot, we can use that other places. That can then become an Instagram shot. It’s not as if we have to create original content every day for every platform. We have so much artwork that we’re creating in a weekly basis, and then Alicja capturing it, us screenshotting stuff, us building presentations for clients, we’re basically already creating all this content. Then it’s up to us to decide when, how, and where we want to post it. We still have it all. It’s still ours. Brian Gardner: Speaking of the content, and we’ve alluded to this thing called Sidecar, or Made by Sidecar a couple of times. Explain. Lauren Mancke: I think what Brian is trying to say is, what is Made by Sidecar? Why did you guys create it? I know we talked a little bit at Circles Conference last year, which was a few months after it launched, but can you elaborate on the mission of Made by Sidecar? Has the focus of it changed at all since you first launched? Complementing a Service-Based Business with Products Bill Kenney: Great question. There’s two reasons here. There’s a business aspect, and then there’s also the bigger mission. Running a creative agency and a services-based company, you are reliant on client work. That can be taxing year over year over year. You are totally at the hands of, “Did we get leads, or did we not get leads? Do we need to go out and drum more up?” whatever that looks like for a company. For us, we are blessed with the fact that we have a platform like Dribbble, and it drives a bunch through. It’s a lot more of just sifting through what’s coming through, but you’re still relying on that to live. That’s your revenue stream. We want to create a variety of revenue streams for Focus Lab. Sidecar is an easy first step to that, but the bigger mission is not really about us and just making money. It is very much about giving back to the design community and building a community within Sidecar, a tribe if you will, that does a couple of things. On one angle of Sidecar, we’re saying, “Here are the things we build for our clients that take us a ton of time, and our clients pay us a lot of money for. We can actually modify this, create it, and make it a template for you, and we can charge you X, which is nothing compared to the time and energy that we’ve put into it over the years to say that this works for us. Here’s your template.” Yes, $56 or $76 might be a lot of money in a template world for a younger designer out there looking for things. How much are they gaining? How much time and experience are they gaining from that one deliverable that they can now reformat and use for their own client work? That’s the simple, high level, what we’re putting in there and what we’re selling, whether it be photography icon sets, all that stuff. Really, the bigger greater mission for Sidecar, which will take years to play out, and it is in motion, which is the, how do we share knowledge? How do we teach? How does the community come in and help each other on a daily basis? We can build this really tight network of people that are willing to share information with each other, that are willing to encourage each other, that are happy to lift each other up, and do all of these things within the Sidecar tribe, if you will. The goal is to build a tribe there that is that close, that has a variety of skillsets, perspectives on life, and all of these things. Right now, we have our Slack channel, which is our private Slack channel, that we invite people to. We’re starting to build up that tribe behind the scenes, if you will, that doesn’t exist on the site. Right now on the site, we sell the products, and then we do all this free writing basically. We’re putting all this content in the journal of all the things that we know to be true, client experiences, and this is how we do this, this is how we do that. That’s our form of giving back right now, but really we want to blow those doors open and make it more of this community-driven, we’re all here for the greater good of design, if you will, to educate, to inform, to make us all better. That’s basically seeping through from Focus Lab. That’s how we interact with each other. We all want to grow. Even today at lunch, one of our team members gave a lunch and learn on one of the books she read. It has nothing to do with design. It has to do with conversations and how to get through. The name of the book is Crucial Conversations. Just that type of stuff, doesn’t have to be design-specific. I guess what I’m saying is Sidecar is now the outlet to do all of those things. Focus Lab still has to be what it is, which is a design agency. We can’t do all of the things that Sidecar will be able to do, so we’ve basically opened that up so that we can do that with Sidecar. I think that answers your question. I said a lot there. Brian Gardner: Yeah, it’s great stuff. The way I see it is that Focus Lab is the creative agency that drives the revenue. Social media is the outlet in which you do things like build authority, get leads, and so on, but Sidecar seems to be that middle piece, which may have been lacking up until it was created, where you can take some of the stuff that, as you say, learn and have figured out through your experiences at Focus Lab. Sidecar is kind of the distribution channel for sending that out to social media. Most of the stuff that you guys do on social media, that’s not necessarily just visual posting pictures, but more like the content side of it is actually through Sidecar and these, what you call, free writings, lessons, or tutorials where you’re really trying to help teach people. Not necessarily in a way that you hope that they come back and become clients, but just equip them as being tribe members of Focus Lab as a whole and all that. Bill Kenney: Yeah. Focus Lab is very much the client-facing. We have this give back part of who we are, all of us in the team, like in our DNA, but we can’t be so peer-facing as a design agency. We have to be appealing to the clients, so there’s a little bit of a conundrum there when you’re like, “We’re writing for the Focus Lab blog, but really it’s purely peer-facing.” It’s a little bit silly. As your company continues to grow, the company has a focus, and it’s driven by what it’s trying to achieve. Sidecar now becomes the peer outlet. In the Slack room, I’m in there interacting with all these people, and they’re saying, “Hey, can I call you up and just ask you this question about what to do?” Now they have direct access to us and to the team, which is awesome, because we want to be able to do that, but Focus Lab can’t function that way. Sidecar opens that door. Lauren Mancke: Fun question. If you had to pick one, just one social media platform, to build a creative business around, what would it be, and why? Bill’s Favorite Social Media Platform Is Bill Kenney: Well, I think the entire world knows what my answer is going to be to that. Brian Gardner: Okay, you can’t answer Dribbble. Bill Kenney: Oh okay, all right. We’ll take that out of it then [00:33:48]. Brian Gardner: This is not you as Bill. This is you, like what advice would you give to somebody who’s starting up? Aside from your own plot of land, what would be the most fruitful opportunity for someone to help spread their own word? Bill Kenney: I don’t know how it could be something else, honestly, and here’s why. I can say Twitter. That’s not a niche demographic there, so you’re going to have to fight your way through crowds, which is fine. I think you still want to be on there as well. You want to play amongst the different fields, but Dribbble gives you such a unique opportunity to the fact that it’s super-low cost. You have no price barrier coming in as a younger creative or someone that’s looking to start an agency. You have immediate exposure to both huge players and small players, people that you’re going to be immediately able to interact with on a peer level to say like, “Okay, I feel equal to you. You will interact with me. I don’t know if I can go interact with that person yet. Maybe I feel too shy. Maybe they’d be totally chill,” like I am, and I’ll talk to anybody. It doesn’t matter, but you don’t see that when you first come in. It couldn’t be anything else. I guess here’s the other thing. I am a little bit biased, and that’s fair. I can recognize that. You could do really well on other platforms, like Instagram proves itself really well for type designers. You see a lot of people get really far in type on that, and they actually get client leads and stuff. It’s just a little bit harder for me to speak to because that’s not been our path. Therefore, I don’t know that I could give that advice, but I guess if I knew if they were in a specific realm, I could point them in a different direction. As an overall creative, and if they wanted to follow a similar path as us, I paved the way. Basically just do what we did. We’re not magic makers. I didn’t come in with some secret sauce. I didn’t start with a ton of money and was able to get ahead and all these other things. We just got in and got our hands dirty, and Dribbble is the platform to do it. I do think that some people get ahead on Behance. I have a massive following on Behance. I have a couple hundred thousand followers on Behance, significantly larger than I have on Dribbble. I can tell you that it doesn’t even touch the return as far as revenue, and it doesn’t touch the connections I make on a peer level from all walks of life, junior designer all the way through to people that I would look up to and respect. I could try to break away from Dribbble and say like, “Okay, let me try to think of something else.” I think that would be bad information. I tell everybody, “As a younger creative, just get on Dribbble. Put some energy into it and make it work,” because we did, and I know it works. Brian Gardner: You know what, though? That’s kind of an unfair question, though, now that I think about it. We used the word ‘creative.’ We didn’t ask you specifically, what would you tell a designer, right? Because a creative is more than just a designer. It’s a guy who’s a photographer. He’s a videographer or a writer, and in that case, Medium is a much better place for a writer to go. Bill Kenney: Right. Brian Gardner: Backing up and letting you take the easy route with Dribbble, for sure, as a designer, that’s absolutely the place. I wouldn’t have even asked you to say something other than Dribbble just to answer the question because, yeah, designers need to go to Dribbble. If you’re another type of creative, obviously there’s different types of outlets like that that are probably better suited for you. Let’s not see a copywriter try to use Dribbble to expand their platform. Finding Your Tribe Bill Kenney: Yeah, for sure. When I am posed with that question, which is from anybody, “How should I get out there?” and even if we’re thinking about new angles or new things that we want to release, new products, or whatever, it’s still following the same model, which is go find where your tribe is basically. Focus Lab’s tribe just happened to be on Dribbble. It continues to be there for now. But depending on what industry you’re in, you’re basically going to go out and find your tribe, hang out amongst them, make yourself a name within that group, and then bring that tribe back to where you need them to come back to — whether it’s your personal site, whether it’s a book you’re releasing, or whatever. Yeah, you want to go out there and find your tribe, so whether that be Dribbble, Medium, whatever photography site, community. It’s just about the community. You got to find your own community. Brian Gardner: Yeah, let’s talk about that. Alicja, who works with you guys a lot, is a photographer. Let’s just use an example. Ironically, I think you guys did their logo design, the photography site that just recently you guys launched a design for. It’s sort of the photography version of Dribbble, right? Bill Kenney: Yes and no. To be clear, yes, we did do the branding work for 500px. They’re an amazing client, such a great team, and they are a really large community. It is interesting, though. I don’t have much experience on that platform in the sense of how we use Dribbble, so I don’t know if each community, if the result is the same. I don’t know that there are Hire Me buttons, CTAs, and stuff that really help to drive that type of action that come from Dribbble. But yes, I would always tell people in other industries to at least do what you can to find your Dribbble. I’ve said that many times to many people in different industries, even to developers. “I don’t know where it is. I don’t know what to tell you, but you need to find your Dribbble. You need to find your version of what I did.” That’s the easy first step as far as I’m concerned. All it takes is time and energy. If you don’t have time and energy, you obviously don’t care enough about whatever you’re trying to start or what you’re trying to accomplish. For every industry, it’s going to be different. I think that design is one that Dribbble specifically just worked out great. I don’t know that there is one for every industry. I think that’s really tough for other industries to figure out. Like, “Oh, I don’t know where the tribe is,” and there could be other huge barriers even if you figure out where it is. How the hell do you get into it, and how do you interact? Brian Gardner: It always seems like an opportunity, if those don’t exist for certain media, to actually be the person like … is it Dan Cederholm? He’s the one who did Dribbble, right? He’s got his co-founder, Rich? Bill Kenney: Yeah, but I think Dan seems to get the crown the most. I don’t know if that’s just because he has the most exposure. He’s actually on Dribbble with the big following up on the first page. But yes, it’s both of them. Brian Gardner: My point, though, is that even if you’re a creative, and we do this with our software at our company a lot, if it’s not out there and we need it, we build it. To the really, really savvy entrepreneur who’s a creative, if that medium or that Dribbble doesn’t exist within their niche, that’s an opportunity. It’s just an opportunity to go try to create that thing, be the next Dribbble founder or the next whatever founder. Bill Kenney: Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that 100 percent. If you’re a developer and you say, “I wish there was a …” Well, I think there have been some small attempts, but yes, I agree 100 percent. If you remember Forrst, Forrst was before Dribbble, right around the same time, but that was a play to designers and developers. You could actually post code and stuff on there. That was a little bit earlier. I don’t know that people were searching around and hiring as much as they are now from a client perspective. The community was smaller, just because that was a while ago, just like Dribbble’s community was smaller, but there seemed to be other kind of platforms that poke around, but yeah, if you had the opportunity to create one in whatever your space is, it works. That’s the only thing I can ever say to the path we’ve taken is it works. I don’t think I did anything magical. I think I set a course, and I said, “This is what I’m going to achieve, and I’m going to achieve that by doing A, B, and C.” I did A, B, and C, and it worked out. Everybody’s path is different, but it wasn’t rocket science, I can tell you that. Look, it took me until the end of my college career to get the college algebra thing crossed off. Lauren Mancke: Speaking of that, who are some of your heroes or people that you look up to, respect, and say, “I wish I could do X like X”? Who Bill Looks Up To Bill Kenney: Oh, that’s a great question. My answer is not going to contain names I would have read about in art school. The reason is simple. It’s not because I don’t respect what they’ve done and basically the foundation that they laid for design and art in general, and the history of the world, if you will. When I was a sponge and I was coming into the who am I looking up to when I was fresh into, deeper into the design world, if you will, it would have been all of a sudden the bigger names that I would have seen on Dribbble. I hate to go back to Dribbble, but that is such a big part of my evolution over the past six years. When I think about the people that I look up to or that I respect, those are the people I’ve been around the most and have seen the most volume from, week over week. They would just pop out in my mind to be the people that I would look up to. I can tell you typically what I look up to most, whether it be a big name or a small name, would be people that do things that I don’t do or that I can’t do. I love it when I see really great motion work come out of the variety of people that do motion work now. Motion’s really blowing up. When I see that stuff, and we have now a motion designer on our team, Will Kesling. He is awesome. That’s the stuff when you want to get down on your hands and knees and just say, “I am not worthy.” It’s like when I look at people that do the things that don’t cross my plate typically, which are going to be just amazing typography. I just started following these two girls on Dribbble. They do really awesome felt fabric figurines. It’s so obscure. I would never even known that I would have found that. I was just kind of trolling around on Dribbble, not to say that I’m a troll. I just found these accounts. I’m like, “Wow, people make little people, but purely out of felt.” They make little mini Pepsi cans, but the scale of it is like a fingertip. It’s all felt. That’s the stuff. That’s what inspires me. I’m like, “Holy crap. That is amazing. What is that thing?” To say that I look up to somebody, and this is in the most humble voice ever, in the branding space or even a web space, there are people that I’m like, “Wow, you do really great work, and I respect you,” but that’s not really what kind of tickles my feathers, if you will. It’s when I see the really funky stuff that’s completely unexpected. It seems like type illustration, motion work, new mediums, three-dimensional stuff, and blending platforms doing three-dimensional stuff with flat stuff and motion — all that stuff paired together. It’s crazy to me, and that’s what I really love. I think what you were looking for is for me to name drop somebody, but I haven’t done that yet [00:45:09]. Brian Gardner: Give me two or three names. Come on, two or three designers that you want to emulate, not copy, but you know what I mean? A lot of these people are on a much higher pedestal on my level than they are your level. For you, these might be peers, but I want to know two or three people that you say, “Man, that guy or that gal has just killed it in design.” Bill Kenney: Oh, man, that’s so tough. I’m such a people pleaser. It’s like, “Oh, I got to make sure I name the right people.” Let me think about the people that I know that constantly do great work, and let me also make sure that it’s clear that I would consider these people very good people, too. That is important to who we are and who I am. I would say Kerem is somebody that I’ve looked up to for a long time. Kerem can be found on Dribbble. He’s out of San Francisco as well. He’s West Coast at least. Kerem’s last name is Suer, I believe. He does really, really solid work, really great person. He was one when I first started on Dribbble, you’d look up and you’d go like, “Oh my God, I can never touch that level.” Then you finally get to meet them in person, and you have grown as well. Now they’re aware of you, and you’re interacting on a peer level. You’re like, “Wow, this is amazing.” I would definitely say that Kerem is one. You know who jumps out lately who’s totally crushing stuff is Bethany Heck. She just moved on from the IBM team, or I’m sorry, sorry, the Microsoft team. She’s moving on to her new position. I actually forget where it is, but the type stuff that she’s putting out. She just did this thing with Fonts.com when she put out all these baseball card posters using all this new type that they have for sale. That’s the kind of stuff. I saw that poster. I was like, “OMG! I need to have that. That’s amazing.” I would say that she is somebody that I’d look up to, for sure, to this day. Right now when I look at her stuff, I’m like, “Wow, this is really great.” That covers two platforms. That covers basically UI because Kerem’s more of a UI product guy. She does a lot, but a lot of type. What other funk do you want? I could throw out the cliché names, like Draplin. Draplin’s awesome. I love hearing him talk. He does rad work, but like everybody says Draplin. I don’t need to say Draplin. Who else? Who is on your list, Brian? I’m curious to know who you [crosstalk 00:47:38]. Brian Gardner: Well, there was one person, and I don’t know, I kind of assumed that maybe it’s just too obvious. I know that you not saying him isn’t in any way a form of disrespect. Maybe you just didn’t want to say it, but I was thinking GoPro. Bill Kenney: Were you thinking Charlie Waite? Brian Gardner: I was thinking Charlie Waite. Bill Kenney: Mr. Charlie Waite. Let’s talk about Charlie Waite for a minute. Charlie Waite will love this. He listens to all my stuff. Right, Charlie? You’re going to listen to this. Charlie Waite is a great person. That’s easy. You can say that. You can call me biased, but that is the truth. Brian Gardner: And full disclosure, Charlie used to work at Focus Lab. Let’s put that out there, so everyone who’s listening knows that this is all [crosstalk 00:48:17]. Bill Kenney: Right, which is why I’m biased. Yes, Charlie Waite, so Charlie Waite worked at Focus Lab for three years. You can call him number three in command. You have me, my business partner Erik Reagan, and then Charlie Waite was next in line. Charlie is an amazing, well-rounded designer. He’s amazing in two ways. I’m glad you put me on to Charlie because this is just good design discussion. We have this talk now all the time with like, “Should designers be able to code and design it all?” and all of a sudden, it’s like we’re supposed to be everything. Charlie, from a design perspective, taking code out, but from a design perspective, was extremely well-rounded. Projects come in, and they need all this illustration work. Charlie just whips it up. I’m like, “Wow, sh*t, I didn’t think you’d be able to do that much that good that fast. Okay.” UI work, he did branding projects. The well-roundedness of Charlie, and to be really strong basically when I worked with Charlie and Charlie got a project, and although I was his boss — we don’t even like to use that word — I had no fear. I didn’t even feel like I had to check in. Charlie just knocked stuff out. Charlie now works at GoPro, and he leads design over there. I actually just had dinner with Charlie and his wife in the city this weekend because they were on the East Coast. They came in. It was the first time I had actually seen him in a year since Circles, like we were just talking about. Such a good time to see him. Me and Charlie Waite are still the greatest of friends. Leaving a company is always tricky in any regard, especially when there’s friendship, too. Brian Gardner: You understood, though. You sent him off well because I know that he’s always been sort of a California, West Coast boy. You really embraced that, understood that, and knew that he was growing into a bigger position. That’s kind of important, though, right? Letting Your Staff Grow into Bigger Positions Even When It’s Not with Your Company Bill Kenney: Absolutely. Yes. That is important to us at Focus Lab in general. It’s easier said than done, but Charlie spent an amazing three years with us. He helped us achieve a lot as well. When it was time for him to leave it wasn’t as if he just said, “Oh, hey, I got this new gig. Thanks for helping my exposure grow on Dribbble, and I’m out of here. Good luck.” He hit me up all along the way as people … here’s the interesting dynamic that happens at Focus Lab. People join Focus Lab, they’re strong. I can see that they’re strong. They’re not at the level where all of a sudden Apple’s going to go out and hire them because their portfolio is not there yet. It’s not been proven to those types of companies. I can see they’re great people. They come into Focus Lab, they turn into even better people, not because I’m there for any reason. It’s just because the Focus Lab ecosystem is such an environment for growth because of all of us that are there. We all encourage it. We all want it. Followings grow. Exposure grows. Here comes the poachers, everybody. That’s fair. It is what it is. You can’t stop that. All of a sudden, all the team members get job requests from everybody because they see all the work all the time, the Instagrams, the Googles, the Pinterests, the Microsofts, everybody. Charlie was very transparent with that. He said, “Listen, I’m getting approached by a lot of people, blah, blah, blah. I don’t plan on doing anything.” As time went by, GoPro was the perfect storm for him. It was a great opportunity for a lot of reasons. He got to move back to the West Coast where he grew up. He actually lives in the town that he grew up in. His daughters now are going to the school that he went to school at. He’s a surfer. He was living in Alabama — time to get out of Alabama, time to go back to the West Coast, and take the great new job. Yeah, let’s put Charlie on the list. I wouldn’t have thought that initially just because it wouldn’t have crossed my mind. Honestly, right now, I would have been looking for the big names, if you will. Charlie is great all around. Lauren Mancke: Do you have any parting words for creative entrepreneurs or just entrepreneurs in general? Any secret tips or recipes for killing it online? Bill’s Secret Tip for Success Bill Kenney: Oh gosh. The secret tip is you got to put your hard hat on, go out there every single day, and bang it against the wall. Some days are amazing, and some months, some quarters, and some years are amazing. Some days, some months, quarters, and years are really a grind. I think the thing for me, and the thing for us at Focus Lab, it’s the longevity. It’s the stay the course. Course correct as needed. Motivate as needed. It looks all sunshine and like it’s all easy every day from the outside perspective. To be fair, it is 90 percent of that, but there are the days where you’re like, “Oh, can I post another thing here? Can I grind out another amazing deliverable on top of the one I just spit out?” That becomes quite a challenge. It’s being a creative on top of running a business and all of these things. It’s not necessarily easy. I think it’s the, can you weather the length of time that you may be doing it — whether it’s three years or 30 years — and can you also weather the storms when they come? Because they’re going to come for sure. When you get on the flip side of it, you’re a bigger, better, stronger person. But can you weather that? That would be my only advice. For me, it’s a time, energy, and intention game. If you put in the right amount of time, the right amount of energy, and the right amount of intention, you should be moving forward. That ball should be moving forward, and it should be growing for you. Just keep doing it. It’s the old ‘don’t give up’ speech, but it’s so the truth. Year after year, that starts to become pretty hard. Where do you find your motivation? Brian Gardner: Yup. Words of wisdom from little Bill Kenney of the big ship, Focus Lab. Bill Kenney: Thanks.

Being able to juggle an overwhelming amount of tasks, responsibilities and day to day activities comes down to how well you're able to carve out enough time to do the things that matter most to you each and every day. Charlie Waite started his career with Focus Labs in Savannah, Georgia and learned the value of the hustle and how to make an impact in fast paced high demand, agile environment. After living and breathing the agency world Charlie sought to find a company, role, and environment that he identified with and work with disciplines that he hadn't had a lot of interaction with. Charlie found that opportunity with GoPro as their UX/UI Design Manger for their software team and was able to dig in and work with teams to design consumer facing products and be a part of creating a universal design language that spans the entire company In this episode, Charlie sits down with Anthony to discuss what it meant for Charlie to make the transition from client services to more product focused design, what it means for Charlie to work directly with people, and how what you do outside of work can make a huge impact on your productivity, success, and overall level of happiness. Follow Charlie here: Twitter: @charliecwaite Dribbble: charliewaite Web: charliewaite.me Gopro Twitter: @gopro Focus Lab Twitter: @focusLabLLC Visit the Funsize website Subscribe to The Funsize Digest Check out Funsize on Instagram

Today we sat down with Charlie Waite, a designer at GoPro who previously spent time designing at Focus Lab. We explore how design works at GoPro, the key differences between agency and product work, navigating work-life balance and working as a freelancer on the side.