Dear Unexpected Entrepreneurs

This week our ‘Three Lessons Learnt’ podcast featured Brandon from the Craft CMS team. Brandon is the founder and CEO of Pixel and Tonic who created the content managing system titled Craft CMS. This system aids web agencies in building websites that their clients are then able to content manage going forwards.

If you haven’t yet listened to the podcast, here’s a summary of Brandon’s three lessons that he learnt when starting up his own business:

Don’t take your existing customers for granted. Brandon has learnt from his own mistakes in this, having lost half of their sales after a few months of announcing their new, competitive product. He says not to take your current situation for granted as clients are always capable of moving onto something new. His advice to avoid this is to stay professional, keep delivering what customers are looking for, and treat them with respect.

Be transparent with your community. After seeing how their competitors were treating their communities, Brandon decided to learn from their mistakes. The team aim to be as transparent as possible whilst keeping future plans somewhat close to their chest as to keep some elements a surprise. Brandon suggests trying to keep things open to the public and being honest; particularly on a personal level. Being honest when people write into the company is key to being transparent.

It is important to give your team members a voice. Brandon says that no matter what your team are talking about, give them room for their opinions. Often they are seeing things from a different perspective to you and you may be overlooking something. Trust that you have hired smart people and that they have smart opinions to voice. Respect your team and give them all a fair stake at the table.

It was great to have Brandon on this week's podcast. You can find him over on Twitter @brandonkelly or find Craft CMS @craftcms or via their blog www.craftcms.com/blog.

www.steadfastcollective.com

This week our ‘Three Lessons Learnt’ podcast featured Martin Adams. Martin currently works for a mattress company, consulting as their technical CTO as a contractor. Originally part-time, he has been full time since 2003. He is also building his own start-up called Zaro which began out of the frustration of working with remote, in-house and agency teams, where there is a lack of communication of the work that is done. He has been into technology and the web space since studying Internet Technology at University in 2000 and has been programming since he was 13.

If you haven’t yet listened to the podcast, here’s a summary of Martin’s three lessons that he learnt when starting up his own business:

Don’t get distracted. Martin admitted then when he spots a problem, he often tries to figure out a solution by looking at the different things that are going on and can become easily diverted off of the path that he is working on. His main advice is to enjoy doing one thing really well rather than ten things to a subpar standard and suggests training yourself to be focussed and to tune out any possible distractions.

Just launch. Martin knows from his own experiences that you can get into a cycle of trying to make everything perfect or going above what is required for a launch. He uses various methods to control deadlines to ensure no tasks are put off. Constant reminders proved beneficial. He suggests to just get something launched, take the win and move on to the next challenge.

Enjoy the dip. Martin believes ‘the dip’ is the part of a project or phase of a business where most entrepreneurs quit as things begin to get difficult. He advises not to “compare your documentary to other people’s highlight reel”. People can look at other startups and see success but they don’t necessarily see the behind-the-scenes years spent stuck in the dip pushing and believing in their startup. Martin does his job for the love of the craft as he naturally finds it enjoyable. He suggests that appreciating the small things can get you through the dip.

It was great to have Martin with us on our podcast. Why not follow along on Twitter @martin_adams and find out more about what Martin is working on. We’ll see you again soon for our next podcast.

www.steadfastcollective.com

Radim Malinic is an award winning freelance creative director, graphic designer and keynote speaker based in London. He runs the micro agency brandnu.co.uk.

He joined us to talk about three lessons he's learned along his career and working with brands such as Nike, WWF and the Harry Potter Franchise.

At Steadfast Collective, we're meeting with creatives from all over the world to chat to them about three lessons they've learnt while starting up. https://Steadfastcollective.com

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

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

Listen here!

www.steadfastcollective.com

We chatted with Simon Bennett of Snapshooter to discuss three lessons that he has learnt while building Snapshooter and other SAAS products. 

Snapshooter helps you schedule frequent customizable DigitalOcean backups of your droplets and volumes.

- About Steadfast Collective -

We are Steadfast Collective; a team of passionate creatives based on the south coast.

www.steadfastcollective.com

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

www.steadfastcollective.com

We met with Lee Tengum of 7am.ca to discuss three lessons that he has learnt while building digital products and helping others with their sales process.

7am builds products and processes that help businesses grow their revenue and market share. Lee has years of wisdom in building businesses

Listen to hear Lee’s lessons on sales, failing and no excuses!

The Steadfast Collective podcast steadfastcollective.com is for those starting up looking for wisdom from those with a few years head start.

We met with Chris Whyley of Zamzar to discuss three lessons that he has learnt while starting Zamzar.

Zamzar is an online file converter, created by brothers Mike and Chris Whyley in England. It allows users to convert files without downloading a software tool, and supports over 1,000 different conversion types.

Listen to hear Chris’ wisdom about focus, shipping and running an application older than the iPhone.

As developers, we consistently strive to deliver feature-rich, performant and secure products. Due to the fast-paced nature of our work, it can often be difficult to deliver all three within the time and budget requirements of any given project.

To ensure we meet these goals, we often reach for frameworks and tools which allow us to build products without re-inventing the wheel. We have recently been working with Craft CMS 3 to build client websites, and have been loving it. Here’s why: