In previous seasons of this podcast, we touched on the importance of clarity for marketing your agency services and that building trust and long term relationships with your clients is key to building a successful agency. My guest this week is Kerstin Heuer, and she is an excellent example of how doing this in a way that is driven by your own personal values and passions can bring huge benefits to your agency. Kerstin has a huge amount of experience in marketing and in working in and running digital marketing agencies. But this year, she decided to launch a new agency that is totally focused on nonprofits in her adopted home of western Canada. Kerstin is the agency owner of Non-Profit Today and HeuerDesign. They help nonprofit organizations to achieve their mission with digital marketing, branding and graphic design. In today’s episode, Kerstin shares her experience serving in the non-profit niche, and what it is like to work with  those types of clients on a long-term basis. We also dive into the importance of hiring for fit, focusing on matching the values of your company with the values of your employees, and really finding ways to make an impact in the non-profit space.

Today on the show we welcome on William Stubbs, founder of Spur:Labs and an experienced strategy and innovation consultant, with a passion for behavioural design and systems thinking based approaches to social change. His journey to agency life started with a nonprofit foundation created to tackle a tough issue in an even tougher market - talking suicide and mental health with males aged 18 to 44 in Australia. William and his co-founder launched the business with a very clearly defined set of values and a mission to not only continue to build in the success of their own foundation but also to use their experiences and skills to help others plan, design, implement and measure campaigns to, in his words, make the world better, better in a real way. The genesis of Spur:Labs is a fascinating story and one that seems so different to the founding of the other values-driven agencies I’ve spoken to so far in this season. There is so much in his words that can and will inspire and encourage all of us, no matter where we are on this journey with our own agencies.

In this episode, we are joined by Alana Range. Alana is a designer, photographer, digital storyteller, and founder of Radish Lab. Radish Lab is an award-winning, full-service interactive creative agency focused on design for social impact. They help social change-makers and organizations create and tell compelling digital stories that deeply engage their audiences. The team at Radish is made up of people who genuinely love what they do and who they work with. They are innovative designers, masters of collaboration, and full of good ideas. In today’s episode Alana shares her story of building a successful creative agency with us. We also dive into her passionate, yet grounded in the real world, insights behind the joys and the challenges of running an agency facing a conflict between pure profit and positive impact.

Today on the podcast we welcome Matt Schwartz. Matt is the Founder and Executive Director of Constructive, a social change brand strategy and experience design firm in New York City. The company works exclusively with non-profits and educational institutions. Matt’s background is in digital design and creative writing, having worked early in his career for a big international agency. Then about 20 years ago, he set out to create his own company run with a different set of rules. He has a passion for uniting strategy, content, design, and technology to help organizations advance missions that drive positive social, economic, and environmental change. Inside this episode, Matt shares how he views working with non-profits as a kind of paid PhD for how the world works. He describes how the work Constructive does is able to make an impact at scale, even though they are not directly working where, as he says, “the rubber hits the road.”

In this week’s episode, we welcome Bill Barbot. Bill is one of the founders of Threespot, an independent digital agency that is hell-bent on helping those, and only those, who are committed to helping others. Founded in 1999 based in Washington DC, Threespot have come to realize that they value doing work that matters more than awards, accolades or cold, hard cash and in this episode, Bill shares his and the agency’s journey to this point. Threespot have an incredibly clear understanding of their "why," and in this episode Bill shares insight valuable for anyone looking at how to be genuinely true to their values as they build a successful business.

Welcome back to the final episode of HappyPorchRadio season 2.

Season 2 has been all about Umbraco, the friendly CMS. We’ve heard from a number of agency owners, developers, designers and other experts. It has been a really fun season and, I hope, you have found it valuable as I have!

For this last episode I have invited two good friends, Carole Logan and Ondrej Pialek, to share their experiences at CodeGarden - which is the biggest Umbraco event of the year.

Carole is a web developer based in Glasgow, Scotland - she’s meet up organizer, blogger, event speaker, is very active in the Umbraco community and is generally an all round inspiring person. Ondrej is a key part of the team here are Endzone - he’s an Umbraco package developer who cares deeply about using technology for social good.

It’s a real honor for me to have them both on the show and sharing our experiences at CodeGarden.

Welcome to episode 15 of season 2 of HappyPorchRadio!

Season 2 is all about Umbraco, and sadly we are nearly at the end of the season - but fortunately we have 2 (actually 3) amazing guests on the show this week!

We are continuing our journey with two very different conversations from two Umbraco focused agencies.

First you will hear from Josh Seifert and Catherine Stevens, who are project manager and front end dev respectively in an agency called ProWorks. Josh and Catherine share their prospective and learnings from working “at the coal face” with ProWorks, plus they talk about a presentation they did, discussing Wordpress and Umbraco, at this years uWestFest Umbraco festival. One of the really valuable aspects of this conversation, for me, is the emphasis that put on the editor experience.

You will also hear from Mark Mars, who founded the agency Perceptive Flow. Mark shares the story of his agency and shares some really valuable insights. We also touched on one of my favourite topics - ongoing support and retainers!

Many, many thanks to Mark, Josh and Catherine for giving us their time and valuable insights.

Welcome to another episode of HappyPorchRadio, season 2.

Season 2 is all about Umbraco, the friendly CMS. In this episode we are talking community.

As web agencies we make extensive use of open source tools to help bout our businesses and our clients' businesses succeed. One of the most intriguing aspects of successful open source projects, like Umbraco, is the vital part that community plays. And I am very interested in the huge effort that many individuals put into supporting and growing these communities.

So, this week, I am delighted to be speaking to two stalwarts of the Umbraco community: Ravi Motha and Warren Buckley.

First up is Warren, who has been involved with Umbraco pretty much from the start. Warren shares his story and the genesis of uHangouts - which was (and soon may be again) a awesome platform for the Umbraco community.

Next we speak to Ravi, who is one of the key people behind the London Umbraco community and the regular meet ups there. Ravi shares his personal story and then we really dig into the challenges of running a regular community meet up.

Welcome to another episode of HappyPorchRadio season 2 - the season that is all about Umbraco!

This week we meet another cool agency - Cypha Interactive - who are based in Sydney, Australia. You'll hear from Daniel Christos, who founded Cypha 4 years ago.

Amongst a number of other topics, we discuss why they use Umbraco, the different types of projects where they have found Umbraco a great fit, the challenges of using Umbraco and much more.

Welcome back to HappyPorchRadio!

This is episode 12 of season 2 which, as you know, is all about Umbraco!

In this episode we hear from 2 Umbraco developers. First up is Blake Clerke. who is an Umbraco developer based in Denver. We talk about her transition from design to coding, the differences between Umbraco v4 and v7, getting involved in local meet ups and then we dive deep into the processes and challenges of supporting, upgrading and maintaining Umbraco sites.

You will also hear from Myke Bates, who is senior web developer at a agency called The Alchemedia Project based in Missouri.

Myke & I talk about why he loves Umbraco, the positives and the challenges of working with Umbraco and he shares the story of “The Alchemedia Project”. We also talk about how the agency does ongoing support, upgrades and maintenance - all of which I find fascinating to hear a different perspective on.

I really want to thank both Myke and Blake for joining me on the show - it’s a real honour to be able to share their stories and insights.