Welcome to the Digital Animal Podcast. We’re here to accelerate new digital businesses, transform existing businesses, and use the word business too many times in a single sentence. 

Renier Lombard is your host and he’s joined by co-host, Jonathan Warncke. 

Renier is a serial entrepreneur, agency owner, and digital animal. He’s here to share his knowledge and experience in the digital space, and do everything HE can to help YOU succeed. 

Jonathan is a creative director, copy consultant, and podcast producer. He’s here to make this podcast sound good and learn from Renier as he builds his podcast production company from the ground up. 

In this first episode, we introduce ourselves, tell you a little bit about where we’re coming from and how we aim to serve the business community. 

If you’re in a rush, here are some shortcuts to key moments in the episode:

• 0:40 - Using an emoji in your LinkedIn name helps sort the real from the robots
• 3:55 - Who this podcast is for?
• 4:10 - What value are we trying to add?
• 6:00 - The business that Jon is building
• 7:15 - How businesses big and small view digital
• 7:45 - Digital ecosystems
• 9:15 - Renier’s story - Hard work, burnout, and the digital epiphany
• 14:10 - Contract-free client relationships
• 14:28 - That time Renier got fired
• 16:15 - Doing stuff you can’t do when you start out
• 16:56 - You’re not a freelancer, you’re a consultant

19:25 - Wrap-up - We’re raring to go, we’re building a website to support the show, and we’ve got a lot more great content coming. Join us to learn and chat to us via our Speakpipe Q&A. Just go to www.speakpipe.com/thedigitalanimal to drop us a voice message if you have a question or comment, or just if you want to connect and say hi. That’s what this is all about.