
Dear Unexpected Entrepreneurs
By Steadfast Collective
An unexpected entrepreneur is an expert in their field, who has ambitious goals to innovate in their sector and push boundaries, which then, in turn, become their means for living and their own unique business.
Their goal wasn’t always to build a business, but to fill a need in a sector they're passionate about.

Dear Unexpected EntrepreneursDec 06, 2022

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

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

You can't be everything, to everyone. - Liana Fricker
Liana Fricker is the founder of Inspiration Space, TedX Speaker and Californian optimist sharing her three lessons to you, our Unexpected Entrepreneurs.
Dear Unexpected Entrepreneurs is the new flagship podcast for Summit, a community for entrepreneurs looking to refine their idea or grow their businesses to the next level.
An unexpected entrepreneur is an expert in their field, who has ambitious goals to innovate in their sector and push boundaries, which then, in turn, become their means for living and their own unique business.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lianawilsonfricker/

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

"Not every customer is right for you" - Pete Matheson
Pete Matheson joins us to discuss the ups and downs of running and selling a business.
Pete shares his top three tips for Unexpected Entrepreneurs in this podcast.
https://www.youtube.com/c/PeteMatheson

Why you should design your apps like cities
We dig into some real-world UX problems and talk about how these lessons can translate into better designed digital products.

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

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

What Bloom and Wild can teach us about eCommerce
Dan and Pete jump into the Bloom and Wild website to showcase five lessons you can implement into your website!

Tools for Remote Working during Covid-19 - Inside The Studio
Inside the Studio is back. In this first episode, we take a look at four applications we are using for communication, project management, and pair programming, all of which are particularly useful when working remotely.
Watch the full episode at: steadfastcollective.com/videos

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

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

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

What to consider before starting a business

Slack as a hub for your business

Should you use Shopify? - Inside The Studio

What we wish we did from the start - Inside The Studio
Subscribe to the podcast at inside.steadfastcollective.com
Watch the video at www.youtube.com/channel/UC2wqdXFTQRDh2ZamjoH3NHQ

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

How we hire top talent - Inside The Studio

Our 2020 Goals - Inside The Studio

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

Conferencing Top Tips - Inside The Studio

How We Win Work - Inside the studio

Introducing Inside The Studio

Jeff Gardner of Intercom shares his lessons learnt.
We asked Jeff to share three lessons he has learnt during his time at Intercom.
Read the interview at: steadfastcollective.com/articles/jeff-gardner-intercom/
Join the other developers, designers and product owners by subscribing to thedigitalproductplaybook.com for monthly insights into how to start and grow your digital product.

Soldo - Digital Product Playbook Podcast
Soldo helps businesses to control their spending, with pre-paid debit cards, virtual payment cards, and a handy dashboard overview. Founded in 2015, Soldo has raised a total of $22.2M in funding.
steadfastcollective.com

Intercom: On Starting Up
We’re giving away a brand new copy of this book, at the end you can find out how to get your hands on your own copy.

Directors Growing Up
The first instalment of these podcasts is entitled ‘Directors Growing Up’.
Thanks for listening. We hope you have enjoyed finding out more about our back story as a company and our hopes for the future. We would love to get to know you, so get in touch and meet us for a coffee.

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

Brandon Kelly, Craft CMS - Three Lessons Learnt
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

Martin Adams - Three Lessons Learnt
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 Brand Nu - Three Lessons Learnt
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. Steadfastcollective.com

Gaming - Talking Tech

Lee Button - Three Lessons Learnt
Listen here!
www.steadfastcollective.com

Simon Bennett, Snapshooter.io - Three Lessons Learnt
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

Apple's Gather Round Event - Talking Tech
www.steadfastcollective.com

Lee Tengum - Three Lessons Learnt
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.

Chris Whyley (Zamzar)- Three Lessons Learnt
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.

Why we’re using Craft CMS!
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:

Jan Carlyle – Three Lessons Learnt Podcast
AutumnLive is passionate about Technology, Education, Equality and Inspiration. They deliver this through strategic events, programmes and marketing campaigns, specialising in the tech, digital and creative sectors.
Listen to hear Jan's wisdom about marketing, ROI and mentorship.

Pete & Rachel Heslop – Three Lessons Learnt Podcast
Steadfast Collective are a team of passionate creatives focusing on creating content-driven digital platforms and applications. We have a team of five, permanent, talented individuals in our Southampton office, alongside a small team of regular contractors who work alongside us on many of our projects.
Pete and Rachel share three key lessons they have learnt along the way...

Shelly Frame – Three Lessons Learnt Podcast
The Etch Group is a collection of user design, customer experience, product and web development companies, which include Big Radical Ltd. They work across the Auto, Airlines, Health, Hospitality, Financial and Entertainment industries.
Etch has a team of around 80 talented individuals across three offices in London, Southampton, and Cape Town.
We asked Shelly what three lessons she had learnt whilst starting up Etch several years ago and along the way.

Three Lessons Learnt with Ashley Baxter
We asked Ashley what three Lessons she had learned while starting With Jack,

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