Design and Development are not Separate Disciplines. - Tamara Olson - Episode #31

Dec 14 2021 • 42 mins

Tamara is the Owner and Head of Operations at Studio Simpatico. Simpatico is a creative agency based out of Manhattan, providing a variety of services from user experience (UX) design & research, branding and identity, to mobile and web design, WordPress development and maintenance, and packaging/print collateral.

Discussion Points:

What myth or bogus strategy do you want to bust? 1:25
What type of system and processes have you adopted? 4:50
Are there tools that you use specifically to manage your projects? 6:55
When you started a business, what was your vision? How is turning down the clients and projects helping you grow and scale? 8:52
How has your small-sized firm helped you and differentiate from other people or competitors? 15:50
What's the seniority level on your team? 17:30
What made you quit your corporate job and then start an agency and how did it all start? 19:38
What is the biggest mistake you made as an agency owner? 20:41
How have things changed w/COVID? 22:14
How do you maintain the culture in the team? How do you keep them motivated? 23:10
What's your favorite kind of sandwich? 25:30
What's the one thing that clients do that drives you bananas? 28:10
If you were going to identify a superpower for your agency, what would you say is your superpower amongst you? 33:27
As a small child, what did you want to be when you grew up? 36:09
What keeps you up at night? 37:45
What are you looking at for the future for your agency for growth? 41:11

Takeaways

Design and development are not separate disciplines. The design affects how you're going to approach development, so is development affected by design.
Introducing people who aren't on the same page about how that process flow is going to go, can introduce a lot of inefficiencies.
Saying no, when we don't feel that we can provide, is the name of the game in a lot of respects.
There are different purposes for why we do what we do, and the way that we do it. -Jessie
Most things can be sorted out if the clients are asking for something, and maybe they don't quite understand something, that's where a little bit of mentorship goes a long way.

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