Never Settle Podcast

Rebecca Reid introduces Season 3 of the Never Settle Podcast and hints at some of our upcoming guests.

Never Settle is brought to you by Ashton McGill, a team of accountants and designers who help people build better businesses.

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Vanilla Ink is Scotland’s unique Jewellery School and Studios. Established in Dundee in 2009, Vanilla Ink moved to Glasgow in 2014 and set up in their current home of The Hidden Lane in 2017. An environment that focuses on educating, inspiring and empowering the jewellery industry. Built on transparency and honesty, Vanilla Ink responds to the needs of the trade, giving makers the best opportunity to learn to be a jeweller/silversmith in today’s landscape. We chat to the Vanilla Ink team about the story of Vanilla Ink and where it's heading in the future. https://www.vanillainkstudios.co.uk

Rod Mountain is a specialist ear, nose and throat surgeon who operates and teaches at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee. He is also championing the role that design, and the creative industries, can play in improving all aspects of care. “I consider myself as a mature ‘student of design’,” he says, looking to design and other areas of creativity for “helping society completely rethink, reinvent and redesign what is meant by health and social care”. If you want to hear more from Rod, then check out: his TEDxDundee Talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on3KttMgbZE his Pecha Kucha talk at https://creativedundee.com/2015/03/rodney-mountain-pkn/ and this interview that we did with him back in 2016 https://youtu.be/9hNMGCZVUZY

Not many people know Kallum Russell as Kallum Russell. To most, he’s Kallum with a K! That’s how you’ll find him on twitter, it’s also how he introduces himself, and how others introduce him. Kallum is Chief Enterprise Officer and co-founder at Acorn Enterprises, the now Dundee-based business accelerator programme. He’s won awards for his work from all sorts of people and was recently included on the Times Maserati 100 list. He didn’t get a free car though. We discuss Kallum’s journey, the growing ecosystem in Scotland that now supports entrepreneurship, why Acorn is different from the rest. And we talk about books. Kallum’s a voracious reader and shares some of his favourite books with us. Find Kallum on twitter @kallumwithak and on Instagram at @kwithakallum, you can also find Acorns at https://twitter.com/AcornEnterprise

Karen Reyburn is the founder of The Profitable Firm, a creative agency that works exclusively with accounting firms. She’s also an accountant. Not many people know that. She moved to Scotland in 2001, supposedly for 3 years, and never left! After joining an accounting firm, she moved into a Business Development role. This led to more creative roles within the accounting industry, before taking the plunge into entrepreneurship. Over the past few years she’s built PF into a specialist creative agency, working with accountants all over the globe. It’s built upon four pillars – creativity, integrity, generosity & rest. We explore all of these in detail, and how combine into creating something very special. You can follow Karen at: https://twitter.com/karenlreyburn https://twitter.com/ProfitableFirm https://www.instagram.com/karenlreyburn/

Julie Christie is the owner of online membership site Togs in Business, where she helps professional photographers run better businesses. Julie’s is an interesting story. Originally from the west coast of Scotland, where she trained and worked as a school teacher, Julie and her family moved across the country to the east after her husband got a job in Aberdeen. After deciding that she didn’t want to go back to teaching, Julie decided to see if she could make some money as a photographer. The rest is history! This is a fascinating listen, as Julie learned the ropes and pivoted to an online business. There’s so much to learn in this hour-long conversation. You can connect with Julie at: https://togsinbusiness.com/

DJCAD is rightly lauded as one of the top art & design schools in the UK. On today’s episode we speak to 4 final year Design students - Julie Cumming, Cameron Malcolm, Cameron Watt & Finlay Clark. All four are studying Product Design as part of DJCAD’s Social Digital programme. We discuss what brought them to Dundee, what they’ve learned during their time in the City, some of the exciting opportunities and projects they’ve been involved in, and where they look for inspiration. You’ll also be surprised to hear about their plans for the future. Support Social Digital’s Indiegogo campaign https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/social-digital-18-design#/ Follow the guys online at: Julie - https://twitter.com/juliecreatdthis Cameron M - https://twitter.com/CMalcs Cameron W - https://twitter.com/CWatt_PD Finlay https://www.instagram.com/fclark_designs/

Gary Turner is co-founder and managing director at Xero UK and is responsible for Xero's business operations across Europe, Middle East & Africa. Xero is the multi-award-winning global leader in online accounting software with more than 1.2 million paying subscribers around the world. Under Gary's leadership, Xero UK has scaled from a three-person startup with annual revenues of £50k to what will surpass £30m during 2018. A native of Glasgow, Gary previously held executive roles at Microsoft, Systems Union and Pegasus Software. In this episode we hear about Gary’s journey in the world of accounting software, explore what makes him tick, and talk about delivery robots in Milton Keynes! Follow Gary on Twitter at https://twitter.com/garyturner Follow Xero at https://twitter.com/Xero You can find The Cluetrain Manifesto, which Gary talks about and which was also a hugely influential book for me at http://www.cluetrain.com/ Finally, here’s a link to a story about the delivery robots in MK https://tamebay.com/2017/12/i-chased-by-a-robot-in-milton-keynes.html

Kev & Gillian O’Neill are the co-founders of video marketing agency 29 Studios. I’ve been lucky enough to work with them several times over the past dozen years or so. In this episode we explore their journey as video pioneers and hear about their experiences working in Silicon valley with brands like YouTube and Google. They share their passions for travel, for exploring the world, for pushing the boundaries, and we talk about creating culture within a business. You can connect with them via the website at https://www.29studios.com/ or on twitter at https://twitter.com/29studios, https://twitter.com/kevoneil & https://twitter.com/gillianoneil You’ll find their 29ers Show on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/user/29studiosUK

Ryan McLeod is a Dundee-based Designer. He’s also the host of the popular Creative Chit Chat Podcast. After graduating from DJCAD, Ryan did a Masters in Design before spending time in Canada. After returning to Scotland, he did a stint working in one of the country’s biggest agencies before moving back to Dundee and setting up his own design studio, Slurpp. In 2017 Ryan launched the Creative Chit Chat podcast, which tells the stories of Dundee’s thriving creative sector. In this episode we talk about Ryan’s journey, dig into the design process, solve the problem of Dundee’s taxi service, and explore the benefits of side projects. You can follow Ryan on twitter at https://twitter.com/madebyslurpp, find his websites at http://madebyslurpp.com/ and http://cccdundee.com/ and of course you can subscribe to Creative Chit Chat on iTunes at https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/creative-chit-chat-dundee/id1173354319?mt=2