This week Nic and Nat sit down with Dr Becky Sage (Director of Acceleration at EDUCATE and former CEO of Interactive Scientific) to share their personal experiences with identifying and overcoming burnout. The symptoms of burnout can include energy depletion and exhaustion, increased negativity at work and reduced productivity. It's the result of exposure to prolonged and intense periods of stress and can go hand in hand with deeper mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. Due to the very nature of their roles, entrepreneurs are particularly susceptible to burnout and often push th ..read more

This week Nic and Nat sit down with Dominic Mills, co-founder of Yuup - one of CookiesHQ’s own clients. Yuup is an online marketplace for Bristol-based experiences that launched in September 2020. The vision for Yuup came from a passionate belief in local communities and the role local people and enterprises have in making them thrive. Dominic had done a lot of reading around the idea of us reaching ‘peak stuff’ as a starting point - that as a society we had accumulated enough stuff, and what we’re actually really interested in doing is going out and experiencing more. But what sets Yuup apar ..read more

This week Nic and Nat sit down with CookiesHQ's own clients for the very first time: Rupert and Kate, co-founders of Stornaway - a platform that enables creative filmmakers to plan and produce multi-linear interactive films without coding or complexity. Stornaway existed as an idea in Rupert’s head for many years, before making it to pen on paper that had been plastered all over an entire wall of their home. With a rich history in film, he was on the lookout for something to plug the gaps in non-linear story production. When, after a couple of years, Ru and Kate still couldn’t find anything o ..read more

We’re kicking off 2021 with a brand new episode in our Behind the Screens series. Lockdown 3.0 is here, and homeschooling is back on the agenda. So, who better for Nic and Nat to sit down with than their home co-workers - ahem, kids - Timmy (8) and Alice (6)? As Nic and Nat are married co-founders, the kids have inevitably been involved in and aware of the CookiesHQ journey through the years. Timmy and Alice share what they really think Mum and Dad do, how they rate homeschooling vs going to school, and whether they think they’ll be joining Cookies when they’re older. And, kids being kids, t ..read more

This week Nic and Nat sit down (remotely, of course) with Piers and Dave from Atomic Smash - a Bristol-based specialist WordPress and WooCommerce studio. CookiesHQ and Atomic Smash are nearly the same age, and have had very similar journeys towards similar goals, so they dig deep into this alignment. Piers and Dave started Atomic Smash fresh out of university, where they’d met and become best friends. They share their experience of building a business with someone you have a close relationship or friendship with, and share their tips for ensuring that dynamic stays healthy. This interview is ..read more

This week we have a very special episode lined up - this is a recording from 4th November when Nic & Nat were interviewed by the lovely bunch at Revoco for their ‘Don’t Fear the F Word’ webcast series.  Here, ‘F’ stands for failure, and Nic & Nat talk about their biggest failure with regards to running an agency, how they overcame it and how, in the end, it probably shaped the future of CookiesHQ for the better. Revoco started ‘Don’t Fear the F Word’ as they believe failure is not something that should be feared by founders, but should be something that is welcomed, embraced and ..read more

Back in June we welcomed Emily Mellon to the team to look after CookiesHQ's marketing. And she had a tonne of questions: how do we work? What makes CookiesHQ unique? Why do our clients love us? What’s different between a web and mobile app and what the hell is Ruby on Rails? The list goes on! Of course, the UK was still in lockdown back then, and amongst all the craziness, we never got around to answering them all. Now things are a little more normal, we’re setting time aside to dedicated to exploring these questions Emily can learn more about us. And, we thought why not record these bitesize ..read more

To mark the re-opening of Engine Shed this week we’re releasing our Tough Cookies episode featuring Marty Reid, recorded before Covid-19 restrictions were put in place. Marty had only recently taken on the role as Head of Engine Shed the time of recording, and chats through his decision to leave the corporate world behind after 10 years at Rolls Royce. His previous work and studies had taken him all around the world from Munich to Canada to Japan — but he found his focus shifting moving towards working with smaller companies, within the tech sector and on a more regional basis. He landed a ro ..read more

We talk to a lot of early stage founders looking to build businesses around a tech product. In having many of these conversations over the last decade, we've learnt to look out for some early indicators as to whether someone has the right business mindset to make it work. This week, Nic and Nathalie sit down to talk about some common mistakes they’ve seen early stage founders make when it comes to getting their product off the ground. The first one, and it’s a biggie, is conducting bad or no market research and relying on a hunch that your product will be successful. Running with your gut is ..read more

This week Nic and Nathalie sit down to talk about getting involved in and giving back to the community as entrepreneurs. They look back at everything they’ve done, successfully or otherwise, over the last decade to cement their place in the Bristol ecosystem. We have a long history of running events here at CookiesHQ. When you’re sat in front of a laptop all day, nothing can beat being in a room with and actually speaking to like minded, passionate people. We started out running the Bristol Ruby User Group, and then on after stumbling upon something similar in Belgium, Nic had an idea: to bri ..read more