We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Stewart Rosburg a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Stewart, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?
I think it comes down to a mix of a few things. This is almost a nurture vs nature question. So, I think some confidence and self esteem you’re truly born with, but for me, most of my confidence has been learned or earned over time.
By default, I’ve generally been a pretty humble and quiet person (sometimes to a fault) and previously admired that in others and myself. It’s only more recently that I’ve come to see the value in being confident and being able to share that confidence in a non aggressive way that I’m truly inspired by. Especially when it comes to leadership, it seems to be a crucial skill to encourage a team and get that team moving in an aligned way.
With that context, I think I’ve developed my confidence over years of learning. Seeing what works for me and for other people and continuing to do that. Then, of course, learning what doesn’t work for me or others and learning from that as well. With time, and being open to continuing learning from failures, it’s slowly grown my confidence and self-esteem.
A big road block to that growth usually comes in the form of thinking too far ahead. If my expectations for my company Tell or for my individual growth is too far ahead, it can very quickly take my confidence down. The best thing to remember when I go through that is to be honest about all the growth that I have gone through already and it usually can help me get a reality check and be confident again.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I’m founder and creative director of Tell. We specialize in video production. Specifically we specialize in 2D/3D animation and VFX.
Right now, we’re most excited about growing. To date we’ve been growing based off of referrals alone which has helped us grow our team from ~2 of us to now be a solid team of 5 that expands for bigger jobs. However, it’s been exciting to start to put more internal effort and budget behind marketing ourselves more and get to expand our network. It’s lead to exciting new clients that have been trusting us with more creative vision–both on a per-project basis but also on a more holistic video marketing strategy over the year. So we’re excited to see the impact we’ve had and what impact we will have as we expand to new clients and longer term partnerships.
Similarly, we’ve been expanding our offerings as clients needs expand and recently I was able to direct a creative live-action shoot locally. It was a fun opportunity to bring my creative direction background to a newer medium as I was able to direct the shoot to include my vision for VFX and animated elements throughout the final video. I’ve had experience storyboarding, making animatics and lighting tests virtually, directing, and VFX supervising individually, but this was the first opportunity to combine all of those skills and hire a great team around me to help me execute a single vision. It was a good time and has already led to a happy client (even on our first cut).
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
I like to keep this advice simple
1. Get good at your craft. Whatever it is, however broad or niche you are, be good at it.
2. Learn to collaborate. There’s very little work that gets done well by individuals. You have to be a decent person to be around and to work with.
3. Repeat the two above^
I think a lot of students/early career people that get hired are good at 1. or 2. above. Even better if you can do both well.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
We are looking to collaborate and partner more, yes.
If you work in video, we’re interested to hear more about you. Specifically we’re looking for more freelancers to collaborate with.
Video production: Directors, Producers, DP’s, etc.
Post production: VFX, Editors etc.
Motion Graphics: Styleframe designers, 2D, 3D, Illustrators.
Connect with us through our website or social!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://tellstrategicdesign.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/tellstrategicdesign
- Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/company/tellstrategicdesign
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
