In this episode of the NTP podcast we chat with Ben Tattersfield, Product Owner & Business Analyst at Codafication. We discuss Ben’s experience founding a startup, the transition into his current role, what the team at Codafication are currently working on and key learnings from his career. Hope you enjoy the interview!

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Here you can source all the things we have talked about in the podcast whether that be books, events, meet-up groups and what’s new in the Newcastle tech scene.

• • Ben’s LinkedIn
  • Codafication’s LinkedIn
  • Codafication’s Website
  • Coursera

Find all local Newcastle Technology Events

• Event’s Page

00:00:20:08 – 00:00:43:11
Ellen Bennett
Thank you for joining us for another episode of Digitally Diverse, a podcast where we do a deep dive into the influential and incredibly intelligent people in our product and design industry. So today we are joined with Ben Tattersfield. He is a product owner and analysts business analyst at Codafication. Thank you so much for joining us.

00:00:43:14 – 00:00:44:29
Ben Tattersfield
Thanks for having me also.

00:00:45:00 – 00:00:58:23
Ellen Bennett
And I thank you for coming on. So. So first, some of our listeners, can you give us like a brief overview of who you are, where you’ve come from and yeah, an overview of your career to date?

00:00:58:25 – 00:01:26:01
Ben Tattersfield
Yeah. As you mentioned, but my background’s from being quite different to you, normal way of getting into the product. I guess I really started just doing my own thing, particularly starting in the marketing space. So I actually worked at a bike shop like, you know, your traditional pushbike shop. Early days of Facebook where you got 100% organic growth and just started putting some post up on that.

00:01:26:02 – 00:02:13:04
Ben Tattersfield
Getting some customers into the bike shop. I just built as a website on WordPress. I just really enjoyed that. So kind of just grew on that, started just doing some little freelancing, WordPress websites, things traditional learn from YouTube slash doing kind of approach and then yeah, moved into a marketing role in the travel industry. Again in the social media digital space, still in pure organic growth through Facebook in those early days and that the really good successful Facebook ads where they went out everywhere and they didn’t have all the fancy algorithmic stuff happening and did really well out of that and that really exposed me to the, I guess, the customer facing side in marketing

00:02:13:04 – 00:02:41:22
Ben Tattersfield
and particularly in managing the communities in that. And it was quite an interesting one because I was working with Schoolies and a brand called Discover Queensland. So two very different audiences. It’s sort of the early to middle age females for Discover Queensland and then 16 to 18 year old teenagers. So having to sort of swap hats on that side and deal with the community management and the the content marketing and everything of that was really good of getting that experience of dealing with customers again.

00:02:41:23 – 00:03:02:23
Ben Tattersfield
And then I was actually stuck in the. So you didn’t really have like a marketing department. It was still quite small. So stuck in that it room with the, the dev guys like the engineers and that sort of just exposed me to the work that they are doing on the website, which I really got into and then was giving them feedback on sort of the UI and the UX design.

00:03:02:25 – 00:03:31:24
Ben Tattersfield
Obviously in that marketing space of the split testing, you know, AB testing and starting to introduce doing that onto the website with the engineers and things. So yeah, it was kind of a bit of a crash course into product without realizing that was the direction I was heading. Quite interesting from that role, I actually moved into a UX UI analyst role in a start up in the travel industry, which was where I first got exposed to the lane methodology.

00:03:32:02 – 00:03:54:00
Ben Tattersfield
You know, going into Agile, running in scrums, that sort of thing. And I really enjoyed it. And because we in such a small team, I kind of ended up taking and I don’t even know what you call it, kind of like Scrum Master Product Manager doing the UI UX work, a bit of quite a bit of testing actually as well.

00:03:54:00 – 00:04:13:24
Ben Tattersfield
You know, such a small team, there’s only like four or five of us that I kind of became that just all in one product person again, without realizing that’s really what it was. It was just like I enjoyed that. So I just naturally put my hand up when something had to be done. I’ve done a lot of self self learning.

00:04:14:00 – 00:04:36:02
Ben Tattersfield
You know, if there was something that I didn’t know, I’d just go and Google it, basically. Yeah. End up down that rabbit hole of of Google and a lot of reading to audiobooks in particular, which were really good around the lean lean startup and you know product stuff in general. Once I worked out that that product was actually what I was interested in.

00:04:36:04 – 00:04:45:23
Ben Tattersfield
So that was kind of my very messy background of slowly growing into it without actually realizing that was the direction I was heading.

00:04:45:26 – 00:05:09:05
Ellen Bennett
Mm hmm. Yeah, that’s it’s a story that I hear quite a lot like. Oh, I didn’t realize I was doing UX before I realized it had a name and people just, like, tended to fall into it. Where. Yeah. So just like coming off the bat of being a self-taught now designer and business analyst, how how did you, how did you land the role with codification?

00:05:09:09 – 00:05:29:15
Ben Tattersfield
So I had my own start up previously actually had worked on that for five years and was honestly pretty burnt out because, you know, I loved the product and being hands on with the product and being a founder of a startup, and particularly as it’s scaling you basically all your time is spent in people management and capital raising.

00:05:29:18 – 00:05:51:28
Ben Tattersfield
That’s that’s really where it is. So yeah, I was fairly exhausted after we did a massive launch of our product. So this is a company called Sport Core. We put electronics inside at Cripple. So I went over to the Caribbean during COVID and we had a massive launch of the cricket ball over there. It was a lightweight trip, which sounds really cool, like eight weeks in the Caribbean.

00:05:52:06 – 00:06:12:17
Ben Tattersfield
Amazing. But it was during COVID and we’re in a bubble. So it’s literally like you’re in the hotel, you get on the bus, you go to the cricket bat, you work basically while you’re there. For us, it was collecting the data off the ball, handing it over to like getting it through the broadcast. Then you’re back on the bus, you back to the hotel, you sleep, you wake up and you do that basically every day for eight weeks.

00:06:12:19 – 00:06:31:02
Ben Tattersfield
And I was doing that on top of trying to close out a capital raise and look after the team back in Australia on that completely different timezone. So yeah, really stepped stepped out of that after that, that launch I kind of had that goal of closing out the capital where I was launching the product and then having some time off.

00:06:31:02 – 00:06:46:26
Ben Tattersfield
So I put a new CEO and they took the time off to go back and earn some brownie points with the wife because she had to look after the kids was overseas. Yeah, it kind of did a bit of sort of court date thinking about what I really wanted to do, and it was getting back into that product space.

00:06:46:26 – 00:07:06:04
Ben Tattersfield
So I ended up taking up a role at eBay games actually in the head office, awesome team and they’re like great culturally as well. Anyone that knows any games, gaming and and you know, all the swag and basically all the cool stuff that they have. So the internal culture in there is very like it’s one of the best places I’ve worked at culturally.

00:07:06:07 – 00:07:34:18
Ben Tattersfield
But then the, the opportunity with Kota popped up that was really good. And it sounds kind of a bit selfish, but basically 80 Games was in Brisbane. I was on the Gold Coast. That drive backwards and forwards is a nightmare for anyone that knows that they had one doing that. And Kota had a really good work from home policy and I really like challenges and they’ve got some pretty good ones in terms of like the challenges their customers are facing.

00:07:34:21 – 00:08:04:12
Ben Tattersfield
So yeah, that was really it. It was like that, that combination of, yeah, I don’t need to sit in the car for 3 hours a day and work in a more tech product focused platform in 80 games is awesome. A lot of the stuff that, that basically everything that I working on is internal product where this was like a larger scale external product that does have an eventual road to becoming a global product, which is quite, quite exciting.

00:08:04:15 – 00:08:14:17
Ellen Bennett
Yeah, No, that it would be something really juicy to sink your teeth into. So Ben, tell us a little bit more about like what codification does. Like what what kind of problems that you’re facing.

00:08:14:20 – 00:08:38:12
Ben Tattersfield
I guess Kota, in a nutshell, is a project management system for the insurance building industry. So we communicate with the insurance systems, collect. So you put a claim in for your house if you’ve had some flooding, as a lot of people around Queensland and New South Wales have you put your insurance claim in the insurers, collect the information, pass it on to the insurance builders, you basically look after your claim.

00:08:38:14 – 00:09:02:14
Ben Tattersfield
So we build software products for those insurance builders to basically onboard that claim information and try to automate as much as possible from the project management side so that things don’t get lost and you’re minimizing all those delays for the end customer. And that was part of what I actually quite liked about the problems that Coder is tackling.

00:09:02:14 – 00:09:39:23
Ben Tattersfield
Is that the definition of customer is quite segmented. You’ve got the customer of the insurance builder, the customer of the insurer, and then the customer that is the person who’s actually made the insurance claim. And they’ve all got quite unique wants and needs about their experience. So, you know, we were looking at the what value can we bring as a project management product know, particularly for anyone that has had that experience of having to do an insurance claim delays the biggest pain in the ass out there.

00:09:39:26 – 00:10:05:12
Ben Tattersfield
You know, when you just want to get back into your house, you just want to get something fixed or replaced or whatever it is, then yeah, delays human era or just old fashioned slow systems. You know, that’s a frustration across all of those customers. So that is really a core focus of what CO to do is trying to simplify the workflow, to reduce those delays.

00:10:05:15 – 00:10:06:03
Ben Tattersfield
Mm hmm.

00:10:06:05 – 00:10:25:08
Ellen Bennett
Yeah. And yes, so it’s so true that like a lot of a lot of the customers that they are sometimes making claims in what could be like a really traumatic experience, really scary. So they it’s really great that there’s going to be like an option for them to be like, okay, now I’m really going to be being taken care of.

00:10:25:15 – 00:10:43:15
Ellen Bennett
And the agents are feeling empowered to help them as best as they can to. So yeah, I know it sounds it sounds like you guys. Yeah, really working on some pretty impactful stuff. That’s great. What’s it like working at Coda? Like, what’s the culture like? What’s the team like?

00:10:43:17 – 00:11:09:11
Ben Tattersfield
It’s been a pretty interesting journey for me culturally, like coming from my own company where as a start up, you want to get the culture right because that obviously helps attract the staff. But also as the founder, you’re just so busy doing everything else that you don’t really get the time to put the effort in to do it, especially in those early days, like I said, when I left that and moved to 80 games, I was just my mind was blown by the culture that they’d built.

00:11:09:13 – 00:11:31:29
Ben Tattersfield
Yeah, it was. I was there when we celebrated 20 years of of 80 games, actually, which was pretty cool. It was just amazing that like their staff retention rates are through the roof because it’s just a really cool place to work. You know, everyone’s got all their cool stuff on their desk, like, you know, I’ve got my brand of Legos and lightsabers and stuff in the background that yeah, that was what everyone’s desk is like in it.

00:11:32:02 – 00:11:49:09
Ben Tattersfield
If you walk in there, it’s everywhere. And then that was actually a concern for me when I was looking at the coder role. When it popped up, I was like, I really don’t want to leave it. I really like this. So that was actually the one thing that I was really looking at when I went in for the interview with Kota was what was it like?

00:11:49:11 – 00:12:11:06
Ben Tattersfield
And it was quite funny actually, because walking in there, the meeting room is called Ultron. Now, for anyone that’s a bit of a nerd, that’s, that’s the style was reference and all the internal we call them pods squads, whatever you call them. Each pod is named after Star Wars. I love, I don’t know what you call it, like a not a character, but like a class within Star Wars or whatever.

00:12:11:08 – 00:12:26:24
Ben Tattersfield
And that was basically it for me. I was like, All right, this is kind of like there’s a bit of a nerd culture going on here as well. It turned out that that that former CTO at Kota was actually an Xavier Games guy as well, which is where a lot of that came from, which is pretty cool actually getting it and getting to meet the team.

00:12:26:24 – 00:12:55:04
Ben Tattersfield
I think, you know, those fears weren’t really actually an issue. Like culturally, everyone is really, I guess, understanding of what the goal is from from sort of the vision of the company working. There’s a large contingent working remote like we only had to do eight days a month, so basically two days a week in the office. But the way that they’ve managed to make that work and still retain that culture and things is has been really good.

00:12:55:06 – 00:13:19:09
Ben Tattersfield
And then obviously as a product owner, you’ve got to have a really good relationship with your like the parts, the engineers and even the stakeholders that you’re working with and meeting the CEO and the CEO and everyone just super grounded and like kind of understand what the product team and and the engineering team are facing and stuff. So yeah, when there’s problems and things that’s like there’s never an issue basically.

00:13:19:12 – 00:13:40:19
Ben Tattersfield
And you know, like worrying about having to take some sort of locker to management, it’s just like, so I’ll just pick a message on teams like, Hey, bad news, you know, it’s not going to be some like world ending blow up or anything like that. Like they understand the product and the process and the customers and and everything that we’re dealing with really well.

00:13:40:19 – 00:14:12:12
Ben Tattersfield
It’s been really refreshing as well. And I think that change of going from your own product, we’re also your own company, your own start up and then getting back into a company that has, you know, from my point 80 games, a really like concrete fixed culture that’s that’s really good. And then into codification, which is in that scale up phase where that kind of on the way to that.

00:14:12:14 – 00:14:22:20
Ben Tattersfield
But you know, the staff and everyone that’s coming in is also kind of shaping the direction that that’s heading. So, yeah, it’s been been really good.

00:14:22:23 – 00:14:46:06
Ellen Bennett
Really good. It’d be really interesting to especially one after the other as well, go from pretty much like the stock opposite’s like owning your own business and then going to a big global enterprise group at a B gains and then going into a scale up like you would have seen anything and everything in that time. So it’s great that you’ve found somewhere as well.

00:14:46:07 – 00:14:58:08
Ellen Bennett
That seems like it’s a bit of a mishmash of the two. Like leadership are still really present, but you also do have that really great nerdy culture that you’re after. So yeah, that’s, that’s also yeah.

00:14:58:10 – 00:15:15:05
Ben Tattersfield
I mean, it’s not obviously a must have, you know, it’s one of those things that you’re uncertain of and especially because like I’ve really enjoyed being in a B games and having that culture in the people there. It was like, you know, the, the work that code is on is awesome, but know, you don’t want to leave that culture.

00:15:15:05 – 00:15:39:08
Ben Tattersfield
That’s like I enjoyed even that was a three hour drive. I enjoyed working there. So like the three hour jobs was part of, of that. So yeah, that, that kind of like mindset of like yeah, I don’t really want to leave and you’re kind of so shiny looking at it. You kind of looking at it critically like, yeah, if I find something that I don’t like, that’s probably going to become my excuse for not taking the role.

00:15:39:10 – 00:15:43:11
Ben Tattersfield
Just those little things we just like, cool. Okay. Like.

00:15:43:14 – 00:15:44:14
Ellen Bennett
Yeah, these people in there.

00:15:44:18 – 00:16:06:25
Ben Tattersfield
And get me like we’re going to have that common common element and it’s definitely there. Like the yeah, we’re creating something with the team at the moment that we’re calling the Antisocial Social Club, mainly because obviously where there’s a big contingent working remotely that the concept of the social club doesn’t always work. Like not everyone’s in the office at the same time.

00:16:06:27 – 00:16:31:16
Ben Tattersfield
So we’re just going to create some like social club style events that we can do remotely just to sort of build on on that, which is weirdly actually something that I did during. So when I came back from quarantine, I had to come and do quarantine coming back into Australia for that Caribbean trip, and it was actually something that they’d organize while you locked in your little shoebox hotel room.

00:16:31:18 – 00:16:54:01
Ben Tattersfield
They organize these remote social events each day and it was actually a lot of fun, like considering you can’t really socialize or anything to have. Yeah, remote wine tasting or remote comedy night or whatever it is. Yeah, that’s where like we just I just floated the idea like, hey, you know, would anyone like a company wide gaming night?

00:16:54:02 – 00:17:04:13
Ben Tattersfield
You know, we all jump on and have a bit of a competition on this game. So I guess what about a remote wine tasting? I will send you the wine and we’ll get whoever it is to come and talk about it. That’s awesome.

00:17:04:13 – 00:17:05:09
Ellen Bennett
Yeah, I love that.

00:17:05:09 – 00:17:35:03
Ben Tattersfield
So, yeah, that’s. I guess that’s the kind of culture where, you know, and part of what I enjoy is you’re not knocked back for having these suggestions or concepts and things as well. You know, those bigger companies that are really well established, they’ve got their kind of structure of that those ideas have to go through. Whereas. CUTTER it’s just, yeah, at the the weekly stand up with management or whatever, you could just be like, Hey, I’ve got this idea, let’s all jump on Zoom and drink together.

00:17:35:05 – 00:17:53:02
Ellen Bennett
And it’s I’ll go down to Target. I love that. Well, I would love to hear a little bit more about like how you got into tech, like education wise, what career path did you take and would you would you choose that again?

00:17:53:04 – 00:18:12:14
Ben Tattersfield
Like I saying, I really started just self-taught kind of in the marketing space initially. So just naturally even more content, like just taking photos, putting them up. Yeah, using call to action to try and drive customers. So it was nearly like a sales, like it was a sales goal initially. And even in the travel industry it was around that.

00:18:12:17 – 00:18:35:26
Ben Tattersfield
Yeah, I started doing those WordPress websites just on my own and that was just through like, yeah, YouTube videos, online tutorials, a lot of trial and error and but that’s kind of like my learning style is more of that learn by doing space. So that was really good. And then, yeah, getting into the start up saying there are those boot camps and bits and pieces.

00:18:35:26 – 00:18:59:20
Ben Tattersfield
So you know, I went along like, yeah, start ups, there’s a lot of networking involved, but you can actually learn a lot from that. Mentors as well was a huge piece for me. So having mentors that are specialists in a particular area, you know, working in the bike shop, I used to go out riding with all these really successful businessman and yeah, sounds bad, but they were literally stuck next to you for the next 2 hours.

00:18:59:22 – 00:19:21:21
Ben Tattersfield
So you have those conversations? Yeah, it’s like, you know, you have those conversations and I know these these mentor walks and things. Now that I kind of the same less forced to talk to you in that regard. Yeah, that the mentorship that I had was definitely like that was kind of the things that unlock those big leaps in learning is learning.

00:19:21:25 – 00:19:43:09
Ben Tattersfield
You know, having those people pass on their lessons can save you, especially for someone like me that works on that trial and era concept, it can save you a lot of the errands and kind of have those big leaps in your learning and understanding and stuff. And then I’ve done a couple of really good accelerated programs. So Hot Sports Accelerator was one based out of UK, actually here in Brisbane.

00:19:43:12 – 00:20:20:10
Ben Tattersfield
So it was a university based accelerator but with a huge amount of input from the HEIGHT program, which is an Israeli based accelerator. So it’s like a yeah, kind of like the this is how tech growth happens in Israel, which is super interesting and here’s how we do it, but from Australia, which is quite handy. And I also did another one that was a US based one, and I think I’m probably the only person that’s actually done both these these programs, which is super interesting because you get that US insight into product versus the European insight of product.

00:20:20:10 – 00:20:44:23
Ben Tattersfield
And I never thought of it being different. Like you, I just think of like how you build a company and scale its product and all of those sorts of things. You always think of them as the same, but you don’t realize that there’s also like a geographical influence into it as well. And living in Australia, both those systems were like, Yeah, you know, both of them are like, Man, you guys are on my island time compared to like how fast we move like that.

00:20:44:23 – 00:21:24:08
Ben Tattersfield
That was probably my big takeaway from both programs was just how slow we tend to move in Australia and put it down to like casual nature and things like, Yeah, I made some really good connections and friends from those programs and yeah, that was like their big thing. They’re like, Man, you guys are just so cruisy. Like with the is the pace of like, dude, I’m like stressed out with how fast were moving right now it’s like, now this, this is how you’ve got to go And the US one was really good yeah put me in front of the Silicon Valley product group a CPG, and they’re like, he’s like the founder Marty Cagan and

00:21:24:08 – 00:21:57:06
Ben Tattersfield
his books around, I think like Empowered and Empowered, inspired and loved the three books. So it’s basically about product management, sort of seen in management around product and then product marketing. So obviously from my background in marketing and that love of product, it was awesome. But just that, that insight and I guess again that self learning is like do do a program, you know, pick up the little bits out of that and then find the pieces that are or are of interest and go and do those.

00:21:57:09 – 00:22:26:26
Ben Tattersfield
Yeah. The other program that you did was it was called SEO School, it was run by the accounting firm BDO, and it was for scale up. So basically CEO founders that were their businesses were scaling up really quick and it got me into like really forced into the financial side of, of business and I hate that. But yeah, coming from like that kind of creative problem solving mindset to be like, here are the numbers, they must be done this way.

00:22:26:26 – 00:22:33:02
Ben Tattersfield
You can’t find a better way to do it, you know? Yeah, if it’s a pain in the ass, that’s just a pain in the ass because that’s how it is.

00:22:33:02 – 00:22:35:06
Ellen Bennett
Completely different way of thinking.

00:22:35:08 – 00:22:56:05
Ben Tattersfield
It was hard, but it also really helped me on the product side because so often the finance part is a stakeholder in a project. So their understanding from their side is being really useful in. Yeah, just understanding how tethered they are to the way things have to be that it’s even just the way you communicate stuff to them.

00:22:56:08 – 00:23:20:15
Ben Tattersfield
I change their and the moment they understand that, you understand a bit of their pain points and the way they work, then that stakeholder relationship gets so much easier rather than sort of typical thing I found is like our, you know, we have to go and deal with finance. We have to deal with accounts like they’re always painful because they don’t want to change stuff or anything like that.

00:23:20:15 – 00:23:53:07
Ben Tattersfield
But yeah, doing those kind of, I guess the informal courses going on Coursera and doing some of those basic finance ones, I found it really interesting to understand the it the tethers that these other elements of the business are held back by so that when you’re dealing with that particular area in a product, just acknowledging that with stakeholders can really go a long way towards that relationship and making the product development and that whole product management pace a lot smoother.

00:23:53:10 – 00:24:12:00
Ellen Bennett
Yeah, and the more people that can be on the same page, the smoother it’s going to be. And yeah, if you’re not like having a tug of war parallel with the people, that all should be on the same team then yeah, it’s just going to be that would, that would be like a really good learning. I think for most people in product ownership.

00:24:12:00 – 00:24:30:13
Ellen Bennett
So and I guess obviously your a lot of your education is a lot of like self stuff and learning from others in the industry. Is that something that you would recommend to people wanting to get into tech or would you recommend more of like a formalized education? How would you go about that?

00:24:30:14 – 00:24:54:06
Ben Tattersfield
Obviously doing these programs, you know, the The Hunt program was based out of University of Queensland. That was actually my first experience of university. You know, I left high school early to go and work in a bike shop. You know, the New Zealand system is like a points based high school system, and I gained that by selecting specific courses through year 12 that would let me get enough points to finish high school.

00:24:54:06 – 00:25:13:18
Ben Tattersfield
So I’ve sort of got enough points. I did some random programs like Art History just because it was an external test that I got enough points to to do. I never used that skillset at all ever again, at least actively. Maybe it did help on some design influencing stuff.

00:25:13:20 – 00:25:17:21
Ellen Bennett
To help me subconsciously draw upon that all the time.

00:25:17:23 – 00:25:47:01
Ben Tattersfield
But yeah, now that I think of that, maybe that’s for my at least for me, I’d definitely prefer that and would suggest the self-learning throughout university and those core structures that there’s sort of a contractual theme about, you know, people hire university grads because they’ve gone by proven that they can do turn up and do three years of work and do a reasonable enough job that you’ll get an outcome out of them.

00:25:47:03 – 00:26:09:05
Ben Tattersfield
I’m sort of of the opinion that the universities are there to teach you how to learn. Yeah, you pick up, particularly in engineering and some of those skill sets, you need to learn some of that content. Everyone learns very differently. You know, three years of sitting in a classroom listening to someone sounds like hell to me, no matter how interesting that person might be, it’s not not a reflection of them or the courses content.

00:26:09:05 – 00:26:39:04
Ben Tattersfield
It’s just that concept of turn up, sit, listen to lectures, that sort of thing. You know, I’m more of I watch a video and literally just do it as you go and pause the video, go back and look at that thing again. Like, yeah, that’s I speak with someone, you know, that me being in the room with the engineers, I probably annoyed the absolute crap out of them in the early days of me learning web development because they’ll be working anyway and I’ll sort of pop up.

00:26:39:04 – 00:27:06:10
Ben Tattersfield
I’m like, Hey, so tell me about pain or, you know, I’m trying to do this. What what would you do in this case? But, you know, I just follow. Yeah, read the UI. I follow a lot of Instagram pages and it’s I know it’s a weird source for like learning, but there’s actually some really good Instagram sort of pages and channels and people to follow on that where they’ll just you like all these quick little tutorials and, you know, UX UI design.

00:27:06:13 – 00:27:44:02
Ben Tattersfield
Just looking at some really good examples of good websites, you know, Behance and that sort of thing from that design inspiration site. Like, I’m definitely not a designer, I’d like to think I am, but I have also seen my designs when no other designer has been over them and they’re not great. Yeah, the design learning pace. I can’t see a huge benefit in like either option really in terms of like if you’re self taught, you’re probably going to do things a little bit differently, but the end result will probably be the same as if you went and paid a lot of money for a course.

00:27:44:05 – 00:28:06:26
Ben Tattersfield
You might get a nice piece of paper that side. But yeah, you know, the designers that the really good designers I’ve worked with, none of them have done any kind of degree that is relevant to their design. They’re generally very artsy sort of people, and they might have gone and done a B.A. in literature or, you know, something quite random.

00:28:06:28 – 00:28:17:27
Ben Tattersfield
They may have a degree, but it’s generally not been around anything to do with their actual design work. They’ve generally been just talented designers.

00:28:18:00 – 00:28:56:08
Ellen Bennett
Yeah, I think there’s some things that can’t necessarily be formally taught and that that get up and go and that initiative to learn things on the fly I think is such an important skill, especially now when a lot of formal like tertiary education is not keeping up with how quickly the industry is evolving. So I know speaking from experience, for me, I felt like when I graduated, a lot of the things that I learned in first year were already not obsolete, but had changed quite a bit for when I was starting to get into the design industry.

00:28:56:08 – 00:29:21:09
Ellen Bennett
So it’s it’s a really interesting topic, I think. And you’re right, and with a lot of tech jobs that like, for example, software engineering, anything to do with data analytics I think is really important to have that like tertiary education. But you’re anything like creative, that stuff you can you can learn on the fly quite, quite, not quite easily, but it can be done.

00:29:21:11 – 00:29:30:25
Ellen Bennett
And that ability to jump in is super important that I think a lot of designers need to have. So yeah, yeah, it’s super interesting. Yeah.

00:29:30:27 – 00:30:08:03
Ben Tattersfield
It’s quite interesting. Like in the, the software engineering space, they have this idea of co co working or the CO coding. So you basically you work together on a piece of code and you’ll have those discussions and things and I think that’s really at least from the UI UX design space for me that’s actually how I learned a lot as well was just basically attaching myself to someone in the company I was at who was doing that and just picking their brain and seeing what they were doing and asking questions and yeah, then it’s kind of like that mentorship concept, right?

00:30:08:03 – 00:30:26:26
Ben Tattersfield
Like without being that I see, at least in my head, I see the mentor as this like, you know, gray haired old man. That’s yeah, like most of the people that I’ve learned the most from the same age as me, where we’ve worked together just in a different area that I’ve been interested in.

00:30:26:26 – 00:30:44:13
Ellen Bennett
And it shows the importance of just asking questions like, you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t be. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You shouldn’t be like, Oh, that’s not my area. I can’t. I don’t want to get involved. Well, no, get in there, get curious, ask a bunch of questions. You never know what’s going to come out of it.

00:30:44:15 – 00:31:10:24
Ben Tattersfield
Yeah. Yeah. And that’s that. Like, especially from the product world, you’ve got to like this. This idea that you’ve got to be the domain expert, that there’s definitely a huge piece of that. That’s true. But I’ve also found that one of my strengths is that broader knowledge, particularly because like projects that you work on or product that you’re working on quite often doesn’t just sit in a single line of or a single area.

00:31:10:26 – 00:31:31:10
Ben Tattersfield
It it touches a lot of different things. So yeah, going and asking questions, spending that time with the people that you work with and learning what they do, how they do it, what their pain points are as well. It all really helps, I guess, building that skillset around product in general.

00:31:31:13 – 00:31:43:19
Ellen Bennett
And do you think that it’s kind of helped out with your current role of doing like the product ownership? You you’ve got that really good, broad general knowledge about all of the facets of a product.

00:31:43:22 – 00:32:03:22
Ben Tattersfield
Yeah, Yeah. And you know, at Coda we’ve got a really good UI UX designer sash and she’s just an absolute based in terms of like, I give her something expecting it to take a few weeks. Yeah, it’s a big scope. You know, we need to do some prototyping, a few different tests and things. You turn off in like two days.

00:32:03:25 – 00:32:28:13
Ben Tattersfield
I’m just like, How do you do that usually? How is that how are you doing that so quick? And she’s just the maestro at Figma, like everything’s so well organized. She’s not looking for stuff. She’s not losing that time. That keyboard shortcuts the absolute Queen has made, just looking at the UI, clicking on stuff and she’s just like, bang, bang, bang, two key clicks and it’s all done.

00:32:28:20 – 00:32:52:25
Ben Tattersfield
Yeah. And then and then that I’m like, Alright, show me that shortcut again. Like, how did you do that? And then like, that’s, that’s packed away my little knowledge right now. So when I have to do like a really quick wireframe to give to her as a scope then yeah. It’s, it takes me less time to do that now so I can give her more detailed stuff, but that’s from me asking questions to her about how she was doing that.

00:32:52:25 – 00:33:24:02
Ben Tattersfield
And then yeah, like those, those examples and even across engineering is yeah, just trying to understand how they do stuff, particularly when you’re writing tickets or that initial discovery phase. It just gives you really good insight from a product owners point of view to understand like actually there’s this whole task that might have been messed with and scoping this project had I not have known about how they set up the server for a new client.

00:33:24:04 – 00:33:54:27
Ben Tattersfield
Yeah, an example. They’re actually on a product that we’re working on recently was Yes. Setting up email addresses so that when the emails go out, the email goes out from the, the logged in users email address. As a product owner point of view, I would have completely missed that or just wrote the check it out. As you know, when I want to send an email, send an email, but then understanding the complexities in that and those subtasks, it sort of gave me a lot more information to be able to put into the ticket.

00:33:54:27 – 00:34:10:04
Ben Tattersfield
So the estimates for the business were a lot more accurate, and that just came from asking questions to the the DevOps engineers. Yeah, I guess that’s kind of the summary of my way of learning is just ask questions. All right.

00:34:10:10 – 00:34:11:24
Ellen Bennett
Yeah. Be noisy.

00:34:11:26 – 00:34:39:18
Ben Tattersfield
Yeah, yeah. Be annoying. Be that guy that just keeps sticking his nose into stuff that he’s not supposed to. But yeah, it really does help. Like the amount of stuff that I’ve picked up from just asking questions that I can go back to even a project two years in advance and like, oh, actually when I was working at this place, I used to sit next to this person who did this role and I used to do it that way.

00:34:39:20 – 00:34:45:28
Ben Tattersfield
And that actually becomes an entire solution for a project. Yeah, because.

00:34:45:28 – 00:34:46:09
Ellen Bennett
Yeah.

00:34:46:15 – 00:34:46:24
Ben Tattersfield
Yeah.

00:34:46:24 – 00:34:49:15
Ellen Bennett
It’s just simply chopping on people. Yeah.

00:34:49:17 – 00:34:56:04
Ben Tattersfield
Yeah, basically. Yeah, it’s fine. It’s fine. Yeah. The secret to success is just spying on other people.

00:34:56:06 – 00:35:03:22
Ellen Bennett
So. And what, what inspires you or, like, motivates you to keep working in product and tech?

00:35:03:25 – 00:35:23:09
Ben Tattersfield
Good question. I think my main inspiration actually comes from problems. I’m kind of a problem solver, which annoys my wife because sometimes she just wants to tell me a story. I’m like, Well, here’s a solution, I guess. Yeah, I really am that problem solver where I enjoy as we on the heart of the problem or the more complex the problem more.

00:35:23:09 – 00:35:47:10
Ben Tattersfield
I kind of like digging into it. Yeah, I guess that’s probably the easiest way to sum it up, to be honest. I know like everything in product is supposed to be around value adding, adding value. And for me, yeah, the way I get inspired, which leads to that value add is really around getting into the core problems as well.

00:35:47:12 – 00:36:00:22
Ben Tattersfield
You know, if I hear one of the engineers complaining about some had the way they do something or complaining and they’re like, Oh, we should really fix this sort of thing, that’s like, that’s where the ears prick up. I’m like, Oh, what’s that? It’s like, Yeah, what’s going on? It Yeah, I.

00:36:00:22 – 00:36:02:13
Ellen Bennett
Can get involved here.

00:36:02:15 – 00:36:19:23
Ben Tattersfield
And the same with the customers, you know, they come to us and it’s something that a lot of people who work in that like a customer or project customer project based area, you know, you get this whole big list of like, here’s the features we want to, oh, that sort of thing. And straight away I’m flipping it into like, All right, or what?

00:36:19:25 – 00:36:39:29
Ben Tattersfield
What problem do you think this is going to solve it? You know, there’s an exercise called Five Lies, which you sort of deep dive further into trying to establish what the core problem is. And then you work your way back up. And it might be that the feature they requested is actually the best solution. Yeah, that’s that’s really what inspires me.

00:36:39:29 – 00:37:06:09
Ben Tattersfield
And then seeing really cleanly executed product where you completely understand the problem that are solving. And it might be something like super, super simple. What’s an example? Oh, seen some big sheets the other day on Facebook or Instagram or something and it’s a fitted sheet and everyone knows how much of a pain in the ass they are. But it had handles and I was just like, That is awesome boy genius.

00:37:06:13 – 00:37:11:18
Ben Tattersfield
You’ve just put these handles on it so you can just like, grab the handle, stretch it around, jumped on.

00:37:11:21 – 00:37:18:16
Ellen Bennett
Now, has no one thought of that before? Yeah. And that’s when you know how simple is best sometimes. Yeah, I love that.

00:37:18:18 – 00:37:43:03
Ben Tattersfield
The same thing in software I like I’m at the moment. I’m in this big like time hacking time boxing growth hack kind of mindset. I’m trying to find like a system that works for me, and the best one I’ve actually found is just an old fashioned lying around somewhere, just an old fashioned diary. Basically, there’s all these fancy texts, these things now like motion and everything.

00:37:43:06 – 00:37:55:00
Ben Tattersfield
And this is just basically a book where you just write down like the most important thing you want to do today. And then the second most and you just have this list and then you just literally draw a box and off it goes.

00:37:55:03 – 00:38:17:20
Ellen Bennett
Mm hmm. Yeah. There’s something to be said. Yeah. About just keeping it simple and sometimes that’s just the best way to go about it. I know. I’m. I can. I can say I’ve got a bunch of notion boards at the moment. Things open on Trello, like Google Calendar, and sometimes I just. This is meant to be making me feel more organized, but it’s making me feel more overwhelmed.

00:38:17:20 – 00:38:19:16
Ellen Bennett
What needs to change you.

00:38:19:18 – 00:38:22:07
Ben Tattersfield
In Coffee Day? Just organizing your calendar.

00:38:22:09 – 00:38:41:06
Ellen Bennett
Exactly. Yeah, but I guess like going going on that vein. Ben I would love to hear like, obviously your big problem solver. I it’s the has there been, like, any road bumps that you’ve had throughout your career And like what what’s kind of made you put on the brakes a little bit.

00:38:41:09 – 00:39:00:10
Ben Tattersfield
Probably the biggest one for me would be I guess the burnout that I had with Sport Core. Actually, I like I loved working on products. I love being hands on like I’m the guy, you know, my wife goes and buys a new vacuum cleaner. 2 hours later, I’ve stripped it down into parts just to go and work out how it works.

00:39:00:12 – 00:39:18:06
Ben Tattersfield
And then, you know, I’m quite excited because I’ve created myself a new problem of like, how do I put this back together? But that I guess that passion that I have for being hands on. And then yeah, the ability to go and create my own business out of that, that was awesome. But then there’s that the other side of like, right.

00:39:18:06 – 00:39:38:25
Ben Tattersfield
And you got to get and raise capital. You’ve got to lead basically in terms of like the people management side of that coming from the product side and being customer focused, you do become quite empathetic, which then you sort of soak up all your employees problems and and everything around them. You try to do the best for them, so you end up taking on a huge amount.

00:39:38:25 – 00:40:07:13
Ben Tattersfield
And for me, that that sort of business and people management side ended up becoming my whole time on the business and then I couldn’t work on product. And then when the products started having problems, I try and spend some time on that and then some other stuff would slip and you just end up like basically trying to do so much, not achieving anything and just being absolutely knackered.

00:40:07:15 – 00:40:31:07
Ben Tattersfield
And that was really my big problem. And that was where after like I’d sit this goal of, you know, I close out the capital raise, I get the venture capital funding in and launch the product. And I went over to the Caribbean, launch the product that went amazingly well, considering all the limitations, like our product was also designed to be operated during a major tournament by 2 to 3 people.

00:40:31:09 – 00:40:52:05
Ben Tattersfield
Because of the costs, we could only send one. So I just I just went over there by myself, and the other guys were remote, so the workload through that period was just massive. And then because I was remote, some of the problems we’re having, I couldn’t help or be involved in too much. Yeah, that was really probably the hardest thing.

00:40:52:05 – 00:41:26:10
Ben Tattersfield
Careerwise for me was hitting weird when. I hit the goal I wanted to hit, but it absolutely cooked me so I really didn’t need to take. And then being stuck in quarantine. Yeah, he’s a shoe box. Similar for two weeks. That doesn’t much either on the mental health space. But yeah, coming out of that trip I was just burnt out, really not enjoying my own business, which is kind of sad because you’ve got the ability to create how you want to and because I was trying to do so much and spreading my time so thin.

00:41:26:12 – 00:41:47:25
Ben Tattersfield
Yeah, I just wasn’t in a good place, which is where I took that time off. I took I didn’t know what I took off. My plan was to take three months. I think I might have lasted a month before I got super bored and then saw the Sea Games job. But yeah, for me that that was really the biggest hurdle, was trying to work out what I wanted to do with like as a career.

00:41:47:28 – 00:42:02:13
Ellen Bennett
Yeah, a lot of people hit that point where they’re like, I just need to chill for a second and really focus on where I want to go from here. So sounds like that quarantine time was your refocused time.

00:42:02:15 – 00:42:07:13
Ben Tattersfield
Quarantine was terrible, actually. I definitely, definitely don’t record the day after quarantine.

00:42:07:15 – 00:42:11:15
Ellen Bennett
You know, And I don’t think I don’t I can’t see that happening.

00:42:11:17 – 00:42:37:17
Ben Tattersfield
Yeah, Yeah. The time after, like spending the time with the family, getting that time to just. Yeah. Work out what it is that you’re not actually happy about. And for me, I actually originally thought I was really happy being CEO. And then I realized that was the part that was making me miserable. I just wanted to put me in a room with some engineers and let us just go and solve some problems.

00:42:37:19 – 00:43:03:01
Ben Tattersfield
So that was yeah, basically where I flipped it back around and then the AB games job popped up and yeah, it was a big pay drop. It was quite daunting going back into just being an employee of a big company, but it was what I wanted to do. I sort of I wrote that down as being a Yeah, a opportunity to go and reshape myself back into products.

00:43:03:01 – 00:43:22:18
Ben Tattersfield
And I’m super lucky that my manager there, Michelle, was like, amazing. She helped iron out my. Yeah. When you come from your own company, you got to do what you want, right? You decide you’re going to do this. Michelle was quite patient with me like on my little tangents there where I’m like, No, we’re not going to do this.

00:43:22:18 – 00:43:24:06
Ben Tattersfield
And she’s like, Nope.

00:43:24:09 – 00:43:24:28
Ellen Bennett
Back up.

00:43:25:00 – 00:43:53:04
Ben Tattersfield
Back this way. The focus on this problem, not that one. Yeah, that, that reset was I guess the solution to that, that what for me has been the biggest problem in my career was yeah. Sort of accidental only taking myself off the path of what I really enjoyed. And yeah, basically getting to that point where you just really don’t enjoy the whole thing and then yeah, taking that time out to so yeah, reset and Right.

00:43:53:06 – 00:44:01:26
Ben Tattersfield
What do I need to do to get back on to where I want to be and yeah, that’s really how I did it.

00:44:01:28 – 00:44:30:00
Ellen Bennett
Yeah. And now, now I just kicking goals and yeah, I think, I think it’s really helpful to listen to your gut when you’re going through that kind of those kinds of like, Oh, I should be enjoying this, but I’m not. And what does that mean? Yeah, everyone. Everyone has those times in their career where I’m like, Wait, you just feel like you are torn between what you thought this would look like and then what it actually does look like in reality.

00:44:30:00 – 00:44:47:15
Ellen Bennett
So yeah. And now and now you’re just like kicking all these goals with Coda, which is so exciting. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks so much for hopping on an episode with us. Ben I really, really enjoyed having a chat with you and learned a lot. So yes. Thank you so, so much.

00:44:47:17 – 00:44:48:06
Ben Tattersfield
No worries.