Life and work with Kaye Symington
In our latest conversation on life and work, we talk to Kaye Symington, Co-founder of Paved with Gold. Kaye has been cheering kesero on since it was just an idea.
Kaye runs a very cool crowdfunding and marketing agency based in Glasgow and London.
We love sharing stories of people who have followed their passions, especially when they help others do the same!
Tell us about your work
I run marketing and crowdfunding agency Paved With Gold with my co-founder Richard Ling. Together we work on a variety of projects; running events for printmakers (I run Glasgow Print Fair in my spare time), creating content strategies for scale-ups, managing photo and video shoots, building communities around maker resources and lots of other exciting things. We’ve been supporting people with their crowdfunding projects since 2012, and are really passionate about sharing the things we’ve learned along the way, so we do a lot of teaching and workshops too.
What led you to start your business?
Flexibility! Having the space to choose the kind of work that we wanted to do, the people that we wanted to work with and the option to work wherever and whenever we wanted. We have a band of freelancers that we collaborate on projects with, and it’s always so nice to see them and help them work on good things too.
A typical week
What is “typical” anymore - honestly 2020, huh?!? I have been very fortunate to have been kept very busy during lockdown. So my husband and I have been doing a lovely working juggle, each doing half days to look after our brilliant wee boy.
Pre-COVID times I can usually be found working from our wee studio in central Glasgow, which I share with Jane from Maraid (and my Glasgow Print Fair Partner) and Helen Voce.
The best part of my week
Absolutely, spending time with my clients is my favourite part of the week. I love hearing what they are working on, chatting through any issues they might be having. It’s funny how quite often we’re catching up to help them with branding or a social media strategy but we end up talking through other issues in their business, we’ve been doing this so long there’s very rarely an issue that we haven’t come across.
Skills that would help me
Business-wise being able to tap into a network of photographers or designers would be so useful, we’ve built up a fair resource between here and London but more of that is always good!
Self-care for me is…
Right now it means making time to just stop. Doing something just for myself like going for a cycle or reading a book or watching something Netflix.
