Laravel Developer-Turned-Educator. The Artisan of the Day Is Pete Heslop.
Pete Heslop has lived multiple lives in the tech industry: developer, founder, agency leader, and now the author of Laravel for the Rest of Us, a book written for anyone who sits in a technical meeting and quietly hopes no one asks them to define a queue or explain why caching suddenly broke something.
Pete has been part of the Laravel world since the early days. He ran a Laravel agency before he ever stopped writing code. The book exists because he spent years explaining Laravel concepts to clients, managers, CTOs who used other stacks, and even his own family, who still struggle to explain what he actually does for work.
If you want to know more about Pete’s book and career path, check out this interview by Laravel’s own Josh Cirre.
A Laravel Blog Post That Grew Into Something Real
The book started as a blog post he titled Laravel for Everyone. It was meant to be a glossary for non-technical people. The more he wrote, the bigger the idea became. Each section grew to include not only the framework but the full ecosystem: Laravel Nova, Horizon, Filament, Spark, Forge, Cloud.
The list kept growing until it stopped looking like a blog and started looking like something that deserved a physical spine.
The title arrived during a walk to a Laracon after-party. Pete asked Aaron Francis whether Laravel for Everyone or Laravel for Everybody sounded better. Aaron told him neither worked and offered a new title. That suggestion stuck, and from that moment, the project had its name.
From Developer to Founder and Everything in Between
Pete founded Steadfast Collective 10 years ago. Halfway through that journey, his team asked him to stop writing code and focus on sales and leadership. He agreed without hesitation. He hired people who were better developers than he ever claimed to be, and he learned to guide projects rather than commit to them.
Even though he writes very little code today, he stays close enough to the work to understand what has changed. During the writing process, his team corrected him more than once. Some of the methods and workflows he relied on years ago have been replaced, and he had to relearn parts of the ecosystem while writing a book about it.
Laravel From His Perspective
Pete discovered Laravel after working with smaller frameworks like Fat-Free. As soon as he saw Eloquent, he realized how much time he could save. He leaned into the ecosystem fully, adopted Laravel across the agency, and bought lifetime access to Laracasts because Jeffrey Way was the person who taught him to code during the early Nettuts days.
He believes Laravel’s real strength is that it removes the feeling of being trapped. Clients are not locked into one agency. If they want to move to another Laravel partner, there are hundreds of agencies willing to take over. That pressure forces everyone to maintain higher standards, and clients benefit from that transparency.
Laravel Community Work
Steadfast Collective specializes in community platforms. That niche overlaps naturally with Laravel’s philosophy of community-driven development. Pete is involved in efforts like Laravel London, and he continues to stay engaged in the ecosystem, even though he rarely touches code.
The book is another form of participation. It helps build a shared language between developers and the people who depend on them. And it opens the door for more people to understand the framework that shaped his entire career.
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Answer Taylor's questions at [laravel.com/stories](https://laravel.com/stories).
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