30FG Business Podcast for Designers

This week we are privledged to have Architect Mark R LePage of FiveCat Studio also the host of the Entrepreneur Architect with us to discuss a topic that is relevant and important to anyone wanting to own a business. This interview will give creative business owners and freelancers some practical insights into the difference between being a creative and being the owner of a business that provides creative services. It’s common knowledge that most business fail. Several might make it through the first year, about half might make it through the second, and every year after that it seems, the number of people who stay in business just keeps on halving. This is true for everybody, including creatives. The question is, why is that? We have all the information we need, a lot of it for free, about how to start and run a business. On Amazon alone right now there are OVER 2 million books listed under the term “business”. We come from fortunate educated backgrounds and many of us have worked for successful companies. Why then do so many people fail, and what are we to do about it? My hunch, and I base this on personal experience, is that as creatives, almost all of us at some time reach a point where we start thinking, “Hey, I’m really good at my job, I don’t need this employer, I’m certain I could be much more successful financially if I worked for myself.” It’s at that point that they miss an extremely important distinction.. Being talented and successful creatively, does NOT qualify you one bit to run a business. This discussion is for the creative who is contemplating starting their own practice. They’ve most likely been working under someone else’s wing for a few years and are feeling the urge to get out on their own, probably for the flexibility and the dream of being their own boss and being in control of their finances. I admire them and encourage each one to do what their heart tells them, but before they go, this interview will arm them not only with a few basic truths, but some excellent ideas of what to do next to improve their knowledge and chances of success.  

PART ONE (EP30) - The advantages and disadvantages of the conventional business model relationship between designers and contractors PART TWO (THIS EPISODE) - Alternative models for delivering a project and sharing in the profits by choosing and negotiating with the right kinds of contractors. Patrick has been building his architectural practice for six years after a similar period working on building sites and later as a draftsman. Next year he turns 40. He now has two young children and is asking himself the difficult questions about where to head next. Where will he be in the next 10 years as a business owner and what will that look like? What can he put in place now to ensure a comfortable and profitable future? In this interview we explore the benefits and drawbacks of the “design only”, and “design and construct” frameworks of being a design business owner. Ultimately, can designers and contractors find a way to reciprocate/remunerate each other through the way projects are delivered and the way project costs are structured? Perhaps the grass is always greener but there is something appealing from both sides of the fence in the conversation about the advantages of offering design services vs, offering design services and in house construction capabilities as well. While contractors take on a larger proportion of the risk associated with a project, and therefore claim to be entitled to a greater share of the proceeds, designers create construction value, build trust and are often responsible for “making the sale” in the first place. So why does it so often seem that our contracting cousins often seem to be profiting so much more than us on each project? How is the daily charge out rate for a labourer double or even triple that of a designer? We are no more or less important than each other in delivering a project. Obviously, the completed built forms of a project being the tangible end product, are where most of the value lies in the eyes of the client. The fees we’re able to charge are so often less reflective of the experience, refined skills and time spent on fulfilling that role, as they are in balance with the construction cost of what we design and what clients might be willing to pay for our “intangible” product. We designers are merely the “guides” that show them the way. Or are we? After several years of being a “guide” many of us might be left wondering whether we’ve drawn the short straw. Is there another way to approach this? Can we structure the framework between ourselves, the contractor and the client in order to enjoy a greater share of the rewards? How might this change the way we are involved? Eg. Supplying certain materials, charging a contractor a support fee for the time required to attend to queries, attend site etc. In Part One of this interview, we shed some light on the advantages and disadvantages of the existing conventional business models. In Part Two, we explore ideas about the opportunities for designers to increase their profit share of any given project, without stepping over ethical lines, manipulating the market or adversely affecting working relationships.

Patrick has been building his architectural practice for six years after several years. Next year he turns 40. He now has two young children and is asking himself the difficult questions about where to head next. Where will he be in the next 10 years as a business owner and what will that look like? In this interview we explore the benefits and drawbacks of the “design only”, and “design and construct” frameworks of being a design business owner. Ultimately, can designers and contractors find a way to reciprocate/remunerate each other through the way projects are delivered and the way project costs are structured? Perhaps the grass is always greener but there is something appealing from both sides of the fence in the conversation about the advantages of offering design services vs, offering design services and in house construction capabilities as well. While contractors take on a larger proportion of the risk associated with a project, and therefore claim to be entitled to a greater share of the proceeds, designers create construction value, build trust and are often responsible for “making the sale” in the first place. So why does it so often seem that our contracting cousins often seem to be profiting so much more than us on each project? How is the daily charge out rate for a labourer double or even triple that of a designer? We are no more or less important than each other in delivering a project. Obviously, the completed built forms of a project being the tangible end product, are where most of the value lies in the eyes of the client. The fees we’re able to charge are so often less reflective of the experience, refined skills and time spent on fulfilling that role, as they are in balance with the construction cost of what we design and what clients might be willing to pay for our “intangible” product. We designers are merely the “guides” that show them the way. Or are we? After several years of being a “guide” many of us might be left wondering whether we’ve drawn the short straw. Is there another way to approach this? Can we structure the framework between ourselves, the contractor and the client in order to enjoy a greater share of the rewards? How might this change the way we are involved? Eg. Supplying certain materials, charging a contractor a support fee for the time required to attend to queries, attend site etc. In Part One of this interview, we shed some light on the advantages and disadvantages of the existing conventional business models. In Part Two, we explore ideas about the opportunities for designers to increase their profit share of any given project, without stepping over ethical lines, manipulating the market or adversely affecting working relationships.  

For the small business owner or freelancer, understanding whether you’re a freelancer or an entrepreneur is probably the single most important distinction that needs to be made, it affects every single decision that you will make for your business. It's worth taking a closer look because by understanding the way each think can allow you to improve your business in different ways. These two ways of framing the way your business works sit at opposite ends of the playing field. While it is definitely possible to for a freelancer to be a little entrepreneurial, and for an entrepreneur to be a something of a freelancer at times, if you spend too much time away from your goal out in the middle of the field, except by some chance of luck, you’re simply too far away to consistently score goals. And besides that it just gets downright confusing for you and those you try to do business with. Of course it’s very common for people to experiment between the two or even switch between the two across the course of their careers and that’s pretty healthy. An entrepreneur might dabble in consulting, or give presentations at a conference where they’re being paid by the hour, for example. A freelancer might set up a web page to sell prints of their work or a book that they’ve written that customers simply download. If you stick around to the end of the interview, you’ll have the chance to hear the story of how another fellow designer is taking steps to change direction in their career without losing their creative identity. We talk about the advantages and the disadvantages of being a freelancer as well as the benefits and challenges of taking the entrepreneurial path.  

Cash flow, or lack of it, is possibly the single most important aspect of surviving in business. Without it, everything stops. For the freelancer or small business, cash flow is the only way to enjoy any sense of stability, to be able to safeguard against or plan for the future, and to be able to measure the success of your business or talk to your bank manager about taking a loan some day. Despite this, we all know it’s something which almost all designers, from freelancers to established design firms continually struggle with. Why is that? Certainly a starting point may be to recognize designers and consultants as providers of a service. This differs from people who provide a product, in the first instance because consumers pay for products up front, but also because products tend to be a fixed, predetermined outcome. When you’re a service provider, particularly when you’re providing a service that is largely based on subjective judgement, dealing with intangible things, it’s expected that you will be paid, once your client is satisfied with the result, and all aspects of your agreed scope have been completed. Obviously there are many different ways of thinking about cash flow so we won’t be able to cover them all, besides we probably don’t have all the answers anyway. What we do have are our own experiences on this topic.  

I'm just about to leave my job for the second time so this is a solo episode in which I'm going to share with you a few chapters from my own story. First I want to tell you about my last business, which was a Landscape Architecture Practice I attempted to set up in Penang Malaysia. I don't have the time to explain all the details but you'll get a good idea of how it started and how it failed. I talk about all the poor decisions I made while I was there and how I ended up losing $30,000 in my first year. After that terrible fall, I knew I had to get back on my feet again and that it wouldn't be easy. Although I have taken a job for a while I think deep down I've always known that building my own business was the only way I would ever really be able to dig myself out the hole I was in. That took a lot of hard work so I’m also going to share with you exactly what my training regime was that helped me recover and reinvent myself. In this episode I also share what I’ve done to apply all the new knowledge and skills I now have from that recovery period in order to replace my current day job and my income with a new business framework. This new framework is presenting new opportunities for business and additional streams of income every single day.  Most importantly my new business allows me to work from anywhere, which has been a career dream of mine for over a decade.  

In this interview we're exploring the idea of the Inflatable Design Team, a framework that enables your practice, even if you're a freelancer, to expand and contract depending on the scope and scale of a project.  As the list of demands on the built environment grows and the complexity of our cities slowly multiplies it is very rare these days that any one design discipline is ever able to understand and deliver a holistic outcome for almost any project. This has given rise to a wave of collaborative design projects and design processes that see freelancers and small design practices coming together to tackle complex projects. Further to that the interests, ideas and even involvement of end-users in the design process is becoming increasingly commonplace too; the notion of “co-design” in which consultants from multiple disciplines along with actual end users, work together to achieve a meaningful outcome, is also on the rise. What does this mean for the design community? How does it affect our understanding of what a design practice is or could be? From a creative, problem solving perspective this all makes absolute sense, the more relevant minds you have working towards a solution, the more meaningful and relevant should be the response. From a business perspective however, this mode of operation could be littered with glitches and potential problems. Who retains control over each project? How do you keep track of everyone? How do you manage work ethic, productivity and reliability when few of the people working on your project are actually from your own company? Fortunately our guest takes all of these into consideration and offers you his thoughful perspective on the subject.

Getting new clients can be difficult, particularly if you don’t have any demonstrated experience in the particular area of design that you’re hoping to be involved in. This is a problem that all designers face at some time or another, whether it’s the freelancer looking for their first gig, or a well established design firm that wants to shift their focus, brand and reputation to another area of the market altogether. In this interview you'll get to spend some time with Andrew Boyne, a freelance architect who shares his refreshing down-to-earth perspective on how to get yourself that first gig (or early gigs). We talk about his own experiences as well as possible approaches you could try to either gain the trust of a potential client to boost your chances of them giving you a break, or how you might analyze the objections the same client might have in order to determine a course of action to overcome them.

For many designers, the decision to become eg. an architect was a selection made from a narrow understanding of the range of career opportunities that exist in the world. In the “bucket” of career possibilities were the more well known occupations like doctor, lawyer, accountant, vet, psychologist and so on. With the pressure from family and probably society as a whole, and being the creative type that you’d always known yourself to be, you jumped head first into a four or five year university course that would lead you to your destination. Fast forward to today. Is this career what you thought it was going to be? Have you moved from firm to firm, hoping to be working on the kinds of projects you’re truly passionate about and always envisioned you were really cut out for but they never came? Are you now working for yourself but finding something is still niggling at you.. Are you happy? Today's guest is a fantastic example of how you can turn things around, stay positive and be excited about a new future.  Christina Canters was recently a registered architect.  She went through uni, she did her masters and she subsequently  studied and did what needed to be done in order to be registered with the board of architecture.  As you will hear in this interview though, a few years into her new career, she started to feel, started to realize and accept, that perhaps she didn’t actually enjoy the realities of her chosen profession, of being an architect, she started to realize that despite her love of architecture and design, the actual tasks and day to day activity of being in her profession, of being an architect, wasn’t actually her. In this interview you will have the chance to listen to how Christina changed direction in her career by identifying and using all the skills she had gained in her profession and focusing them on what really makes her happy. We talk about what it was like to step away from the profession she once loved, about how the idea for her new direction came to her and how she learned all the new skills she now has that have launched her into a whole new career trajectory.    If you stick around to the end of the interview, you’ll hear the one thing Christina has started doing differently this year that ha had a huge impact on where she is today.  

This week Shah is in downtown Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon on a fact finding mission for his new remote design business. The original intention on this trip was to meet up with local creatives and put together an interview, but, well, that never quite happened and instead he talks through some of the things right at the front of his mind at the moment, setting goals and developing a strategy to achieve them, though not in those words. In this solo broadcast Shah re-frames what it means to develop a strategy and make plans for your business in a way that is a lot more interesting, much more exciting and inherently aimed at doing things differently. Forget about your business plan, your strategic plan and three year projections, in this episode we're going to help you come up with something far more cunning in just five steps. And possibly six - if you stay until the end of the interview you will also learn the one unusual practice Shah employs to test if his plan is going to work and to help him do away with written business plans altogether. This discussion is for the creative who feels that sometimes the kind of work they're doing "on" their business is the kind of stuff they think they're supposed to be doing. For those of you who would like an alternative way of planning for the coming months, this episode will surely give you a few ideas.

We never know what life is going to throw at us, whether it affects our business, our personal life or any of the spaces we move through. Like a game of snakes and ladders, with a bit of luck you might roll the right number and rapidly bypass a lot of the toil and effort of a steady progression. On the other hand, as luck might have it, the complete opposite might happen and you find yourself back where you started. Either way you can never be in complete control of the outcome. That's not to say you shouldn't try. The point of this analogy is not so much about luck, but about persistence. Many people who have enjoyed success of any kind will agree that you “make your own luck”. It’s a combination of hard work, persistence and putting yourself in the right place at the right time. Theoretically, if you just keep rolling the dice you will eventually win at snakes and ladders, but a sure way to fail is to stop rolling altogether. As creatives we invest a lot of time in our craft, on the one hand because we’re passionate about it and want to improve and immerse ourselves in our industry, on the other, because being acknowledged or recognized for our skill, and in turn being paid well, requires us to accrue and demonstrate experience. Put simply, people who show they have experience are more likely to climb the ladder to more significant projects and better rewards. In this interview, you will learn Jon’s approach of doing the work up front to find new clients or move into new markets. We also discuss how he published half a dozen books, built a contact list of over 35000 leads and how they affect his business. Jon is certainly unlike anyone I’ve ever met, he thinks differently, he makes decisions with complete clarity and he is absolutely without fear of failure, that is, he’s not afraid at all of getting things wrong, admitting them matter of factly, and moving on. He is wholly and absolutely passionate about what he does to the exclusion of all else. If you’d like to just hear the way an ambitious entrepreneur thinks and speaks about his business and how he got to where he is, stay tuned I really think you’ll get something out of this conversation.

Our world abounds in opportunity. More than ever before we have the chance to adopt multiple identities, move in multiple circles and find multiple platforms from which to pursue the numerous interests and passions we develop both in our work, and personal lives. Of course the most obvious downside to all this is that it means we can make ourselves extremely busy, extremely quickly and find that we quite literally don’t have enough time to do everything we’d like to! A somewhat traditional approach to succeeding in your work life and in business is that you should just focus on doing one thing at a time and be sure to do it well. There is definitely a lot of truth in this (think Jiro loves Sushi), but what if the practice you’ve been building is starting to do well, so well that it’s creating opportunities for you to do other things. And what if, quite frankly, you don’t actually want to do just one thing, because there are lots of other ideas on your list that you’d like to try as well? Our guests Leah Dent and Angela Mitchell have been doing just that under the umbrella of their well known creative practice, Studio Bomba. This discussion is for the creative who not only has a lot of ideas for making a living, but would like to see more than one of them through, perhaps to start multiple side projects or additional revenue streams that could later blossom into independent operations that either feed each other or can be sold off down the track. It may even be a wise strategic decision to protect yourself from downturns, and make sure you’re not relying on just a single source of income.  What does that look like? How do things change, and above all, how can you cope with all the excitement and stress?!

Let’s be honest, TV and the movies have probably given the legal professions a pretty unfortunate reputation as the kind of people you’ll hopefully never have to deal with. On the one side they are perceived as fix it men, to be called upon to help you get out of trouble. On the other, a letter in the post from one of these guys could turn your whole life sour for weeks or even longer. Looming above either is the unknown subject of cost, the infamous time-charge in 6 minute increments, and the fear of a long and drawn out saga of that may never end and could ruin your business and even your life. Is any of this even true? Is any of it relevant to us? Does anyone even know what solicitors do all day? Why should we even care? In this interview with Michael Tucak, Principal Lawyer and Director of Creative Legal, you'll have the opportunity to learn which facets of the legal system are relevant to a typical freelance or small business practice. We'll get some basic definitions down and give you an easy to understand run down of how the law can protect you and your creative business, and the kinds of things you should be doing in order to make that happen. Surprisingly, none of it is nearly as scary as you think! Creative Legal are a progressive legal practice that specialise in representing and helping creative business owners, freelancers, musicians and startups get off to the right start by having the right documents and legal matters in order to prevent bad things happening later. I met Michael just before he was starting his 30 minute slots of free legal advice as part of his P.U.L.P (Pop-Up Legal Practice) initiative at Spacecubed.  

Monica Palmer is in a state of transititon, she loves her design work and the people she works with but she knows there are vast opportunities waiting for her far beyond her home town of Perth. With an upcoming trip to the United States, Mon is starting to experiment with ideas around working remotely and using the internet as a vehicle to derive an income online. This week's podcast is really about exploring alternative ways for your creativity to manifest itself in business. As each of us gets further into their creative careers the hope is that we’ll refine our craft, attract better clients, more challenging projects and produce better work. Our creative skills reach new heights, our network stretches farther and wider and we’re hungry for more. But what if one day, for any number of reasons you wake up and for the first time you’re just not as excited about what it is you do, as you were before? What if you feel a little bit, trapped, like you’re just repeating the same thing over and over and you really want to try something different but you don’t know what? What if your patience with the whims of your clients who never know what they want until they’ve seen it, just seems to be drying up a little bit? Even though you’re good at what you do, what if you feel like you just don’t want to do this anymore? If you decide to change direction in your career, a part of you must be screaming, wouldn’t it be a shame to just throw it all away? All the time you’ve spent building up experience, such an incredible portfolio, isn’t this who you are and what you do? Perhaps it is, but that doesn’t mean it’s a waste. Lets share some ways that you can keep your creative flare, your love for design while applying the lessons and experiences you’ve learnt from the past.

Different people have different levels of tolerance toward certain tasks. Some people are tidy freaks, they love filing, there is a place for everything and everything must go in its place. Some are ok with numbers when it comes to preparing invoices, but keeping track of expenses, taxes and cash flow is a disaster zone. Some people are OK with working through general IT issues, others can waste time and infuriating mental energy trying to stop the rainbow wheel from spinning. Deb Flanagan is an interior designer based in Brisbane operating as a sole trader under the name of Debstudio and is just about to cross the line into her 5th year in full-time self employment. In this interview, we talk about outsourcing certain aspects of your business such as book keeping, accounting, marketing and IT, all of which go hand in hand with the capacity to grow and create the opportunity to focus more of your energy where you need it most. In this interview you’ll discover not only the reasons why you should consider seeking external help, but the costs of doing so, the steps you can take to find the right person, and Deb shares one of her simple productivity tips that helps her get things done each and every day.  

In this episode, the host of the 30 Foot Gorilla Podcast, Shah Turner has decided to record a video of himself to celebrate the new year and the support of podcast since it began less than two months ago. This year is announced as the Year to Connect with other Creatives.

Emma B is a stylist and event planner who occupies something of a "behind-the-scenes" role in the production of advertising and marketing material for magazines, events and commercial campaigns. She has been a fashion blogger and part-time freelancer for over 10 years and has now been freelancing full-time for the past year. In this interview Emma shares what she has learnt about determining the cost of providing your services to your clients. As people who are paid for our creativity, we are often working with people who may not necessarily understand exactly what is involved with what we do, our history of experience, training, experimentation and refinement of our skills. Creativity is a difficult thing to quantify; what makes one painting multiple times more “valuable” ($) than another, when physically they are identical in material, size and time taken to produce? In many ways, creative value is in the eye of the beholder, in other ways, that is far from the truth. How then, can a creative professional possibly learn to position themselves in terms of the value of their ideas; how do you know if what you do is “worth” anything to anyone? And that’s just a third of the puzzle, the next part is recognizing what is involved in producing the work that you do, just how much it costs to get the final product into the hands, eyes or ears of your paying clients. With your overheads (overheads? What is overheads?) time, materials etc; how can you make sure you can put food on the table. Even moreso, a car in the garage and a roof over your head as well, just like everyone else seems to be doing. Finally, you need to look your customer right in the eyes and tell them confidently and matter-of-factly the cost of the work that you can produce for them. For many, this is the single most difficult moment of all.

Thom Perry is a highly accomplished photographer based in Perth who works in the stressful, unexpectedly emotional, often contrived and generally strange world of advertising and commercial image making . Thom is one of those guys is at that time in his career which many of us reach somewhere between 5-10years into our craft when we know more or less technically what we’re doing and are now searching deeper and wider to find what really separates from our peers both in our own eyes, and the eyes of others. Today we’re talking about something that I think we all do from time to time and that is comparing ourselves to others in our field, or even to people in other fields. It’s a pretty normal thing to do when you’re working for yourself, you need some kind of measure to gauge where you’re at, both for yourself and for your dealings with your clients.   If you’ve ever caught yourself doing this, you’ll know that it can leave you with a mixed array of feelings from jealousy, impatience, even desperation then bundled with joy, inspiration and elation. We talk about the impact this can have on both your practice and your business and how you might turn something time consuming and negative, into something positive and beneficial.   

Social Media is now a household name but perhaps its true meaning, usefulness and implications is still largely misunderstood and constantly changing. What does this mean for the creative freelancer? Is that different from how an established creative firm could make best use of social media? Is it important to be selective about which on they use and how they use it, rather than launching themselves more or less blindly into scheduling posts onto Facebook with no real focus just because everyone else is? Nic Granleese is our guest, an architectural photographer based in Melbourne with over 10,000 followers on Twitter and a wealth of experience in this area. Nic has a way of explaining things that really makes this subject easy to understand that will help you to frame your thoughts about social media and the value it can bring to your business. In this interview we talk about the various social media platforms out there, how to decide which one your should pursue and the three step strategy Nic himself employs to build and maintain his online following. Towards the end of the interview we also talk about Nic’s amazing video series which deals websites for creatives, in particular, architects, though none-theless relevant to all of us.

Matt Woods is a freelance interior designer based in Sydney. In this interview you’ll have the chance to listen to Matt’s experiences of entering his work into awards in order to boost his reputation and prospects for keeping the work flowing in. We talk about the benefits of going down this path as well as some of the surprises and pitfalls you need to be aware of. Matt walks us step-by-step through the typical process you can expect if you decide to enter your work and just how long it can take to really feel the rewards.   If you have ever considered submitting your work for awards, or would like to have more success, you'll find this an interesting conversation to be a part of.

Employee empowerment can be defined in a number of ways but generally refers to the process of allowing employees to have input and control over their work, and the ability to openly share suggestions and ideas about their work and the organization as a whole. Empowered employees are committed, loyal and conscientious. They are eager to share ideas and can serve as strong ambassadors for their organizations. Greg Grabasch is the principal of UDLA, a group of landscape architects and urban designers who work with communities to help them realize a better environment for living. Despite his amazing growth and success, Greg is an incredibly humble but at the same time totally inspiring guy, who’s journey as a landscape architect offers all of us a lot to think about, no matter what creative field you find yourself in. Greg turns almost every traditional approach not only to design but to doing business aswell, completely on its head. He speaks with a sense of wisdom that is startlingly simple, yet so deeply relevant and actually meaningful that I’m beginning to wonder if the rest of us really do complicate things un-necessarily sometimes.   In this interview we talk about the kinds of things that cultivate employee empowerment, about knowledge sharing, awarding responsibility, and about letting go. Whether you have your own employees, are working in a team, or starting to build one or simply love listening to different ways of going about your business altogether, stay tuned because I know you’re going to find this conversation tremendously thought provoking, and more than likely an affirmation of what you probably already know and feel as a person and as a professional.  

Nic Brunsdon is a practicing architect and co-founder of a firm called Post, he lectures in architecture at Curtin university, both of these offer him the stability he needs to roll the dice on his entrepreneurial experiments, Spacemarket being the biggest one, a not-for-profit organization of which he is the Director.  In this interview you’ll discover the challenges our guest has given himself in architecture, business and policy making and the entrepreneurial mindset he’s adopted to take them on. While it hasn’t necessarily been a smooth road, Nic has always known it was going to be tough, and that certainly doesn’t stop him. Here is a guy that is not only defining solutions for bigger picture problems but having a real go at taking action on the issues that are important to him and creating opportunities to feed into his business.

  Kristy Haines, our fantastic guest who has been sharing as much as she can to help you get things right for your business right from the startjust kept coming at me with more and more brilliant information to the point that I had to divide her interview into two. This is the second part of that interview and is equally loaded with helpful information and great ideas for helping you get set for success.

If you’re thinking about starting your own freelance practice, or even if you’re already a couple of years in, I highly recommend you tune in to this one. Kristy Haines is a Digital Designer based in Perth. During her time as an employee, Kristy had surrounded herself with successful freelancers and business owners and their influence on her is absolutely tangible. Having just signed up for a mortgage and only four months into full-time freelancing, Kristy was motivated to get things absolutely right and in place before putting so much as a toe in the water of full time self employment. Getting things right from the start is an understatement - Here is a girl who knows what she wants and where she’s going and I look forward with great interest to seeing her grow and continue to expand her network. There was so much great information in this interview, I actually had to divide it into two!   

An introduction to this new podcast series that tackles the business side of running a small creative practice. This includes any of the creative design fields like architecture, graphic design, furniture and lighting design, fashion design and styling, landscape architecture and garden design, photography and projection art and just about everything in between.  The people who I think are going to get the most out of this podcast are those among you who are either just getting started or thinking about getting started, or those that are already up and running and are keen to learn some new tricks along with some really valuable strategies and techniques that can be applied almost immediately to improve the business approach of their practice.    

Chris Nixon is a Perth-based Illustrator and Creative Director. In this interview you’ll learn Chris’s philosophical and practical perspectives on what it is that makes a creative business viable and what separates a business from a hobby. Chris reveals the way he has designed the structure of his business in order to allow him to engage in the different types of creative activities he is passionate about and given him the freedom to move between them as he chooses.

Anya Brock is a successful Sydney-based full-time artist. In this interview we talk about finding that point of convergence between who it is you are as a creative, the value of your skills and capabilities and the market that will part with money to participate in what you're offering. You'll learn how  separating yourself emotionally from your work can actually be really good for business. We also dive into the importance of knowing exactly where you position yourself in the market so you don’t cut yourself off from opportunities to grow and succeed.  

Rikki owns an interdisciplinary practice with a base team of interior and graphic designers that expands and contracts through collaboration with external consultants and suppliers depending on the project. In this interview you’ll find out how you could keep your options open as far as project work goes, by adopting a collaborative approach to doing business. Also how keeping a little bit of distance between you and the details of your work can help to empower your team and give you the opportunity to keep the work coming in. Rikki shares her experience of shifting from being an employee to actually becoming the owner of the business she worked for and walks us step by step through the process she uses in determining, negotiating and clarifying roles in collaborative circumstances.  

Dan is a Melbourne based freelancer with a multidisciplinary approach to design. In this interview,  you’ll have to chance to share in the very real life experiences of our guest, as we explore his recollections of taking the leap from employee to free agent. Dan talks us through, step by step, the two years preceding his move, including the decisions he had to make along the way, his changing mindset, and all the practical things he had in place before he jumped into the abyss of self employment. If you’re sitting on the fence about what to do in your career right now, or have already made up your mind to take control of the reigns of your lifestyle and career, I’m sure you’ll find this peek into someone else’s life, very interesting indeed.

Kerri’s story is a reasonably familiar one, but one that I was really keen to catch because she is right at the beginning of her journey to greatness, its been just two weeks since she left her job. For that very reason, Kerri has barely experienced the ups and downs that many of the rest of you may already have. So far, hers is a tale of bravery through  a number of events in her life and of building the confidence to take on her profession as a full time business. In this interview Kerri talks us through her career changes and how ended up becoming a creative professional, how she managed to negotiate working as a sub-contractor to her employer while still doing small jobs on the side and the events that finally caused her say "enough is enough" and shift all her focus towards Project Artichoke

Emma Williamson and Kieran Wong are a couple, a bold duo who have built a successful architecture and urban design practice from their humble beginnings of just the two of them fresh out of university, through to the team they have alongside them today that has been anywhere from 15 – 20 strong. In this interview Emma explains how building a team is very much a two way street and talks openly about her and Kieran’s ongoing role not only as overseers of the operational aspects of the business but importantly as the cultural custodians of the life of the practice.  

Kat and Jasper are visual projection artists and video jockeys, or "VJs". In this interview you’ll discover some of the real benefits of working with people from outside your business, both for the creative capacity of whatever it is you do in your practice, and also for the long term health, and success of your business, particularly if you’re interested in keeping your business structure compact. Kat and Jasper also share their experiences of working collaboratively with friends and how they get around the ever awkward issue of money and take you step by step through one of their own successful projects to show some of the amazing things that can happen when you put yourself out there and make the effort to reach out to others and build positive genuine relationships and supportive network of others around you.