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.