Unfinished Business

This week on ‘Net Awards Podcast Of The Year’ nominated Unfinished Business, Liz Elcoate, from some other podcast, joins me to talk about why it’s acceptable to admit when we’ve availability and to ask people for work. We talk more about having flexibility in our rates and why it’s reasonable to quote different rates to different people. We also touch on whether web designers should charge ‘rush rates’ and why working for free can be good for the soul.

Speaking of the Net Awards, did I mention that Unfinished Business has been nominated for Podcast Of The Year at the Net Awards? No? If you’ve liked what you’ve heard over the last 55 episodes, please vote for us. After-all, this is the only podcast where you hear about the things that are really important. Apes (obviously,) soap, weeing in kettles and of course Purple Rain.

This episode is sponsored by Perch and by Logical Elements. Get 20% your place on their ‘PHP for Web Designers’ course when you use the offer code unfinished at checkout.

Laura Kalbag is back on Unfinished Business this week to talk about how far in advance we book client projects and what we you do if a client wants more work done, but we’ve other work booked for the next few months? We discuss upping our day rates and how Laura’s client suggested she charge more.

No Unfinished Business would be complete without talk of pirates and smugglers and the Milton Keynes Geek Night All Dayer conference which took place last week.

Thanks to our sponsors for this episode, they are Hammer For Mac and Ghostlab. You can support our show by supporting them.

It’s a good one this week. I’m joined again by Elliott Kember to talk about whether being acquired is just a poncy way of saying that you’re taking a job at a big company. We discuss Google buying a nest thermostatNest Labs for $3.2billion when they could’ve got one for a hundred quid at B&Q and why some people have reacted very negatively to the deal.

Best of all, we start and end this episode with a song that sounds absolutely nothing at all like Purple Rain. You don’t get singing like that on The Freelance Web or The Big Web Show, I can tell you.

Thanks to our sponsors this week, they were Espresso and Shopify. Please support our show by visiting them.

This week on Unfinished Business, I’m in a relaxed mood as I’m joined by Josh Cleland to talk about how we filter enquires from potential clients through our websites and emails. We also try really, really hard not to talk about moviesfilms.

Thanks to our sponsors this week, Hammer For Mac and GatherContent. Listen to this episode for a very, very special offer from GatherContent.

For the first Unfinished Business of 2014 I’m joined by my really good friend Dan Davies to talk about film marathons, what we’d hoard for the apocalypse and Dan’s totally unrelated career change from front-end developer to UX designer.

This episode is sponsored by Ghostlab and Perch. We love them both. Please support the show by visiting them.

For this, the fiftieth episode of Unfinished Business, I’m joined by regular guest Laura Kalbag. We talk about ethical statements and whether we, and the companies that people work for, should set out what they will and won’t work on our websites.

I would like to say an enormous thank-you to Anna Debenham for helping me get started with this podcast. To all our guests and sponsors for making the show possible and to you, our listeners for being lovely people. I’d like to wish you all a very happy Christmas holiday.

Special thanks to Forge, static hosting made simple, for sponsoring this week’s episode.

The wonderfully generous Sean Johnson joins me twice on Unfinished Business this week to first answer a listener’s question about competitive payment terms, then to talk about our downs and ups of 2013.

This episode is part of a whole week of Christmas crossover podcasts including The Freelance Web, Beyond Ink, The Back To Front Show and Boagworld.

I want to say a huge thank-you to Perch who’ve not only sponsored the show this week but have made it possible for us to record Unfinished Business all this year, from Anna and mine very first episode. We use their little CMS ourselves almost every day and can’t recommend it highly enough. Please support this show by supporting them.

Illustrator Josh Cleland is back on Unfinished Business this week to talk about his work on the new Stuff and Nonsense go, go, go, rillas header, the difficulties of designing our own branding and how we can make visits to our sites more memorable by improving the design of pages we often forget.

One way you can say thanks for the time we take making our podcast every week is to nominate Unfinished Business for Podcast Of The Year at the Net Awards 2014. We’d love, love, love you if you did that.

This episode is sponsored by the Device Lab from Vanamco.

This week on Unfinished Business, I’m joined by Elliott Kember. We talk about listening to feedback and the differences between client feedback on design projects and customer feedback about apps. Then I amuse Elliott with my new found adoration for LINGs CARS and that I think Ling is a marketing genius.

Thanks to our sponsor this week WebCode—Spend your time drawing, not writing code.

In this week’s extra length special episode of Unfinished Business, Jon Hicks and I talk exclusively about Doctor Who, so there isn’t a single piece of business advice anywhere in the show — not that there’s usually much.

In particular we talk about the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary episode, so if you haven’t seen that yet — spoilers! Before that we talk about ‘An Adventure In Space And Time’, the story of the First Doctor William Hartnell and ‘The Night Of The Doctor’ mini episode that set the scene for the 50th Anniversary last week.

Thanks to our companionssponsors this week Perch and Riot’s new Forge. Please support our show by supporting them.