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. W

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

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, de

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 car

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,

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 skill

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 o

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.  Ch

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 w

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 p

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

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 underst

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

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 seek

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 p

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 the

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 employ

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.